A Few of My (New) Favorite Things

I was born in Colorado and though I've traveled around and lived in several different places since leaving there, I've spent most all of my life landlocked.  Aside from a few visits to the ocean over the years, I've never spent much time near it.  The ocean... scares me a little.  It's so big, mysterious, and unfamiliar to me.  I do think it is beautiful and fascinating, but I was uneasy about living as close as we are to it now.  It's about 3 miles from our house to the Pacific, as the crow flies.

Here's a sign that we spotted our first time at the beach.  That didn't help me!

Jeff and I have made several trips to the Pacific side and walked along the beach.  During the day and also at night.  It was creepy for me at first, but I started to get used to the crashing waves and the sight of the endless water.  (though we went out in the dark once after a typhoon had passed by and the height and violence of the waves scared both of us, on "our" beach that we'd come to know and recognize in normal conditions).

Our biggest reason for returning to the beach was to look for the glass fishing floats that we'd learned about.  We did end up finding 5 of them in one trip, after a storm had gone by.

Since then, Jeff has found one of the big glass floats.

It has been interesting, finding treasures from the sea on our beach trips.  However, the real reason for this post was to share a few of my new favorite things:

Sea glass, driftwood, and rocks.

The above picture is part of my "haul" from a trip to the beach last week.

While we were at the beach, I was telling my friends here that I've always wanted a rock tumbler, but here I don't need one!  Not with so many beautiful rocks already perfectly tumbled and polished by the ocean and deposited on the beach that we went to.

I've been collecting small pieces of driftwood with the idea of using them as bases for custom model horses in the future.  I think it would be really neat to make a series of horses that are standing on pieces of driftwood from Japan!

(imagine a beautiful custom horse instead of this OF - haha)

The newest of the favorite things is sea glass.  I think it is beautiful.  I don't have any set ideas for it yet, but right now I'm just collecting as much as I can.  I've seen tons of beautiful ideas for using it in crafts, home decor, and so on.  Of course the idea of recycling/upcycling what is basically "trash" is highly appealing to me.

With the possibility of finding some more of my new favorite crafting materials, I find that I'm actually looking forward to going to the beach now.