Christmas in June After my jewelry box was stolen from my home last January, one of the pieces I most regretted losing was, strangely, a Christmas bracelet.→[More:]

I bought this bracelet a few years ago for about $3 at Value Village. It consisted of ovals with Victorian Christmas images on them, and linked together with a aged brass-tone metal. I remember the mental debate I had before I decided to buy it — I thought it might be the first step on a slippery slope leading to me wearing pink sweatshirts with sequinned reindeer on them, but the other half of my mind argued that it was so inexpensive and pretty that I couldn't just walk away from it.

And I was sorry to lose the bracelet, regretting it more than other pieces that were worth so much more, because I knew I couldn't replace it. I'd never seen anything else like it. I even had a look on Etsy to see if I could find something similar, but my searches turned up such a deluge of tacky Christmas crap that I soon gave up the effort.

Then, today, when I was at Value Village, I saw a bracelet exactly like the one that was stolen (or who knows — it may in fact be the same bracelet). It was priced at $10 this time, but I bought it without the internal debate. And I'm just so happy to have the bracelet again that my week is made.