It's my birthday and I'll blog if I want to

(does that win for least original title post ever? I hope so)

Anyways, yesterday was my twenty-ninth birthday [or, as my big brother puts it, "the first of many twenty-ninth birthdays"]. My husband treated me like a princess queen and made a big fuss over me: we went to Sounio for a swim and lunch, we went out to one of our favorite fish restaurants for dinner, I got a milkshake for dessert ... the usual birthday stuff. Oh, and I got a present.

This is a very delicate take on the traditional Greek visual trope of getting rid of the evil eye. You still see many Greeks (and those of other cultures as well) wear a small, usually blue, eye for this reason. I've always loved the design and the significance of it and last year I fell in love with a really fancy version of the necklace. This year we went looking for it, but we couldn't find it. The very day after we found my blue sandals and two new handbags, we went into the jewelry store where my husband had bought my engagement ring and went to work looking at matakia [lit. "little eyes"]. After being about to choose a really abstract gold one with a turquoise stone, the store owner put the one pictured down and it was a sale. The eye is made up of tiny little sapphires with a tiny little diamond in the middle, as the eye's iris. PRETTY!

I didn't actually get the necklace till yesterday and wore it out for dinner for the first time last night. I matched it with my plain pair of diamond studs (also from the same store - they were an engagement gift from my in-laws: usually I pair them with the matching diamond pendant with which they were given to me). Back in the States, I have the perfect white gold/sapphire/diamond ring to wear with my little eye, but last night I made do with my pink ruby ring.

The necklace is quite small and delicate - a bit of a departure from my usual jewelry style, but still totally my type. I love necklaces that hang right at the hollow of the throat and don't really have many that do so. This one does:

Oh, hello, sun burn. Not a very good detail shot, but you can see where the eye hangs on my neck. Nice, right? You can also see that I wore my Gap striped maxi-dress for my birthday dinner. I also splurged and wore contacts! And a hair accessory!

[I'm not that sun-darkened - it was dark and the light in my office is particularly problematic.] Notice, though, the diamond studs and part of the black rose in my bun.

Anyways - this was a totally self-indulgent post. Thanks for sticking with me. Here's to another 364 days till thirty!