listen to your mother...or scarlet's mother, instead.

a family friend of ours, jaime, writes a very sweet blog called "500 pieces of prudent advice for my baby daughter." she has an adorable baby named scarlet who will have quite the collection of motherly advice when she's old enough to read. how wonderful for them to have their blog posted on ohdeedoh today!

if you haven't read it start to finish, do so now. you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll yell, "i know!" at your computer monitor. a few of my personal favorites:

#28 Splurge on fresh flowers once a week.

#34 Good lighting is the key to decorating a cozy home.

#59 Drink Tea!

a masterpiece, of sorts.

yay for spending hours lining up rows of earrings just for this blog.

you can't see them all there, but there are 64 pairs in that lineup.

that setup was ridiculous, but looked so cool.

i found some new favorite color pairings laying these out.

citrine and smokey quartz- so modern, who knew?

i've been working on the above order for my favorite customer in japan for about 3 months now, and it's finally finished. now, i wasn't working all day everyday by any means. but the grand total was 84 necklaces, and 64 pairs of earrings. the necklaces were actually much simpler than the earrings. 64 earrings= 128 spiral wrapped stones, and 640 tiny headpins. my thumb and forefinger were a little sore for a few days. you can't really use a thimble while making jewelry.

jurassic park peonies

i bought some unopened peonies at trader joe's two days ago.

by that night, one flower had opened up completely and was about the size of my head.

one by one, the others have followed suit.

we thought we might put a stop-motion camera on one as it opened, but i have no idea how to do that, so i hope you like these macro shots instead.

i had an idea in my mind of what peonies looked like, and it's certainly not like this. however, they are very beautiful and have received rave reviews from everyone.

i only spend money on very important things...

here are the beautiful pillows i bought yesterday:

don't ask how much they cost.