How nice to stop in and see that we are celebrating my birthday already!!! I have been telling people that I don't mind the party, but I am NOT turning older this year... those numbers are just getting too large. LOL I have been doing lots of digging up and moving plants. We have to get the siding replaced on our house and guess what's in the way? Arg! The contractor has told me that the workers will not be careful around the plants, so out came any small plants and the smaller or the shrubs. The others we are cutting back and tying in hopes that fewer branches will be broken this way. It was especially bad timing because the azeleas are just starting to bloom! I am taking some of the cut branches inside and putting them in vases so we can enjoy them a little. (I was tempted to tell the contractor to delay, but just knew if I did that he would get busy with someone else and there will be a long delay. I think you need to get them when you can...) Anyway, party on, Garden Circle ladies. I think we should have fun all week! Jeanne

28 years ago my wife's diamond ring was stolen. We had no insurance because when we had closed on our first home our insurance man told us that adding in the ring on our home insurance policy would hold up things for the closing. The ring was appraised at $3,500.00 and the diamond was .91ct with an I color and VS1 inclusion. To buy the diamond today on the wholesale internet diamond dealers would probably cost about 4,000.00. I wanted to buy my wife a diamond ring again but the more I learned about diamonds and the De Beers cartel the more turned off I became on diamonds. De Beers monopolizes about 75% of the worlds diamonds. The are responsible for diamonds high prices. Through limiting distribution and advertising they have brainwashed people and gotten jewelers into accepting the high prices. Moissanites are very tough and beautiful stone. If they are ever produced in cubic form there will be no way to distinguish the difference between diamonds and moissanites. Most moissanite stones are not cut as well as many diamonds. Moissanites have only very good cuts while diamonds can have excellent and even better cuts. I bought my wife a moissanite 6mm brilliant round stone and I explained all I know about moissanite and she loved the stone. She doesn't lie but tells her friends what kind of stone it is. We explain it's knickname, the "meteorite diamond" and that the man that discovered it thought they were diamonds on the meteorite that he had found. The color of most moissanite is I-J slightly yellow. But diamonds are often I-J too. The best thing about the moissanite is I don't have waste thousands of dollars on a piece of crystal that we really don't need and I don't have to buy insurance and waste a couple hundred more dollars a year. Also if we ever had to sell it we would not be out a couple thousand dollars. By the way I mounted the stone myself on a 14kt solitaire ring mounting. I am now for our anniversary mounting a 7x7mm square on a 14kt mounting with a 20" 14kt gold chain to give her. The stone cost $599.00 instead of a diamond at $15,000. It will look just as beautiful and I won't worry if it is lost or stolen. My will love the moissanite pendant because SHE IS PRACTICAL and not prejudiced by diamonds.

We went together to get my set. Very simple brushed silver band with a VERY small solitaire diamond. $103.00 and took most everything my DH had at the time! I got his on our first anniversary , as it took me that long to save for it. When you are 16 and 18 years old money didn't come easy. My DH had to stop wearing his years ago due to it catching on something and nearly tore his finger off. We thought we had misplaced it for years and both looked time and time again thru the years for it. Last week my DH mentioned that now that he is retired he would love to have his ring. So I looked for the hundredth time in my jewelry box and there it was! I was stunned that it was there all along and neither of us could find it. Being my 60th birthday was in a few days I knew the best gift I could ever get would be the look in my DH's eyes when I gave it to him along with a new one as the first was so badly worn and split. As we went to dinner for my birthday I had him stop the car as I had something I just had to show him. He was as stunned as I and we shared many tears together! It truly was the most wonderful birthday ever!

16K gold should not tarnish. What I suspect you have is a chain made of a base metal with a gold wash or plating. The gold has worn trough and the tarnish is from the base metal. However, if the chain is marked 16K gold, it should be a solid gold alloy and the tarnish is not base metal, but from another source. Take to a jeweler. He may have a metal cleaner. I know of one way that the appearance of gold can be ruined, but I can't imagine how that could have happened to your piece. Mercury and gold are soluble in each other. If some liquid mercury got on the gold, it went into solution in the gold forming a gold-mercury alloy and can not be cleaned off - its now part of the alloy. It dulls the appearance and color.