Broken is Beautiful too!

 Here I am posting AGAIN! Maybe I can make this a habit! Another mid-morning low tide allowing for a nice therapeutic beach stroll! It was a beautiful day, a bit cloudy with a nice breeze....

I'm not sure what the black cloud is from in the first pictures but it went away pretty quickly!

At first I just walked, glancing around to see the shells, not much there, but on such a beautiful morning, who cares! I did notice Broken shells, (which we use all the time at Sanibel Shellcrafters) and butterfly coquina. I call them butterfly because they are open, both shells still attached but empty. We need those too! So today is going to be supplies for crafters! That's okay with me!

So after I walked down the beach to where I wanted to, I turned around and starting picking up broken, but beautiful shells, while I was bent over (called the Sanibel Stoop in these parts) I figured, why not pick up the coquina too?! At my age, once you get in that position, get all you can while you're down there! 😂

I did use my scoop some, but it was almost easier to just go for it and bend down where I could see so much better!

Before I knew it, I had nearly filled my shell bag!!! Many of the Shellcrafters will be happy to have some new pieces to choose from for their projects!

I found a few minis, and lots of colorful Coquina butterflies too!

Here are just a few pictures of projects our Shellcrafters have created with these shells!

Broken and sliced shells

Close up of broken shell

A Basket of broken shells!

Coquina Flowers

Coquina Flowers

We have made Wreaths, shell trees, all sorts of things with broken shells, they are actually beautiful and add a lot of interest to our projects! 

There is always something amazing to see at the beach....and it's ALWAYS therapeutic for me!! 

Stay tuned I'm hoping to make this a habit!! 😀

Happy Fall Y'All!

I know it's been a very long time since I posted. I can't make any promises, but all I can say is I will try to post much more often!

Happy Fall Y'all!

Sea urchin pumpkins by the Sanibel Shellcrafters

This is what Fall looks like in Florida! :)

What is your favorite Fall Flavor? Is it Nutmeg(s)?

or Olive(s)?

Notice that beautiful Junonia piece! It was my very first find of the day!

Team Cheri went out shelling last week for the first time in a while. Florida is having its rainy season. That normally means storms in the evenings, which is when low tide is this time of year, that makes it difficult to get out very often. Last week, the lower tides were in the morning so we headed out on Wednesday! The abundance of Nutmegs was amazing! Every size you could imagine! I had so much fun I went out Thursday and Friday too! So nice, Fall is almost in the air and the clear sunshiny day was so therapeutic! 

The birds thought so too!

Bird Nerd Cheri told me there were Red Knots (a stocky little sandpiper type birds) and Skimmers, one of my favorites! All were very vocal and having many conversations...all at once!

Skimmers

Skimmers (front) Red Knots (back)

We saw a live Shark's eye, it is difficult to see because he was burrowing under the sand in the water, but so nice to see!

We found this seaweed, and sea whips all bundled up with Squid or Octopus eggs, that's always a fun find. I couldn't focus in enough to see them in the cases, I'm not sure they were developed enough yet!

      

Over the 3 days I found all these treasures...MANY Lightning Whelks of all sizes and some Fighting Conchs to paint and for donations for shell bags. But mostly for therapy!  So...So Fun! 

Stay tuned, I hope to make this a regular occurrence....the shelling AND the posting! Bear with me, gotta get back into 'Blogging mode'

Thanks for stopping by...

Bucket List #19 Completed! Lighted Boat Parade

 I guess it's been a year, or more since I posted. I won't promise, but my plan is to start posting more regularly! We'll see if I can do that, at least I will try!

Cheri and I got to take item #19 off of my Bucket List that is on page 2 of this blog! We went out on a wonderful trip by boat to see the lighted boat parade. What I didn't know when I booked it a month ago was that it included a sunset cruise with dolphin, and Adventures in Paradise delivered! I highly recommend them, it was a wonderful trip! (Here is a link to their website: https://www.adventureinparadiseinc.com/) 

Before we left the dock, I caught this picture of the local pirate ship....I hope to take my grandkids on this one day, I think they would enjoy it...

There were also tons of these little tiki boats all over the place....how cute are these?!

We left out of Fort Myers Beach with Art as captain and his first mate Tom.

They were great hosts and really made the trip special. They apparently know the local dolphin and called on them for a show for our boat!

This was my first attempt at catching them, It was too far away and way off to the right, so I cropped it to see it better....

This was right at Fort Myers Beach where we left, but then we traveled to Sanibel Lighthouse...

We then passed under the causeway toward Pine Island, in search of dolphin...

I almost got this shot of the lineup under the causeway! close enough....

Here we hit the jackpot on dolphin, watch this video, I got a great shot...finally ..watch until about the middle of the video! click on the arrow to see it!

After we watched, photographed and took videos of the dolphin for a while, we watched the sunset....Tom put on a song by a local musician, Danny Morgan called Sanibel Sunset...watch (and listen) here...perfect timing.

We then headed back to Fort Myers Beach for the Lighted Boat parade...

It was so much fun to watch, taking pictures at night with a cell phone aren't the greatest..

Here is the pirate ship I showed you earlier...

and a few others...

They even had a decorated shrimp boat!

Remember that cute tiki? They had some of them decorated also, one did a 360! I missed it though, but here's a video of a couple of them...

Here's a couple other videos of some of the boats...

The trip was an absolute blast! The traffic wasn't bad, the weather was perfect, we were on a boat and we saw dolphin...all in all a perfect day!

Thank you to Cheri for helping me check this one off my bucket list! 

Stay Tuned!

::Shelllady Hugs::

Beach Bummin' the Gulf Coast...the Finale!

First, let me add this pic from yesterday that Jess took from the car as we were headed down the road toward our hotel! I think it's the perfect shot! Doesn't it make you just say "Ahhhhh!"?

 We got up early this morning and headed out to continue our beach trip to Fort Myers. The little town of Carrabelle is very remote and we found that it was going to take a lot of driving the get to a beach. Most of what we found was heavy woods and small remote towns. On the roads we chose, there was nothing to see. We realized it was going to take several hours to get back to the beaches, as the 'Big Bend' of Florida was more marshy, kind of like the everglades, and very wooded. I didn't want to go into Tampa, St. Pete as it's entirely too populated, so we finally ended up on I 75 headed to Sarasota to hit Siesta Key. It took several hours and we didn't arrive there until 2:30, so we decided to make the most of it as it would probably be our last beach for this trip...It also is a very populated area, but we finally made it!

It was a beautiful day!

Jess found another Keyhole Limpet...

and a sweet little Sand Dollar...

We picked up a few more little things, nothing really special, but it was a very nice walk on a beautiful white sand beach....Great Therapy!!!

We decided to find another fun place to eat, and found Siesta Key Oyster Bar another nice restaurant with seating outside!

We had another wonderful meal....!!

and of course had to try the Key Lime "pie"!! It also was great!!!

We arrived home about 8:00 tonight in Fort Myers....we missed a few beaches between Siesta Key and here, but ran out of daylight...that will have to be another trip! For now, I get to mark through another item on my Bucket list and got to spend some time with Jess and make some wonderful memories! Jess flies home late tomorrow afternoon and will spend her Christmas with her boys, I will miss her like crazy! We will have some more adventures in the not so distant future....

Thank you for coming along!

Stay Tuned!

::Shelllady Hugs::