Souvenir Searching...

Australia has lots of interesting souvenirs, we found this out while shopping various markets and shops in all three of the cities we stopped in. For example...

From nameplates...

To kangaroo nuts (Jennie was clearly surprised in this picture!!)...

To wood and jade figurines...

Lots of cute owls...

and an adorable horse!

We saw plenty of the crocodile hunter as well. This was a super expensive bronze statue...

And this is a fancy shop in Melbourne. These are all Christmas decoration and everything was white or silver!!

So I did lots of searching before deciding that I really wanted an opal ring. I saw Missy's adorable opal ring and after searching high and low for ten days for the perfect souvenir, I decided that I needed to grab an opal ring on our last day there. Why an opal ring might you ask? Well, after learning that 97% of the worlds opals come from Australia, and that it is the national gemstone, I had my eyes out for an affordable one. Jennie and I got directions from Missy on where to get a cute ring with a modern look, and we headed to Chatswood with our husbands in tow to do some searching.

We found the shop she had gotten hers at, it was in the mall and called Magnolia. It prides itself on hand-crafted silver jewelry. The ladies there were so helpful, letting us try on everything we laid our eyes on and providing our shopping-weary husbands with chocolate while we debated. They said they could custom make anything we wanted in the size we needed, it would only take 4-6 weeks. Er...what? We were leaving the NEXT day, so we picked from what fit us and where we wanted it to fit us.

I ended up with this pretty....

Isn't it pretty? I love the colors and the silver design.
Here is a link to a picture of Jennie's pretty...

I think it will be the perfect reminder of a fabulous trip to visit Missy!!