Jewelry Organizing Tips

Today I want to talk about jewelry display and organizing. We all ran into or will run into this problem, which is how to properly store our jewelry, and organize them in a way that it's tasteful and everything is easy to find. I have been searching for smart ideas online for a while, and found some amazing solutions.
One article I found was all about jewelry mannequins. Never heard of that? Take a look at this. I found this image on google, and it linked me to Jeri Dansky's blog. She featured several different style of jewelry mannequins, they all look great, but this one is my favorite. If you are interested of buying it, it's on sale at Amazon.co.uk. And you can find more jewelry organizing ideas from Jeri's blog.

Here is a great earring holder design I found on Etsy. It can hold lots of earrings and display them like art. This also solves the problem with earrings with posts. I mean you can literally hang those french wires/fish hooks, lever backs or clips on anything, but not the ones with posts. This will be a great helf for lots of us. And the frame can be hang on the wall or sit on a table. Very versatile! You can find all these great frames in anneball's Etsy shop Serendipity.

And here is a very simple DIY project every girl can handle. You basically go get a nice frame from thrift shop or even yard sale. If you are not a big fan of vintage frames, you can use the modern ones, which can be easily found at art and crafts supply stores. This is so easy to make, and you will have all your pretty earrings at plain sight, no more digging for a matching earring and untangle it from all other earrings. Here is the tutorial for that.

If you are a more classy lady, and want some furniture looking displays, you probably will like this one. Great part of this one is that you can also hang your necklaces and bracelets too. You can find it here. You also can find this more modern one on their website, great for many bracelets and necklaces.
Here is another nice handmade one I found on Etsy. Its simply design and all the twisted branches and curves and spirals make it great for younger generation. And it holds tons of stuffs as well. You can find this one at Claudine's Closet.

And I love these ideas too. Found the images a while ago, but unfortunately don't remember where I found them, and they are just not showing up on my google search.

Flowers From My Neighbor's Gardens

These are pictures of some of my neighbors' flowers. Enjoy.
Daylilies. I don't know the name of this lovely yellow flower. It's perennial, grows about 12" tall, and multiply quickly. The flowers open during the day, so I can only get some pictures of the half opened buds. And we all think this one is a weed, but its flower sure look like a pansy!Astilbe? Really elegant!

ByeBye, My Favorite Celtuce

Yesterday when I got home, this is what I saw. And this is how it looked like the day before. Apparently, a bunny or some other animal dug a hole under the chicken wire fence, and ate all 5 of my precious celtuce! All the leaves were gone, and the growing tips were chewed off as well, which means my celtuces have no chance to keep growing. 2 smaller ones probably can survive, since they were too small and the bunny just ate the leaves, didn't touch the stem. I was so pissed! That is my favorite vegetable, and not very easy to grow. I only got this 5 plants from the 30-40 seeds sowed. Great thing about celtuce is you can keep picking the lower leaves as it grows, (BTW, they taste just like lettuce), and when the stem reaches about 12" tall and 2" in diameter, you harvest the whole thing. This is how it looks like. Peel off the skin, and the inside is so juicy, crispy, and taste kind of sweet. So, you basically can enjoy it for the whole season. Here is my only harvest of the leaves last weekend. It was SO GOOD! But now, it's all gone, and it's cool season vegetable, so it's too late to start over. I guess no celtuce for us this year! How sad!

OK, enough sad news. My lily and gladious opened up, and they are gorgeous! Sorry about the darkness though, it was pretty late when I got home yesterday. And more happy news. Someone bought this yesterday.
love this necklace, and have been wondering why no one else like it. I shipped it out first thing this morning. She is planning to send it overseas to her friend, so hopeful it won't be delayed. OK, I feel better now.

Summer Garden

Here are some of the pictures I took on Sat. Enjoy.

This beautiful geranium was not doing so good in our office, but look at it now. It obviously loves my garden. More nasturtium pics. Never had this pale yellow one before, and it's just wonderful.And look at how big this jasmine flower is!Here are some other annual flowers on my deck.
My elephant ear is getting much bigger. I took it in over the winter, but its leaves look much lovely and healthier out in the summer sun. Another pot filled with gorgeous leaves.Close up on this lovely petunia.I decided to choose a different one this year. This was a shot of the ones I had last summer. They are just so lovely, I have to post them here too. And here are some shots from my vegetable garden.
This onion flowerhead is absolutely stunning in this macro picture. Look at all those tiny flowers! This is a close up of a flower cluster of dill. Did you see that tiny bee? It moved around quite fast, so it was very hard to capture this moment!Oh, another big bee was enjoying my lavender. Actually there were an army of them in my garden, they help me a lot with my cherry tomatoes. I took tons of pictures over the weekend, cannot fit all of them here. So have to show the rest later.

Found a Wonderful Etsy Shop

I am so happy now! Lovely beadsintheround from Tubular Crochet Designs, a fellow seller from Etsy, just bought this victorian garden nursing cover and the jungle flower bookmarks! She loved my bookmarks, and thought this nursing cover will be great for her girlfriend who just had a baby girl. Thanks, beadsintheround. And congrats to your friend. I always check out my customer's shop, if they are also Etsy sellers. And fell in love with beadsintheround. Her design is so wonderful, and her technique looks insanely complicated to me! (I have no idea about crocheting or knitting). And then I checked out her flickr folder. All I can say is WOW! It's like a bead crocheting gallery! Words cannot describe it, you have to go take a look yourself. She is absolutely talented, and so modest. I wish you great success with your business, and hope my panchang knot bookmarks can bring you more good luck.

No TV, No Internet

for 3 DAYS! Yesterday, when we got home from work, found that our cable had no signal, so no TV and no Internet for last night. We called Comcast several times, and the automatic system told us there were some service problem in our area, so we waited patiently. OK, DH waited patiently, I was freaked out a little bit. What am I supposed to do without TV and internet? So, I watched my favorite DVD, the "Planet Earth". This morning we called again, apperantly they fixed the problem, but we still have no signal. And DH scheduled an apointment with their techinican this Sat morning. Saturday! That means I have to live without TV for two more days! How? I guess we can keep working in the basement and finish painting the floor. We have been working down there for 5 nights already, and DH just cleaned the concrete floor last night. If it can totally dry up by tonight, we can start painting it. Cannot wait to see a "Porch Blue" floor down there. I think it will be quite boring. DH wanted to add some of those sparkles like those nice garage Epoxy painted floor, but I am not sure we can use those flakes with this type of paint. Have to stop by Lowe's and talk to those experts again. Meanwhile, here are some of the painted concrete floor I found inspiring. Notice that nobody used light blue! Well, we'll see. If it's really boring, I will have to buy a different color and paint some design on it. And I am going to make some curtains for the storage shelves to hide the mess. I really love this one, but the fabric could be just a little bit too dark for our basement, which has almost no natural light. But I do like that curtain against the light blue wall. So, it might work for my basement, since we will have white wall and light blue floor.

Love Summer Time

Three of my jasmines are blooming!
This is the follow up pic of the flower buds from yesterday.And here is my sambac. It has this one long branch, very unbalanced. I probably will trim it and make some cuttings out of it after the flowers faded. My deck smells so good now, with all these jasmine and gardenia flowers. And all my annuals in the window boxes and other pots are doing great too. And my garden is great as well. I really enjoy the fresh (scented) air and beautiful view (tons of flowers) every morning. And I love to walk around the garden after work, watching the bees and butterflies.

Beautiful butterfly on my purple cone flowers. I grew these from seeds, and they are getting too crowded now. More butterflies on my lavender. A bee on my russian sage. Some of my nasturtiums.

My Wonderful Gardenia

My gardenia finally bloomed! The flower buds formed at the end of Feb, and took them almost 5 months to open. 5 Months! I moved all my plants outside in early May, and really worried about this gardenia. It is my first attempt to grow gardenia, and everyone told me it's very picky, quite challenging. So, I was afraid all the new buds will drop and then it will die. BUT, apperantly it loves my sunny deck. It grows so well, not even one bud dropped. I took these pictures this morning, and there were 6 huge flowers. Two of them opened last Friday, they suppose to last only 2 days, but these two still pretty good, just started turning yellow. The smell is just heavenly! Oh, all my jasmines are happy too. Remember the one that bloomed about 300 flowers a couple of months ago? I trimmed it, and now it has lots of buds again! And two others started blooming too.
Oh, I made 3 more nursing cover and a half apron recently, but only got chance to photograph them last Sun. I will post them in my shop soon.