We’ve decided that it’s time to get a puppy. We’ve our hearts set on a Cairn Terrier and so today we are driving to Derby. Will Poppy be for us and we for her?

I love living where we do, which is in a very beautiful, small village in Hampshire for many reasons, but it’s also perfectly positioned as it’s only an hour from London (by train  that is – about 2 hours by car). I LOVE London! From the minute I arrive in the City I go into complete sensory overload and am aware of all the wonderful things I miss out on by living in the country……..

We went over the weekend, one of our clients – Auditel Franchise -  was nominated for a best website award and the award ceremony was on friday night  and also, my sister Rosy was arriving for a visit from Australia.

Tessa’s only request for the weekend was to go to the Tower of London, which we did on Saturday. What a beautiful day it was, we have been treated with some glorious days lately and it was perfect to be wondering around a place of such historical importance.

When visiting the Tower, you can join one of the tours which are given by various Yeoman of the Guard. This is well worth doing – the Yeoman are interesting, full of  fascinating details and entertaining too. Our guide was Chris.

Now, I know that sometimes I do ramble on about things unrelated to jewellery, but this is not one of those posts because the Tower of London is where the Crown Jewels are kept!

Chris, gave the girls in the group this advice regarding the Crown Jewels:

” Take a long look at those massive diamonds, look into your husbands loving eyes, look back at the Crown Jewels, look at the minuscule diamond ring on your finger and then slap your husband!“

I know that spring is on the way when little daisy princesses appear in my garden!

Empire of the Sun – the Aussie band who’s debut album – Walking on a dream  was released here last month.

Listen to it here

Billy and Desiree were married on Saturday. Desiree wanted necklaces for the 5 special girls from their families who were included in the ceremony in various ways. In the end, Desiree decided on 4 Murano hearts for the older girls and a little czech heart for the little one in the group. Instead of suede I used a contemporary silver chain to hang the hearts on.

Kirstie Allsop – from “Location, Location, Location”  has lost her engagement ring and has set up a website to try and find it.

I know I would be devastated if I ever lost my wedding band. When I got married we couldn’t afford a diamond engagement ring and it never really bothered me as I prefer coloured stones ( I can’t tell you how happy David was about that!). For our 10th anniversary David designed the most beautiful ring for me as a surprise, it has 40 small diamonds set into a rose gold band – I could never imagine a more beautiful ring. Isn’t it funny how there are some things that are so precious and sentimental.

Kirstie, I hope you find your ring.

Have you come across Bookmooch.com yet? If, like my family, you are readers then it’s worth looking in to.

Bookmooch is a site, where you can list books that you own, but no longer want. Other members can then “mooch” your books from you and you can “mooch” any books you might want. It is all based on a point system, so if you mooch from someone in you own country, it costs you a point, but if you mooch from abroad, it’s costs you 2. If someone from abroad mooches from you, you get 3 points.

You don’t have to agree to post abroad, set up your profile carefully as there are various options you can choose.

I have been a member now for a couple of years and love it.  We all read a lot and while I think the library system is amazing here, sometimes I like to keep a copy of a book. I earned a lot of points posting abroad – I always say  that I will only post by surface mail, as it’s much more affordable and that postage will take 6 – 8 weeks but  it’s been lovely to see more people from the UK joining and using Bookmooch.

Normally when I buy semi precious beads I buy a whole strand of them. Because you are buying something that was  created naturally it’s unavoidable that there be flaws and imperfections in it, unlike things made in a mass production factory, where everything is churned out “perfectly”.

Unfortunately the Briolettes that I buy for my Smoky Quartz Briolette earrings are often a bit too irregular or the stones have scratches, and because I  think that earrings components need to match perfectly I end up with stones that I can’t bring myself to use for this particular pair of earrings (sometimes as many as a quarter of the strand!)

It’s such a waste – these are still very lovely stones – I made this pendant last week, out of a less than perfect smoky quartz briolette, and an explosion of a cluster of  really unusual matt green Swarovski crystals.