Ok, so last month, one of my good friends bought a standing jewelry armoire. You can see it in the background.

She has a wonderful jewelry collection–a great deal of really good stuff and then a huge amount of costume jewelry. Now, most of us have a few good pieces and then costume jewelry that we mostly forget to wear. But not my friend. Since she never leaves the house without accessorizing (or without full make-up and hair, even while undergoing ongoing treatment), she wears just about all of it. And wanted a handy way to store it all, in sight, so she would remember to wear pieces that had remained squirreled too far away to notice.

Being a girly-girl, myself, I made sure she knew I wanted to help her organize and fill the new armoire, mostly so I could get a look at the entire collection.  What woman doesn’t like to play with shiny, sparkly things? And then, another of our friends independently told her the same thing. So the three of us got together one night at our friend’s house, and with the help of her teenage granddaughter, we culled through, organized and put away her costume jewelry collection.

It brought me back to when I lived in Tampa. A friend there has a very nice small collection of gorgeous pieces, some heirloom. Gold, platinum, diamonds, sapphires.  Every so often she would bring out her jewelry box, then she and I would stretch out on her queen-sized bed and comforter and go through it. We’d try pieces on, admire their elegance, talk about who gave it to her or its history and have ourselves a uniquely female afternoon. In fact, we just talked about this on Christmas Day. Oh, it was one of the highlights of each year!

So that’s what I had in mind here, too. It’s a pretty nice jewelry armoire, as you can see. Spacious, with well-placed drawer dividers.

Most of the good stuff is kept in a safe, so we didn’t get to play with much of that. And she’s got some really gorgeous pieces. But there was still plenty of sparkly stuff, more than enough to satisfy our girly needs. And no, I’m not at all embarrassed to admit my girliness. Nope.

And then, of course, there was the “discovery” phase–finding necklaces, bracelets and other pieces that she’d forgotten she had. Or pieces given to her by her late mother-in-law or belonging to her late sister-in-law. I have similar things in my jewelry boxes–earrings that belonged to my mother or grandmother. Sometimes I take them out and hold them, just to reminisce.

Jewelry connects women in so many ways–the enjoyment of it, the passing down of treasured pieces and even, as we found out the other night, the sorting through and organizing of it. Even if it’s not our own.

It’s just the way girls are, right?