Carmel Latte Earrings!

The beautiful rich colors of these earrings reminded me of the fall and a luscious Carmel Latte!

Beach Time Fun!

It's beach time again!

Once a year our family packs up and goes to Long Beach Island to relax for a week or two! We are all so busy with sports, school activities and social lives, rarely do we have time to just unwind and enjoy each other's company except for our treasured vacation! We started this family tradition when my son was 4 months old, this year he is 21 and going into his senoir year of college! Where does time go?



We always rent a wonderful house right on the beach so we can enjoy being by the ocean 24/7! I just love waking up to the sound of the waves, and seagulls.

This year we have a little Tree Sparrow that wakes up at the crack of dawn and loves to sit on the telephone pole beside our deck and seranade us as we have our morning coffee! My husband and kids usually walk down to the bakery and bring back fresh hot bagels for breakfast! Most years its cinnamon buns or crumb cake, but we are all trying to be good this year! lol! We'll see how long that lasts!!

This year, our Siberian Husky and two turtles that my son had bought in NYC came along with us!(he thought they could go in our pond at home - wrong type of turtles! So now we have two more pets to add to our menagerie!) A pet sitter is staying at our home watching the rest of our animals! (We seem to always have a house full pets!).

It's been fun to see Kaylee's (our dog) reaction to the sand and the waves! She is beginning to look forward to our long walks on the beach in the evenings and enjoying all the attention she gets from surprised beach goers.

Today we brought her down to the docks to watch the kids go sea fishing! She loved all the great smells! It's been fun!

Our two sons in blue, friend in white & daughter are waiting to leave on their first fishing excursion! I was expecting fish for dinner---but we wound up having pizza instead! Fishermen --they were not! But they had a few nibbles and fun, and thats what counts!

As my children get older, friends are also becoming a part of our vacation. This year my son's girlfriend and best friend came with us for the first week. Here they are taking a surfing lesson! My son is the one in the middle. Our second week has been set aside for our family. It's been fun to have them with us!

My favorite time of day are the evenings, when the beach is empty and the sun

begins to set. This is when I love to take my walks with the kids, my dog and hunt for shells and other ocean treasures that have washed up along the shore.

I have found alot of great items this year, so I am looking forward to creating some new keepsake/Jewelry boxes! The shore is where I get rejuvenated for the year to come and inspired for many of the items I sell! I'm always sorry to see it end but excited to get home again to my beautiful garden, the pets we left behind and of course my own bed!!

How Did I Think of That?

Most of my creations have started with a goal for solving a problem. My mosaic boxes began with a quest for some way to display the sea shells that our family would collect on vacation each year from Long Beach Island, NJ! Every year we would come home with pails filled with ocean treasures! After sitting around for a while I would wash and stack them neatly in bags on a garage shelf. Each years beach finds were stored and forgotten!

One year, I decided I wanted to capture our vacation in a special way, not just in a scrap book or cluttering up my house with loose shells everywhere! That's when my 'Shore to Please' Mosaic Jewelry/Keepsake Boxes were born!

Using the shells and pebbles collected that year from the beach, I created a mosaic on top of a box I had. I wanted to capture the feeling of the beach, so I created it to have a lot of texture and a certain roughness like the beach, not a perfect mosaic that was smooth and flawless! Some shells were poking out of the grout and others were seen in their entirety, similar to what you would find walking along the shore. I enjoy walking along the beach looking for all types of treasures, and that is how I wanted to design these boxes. I delight in finding those little surprises and I tried to include that in my boxes. Even if the background may look very white, if you look closely, you may also find a piece of coral or a special shell or rock mixed in. It came out beautiful!

My love for weathered beach items, inspired me to paint the box to reflect the color of the fences that dotted the sand dunes along the shore. The inside was painted to complement the outside and then I covered the bottom with a piece of felt to provide a soft place to put my jewelry or mementos! It was almost perfect! But it was still missing that link to my family and that year I was trying to capture.

I started experimenting with a favorite picture of the kids on the beach that year, and was very pleased with the end result. I carefully enlarged the picture and attached it to the top inside of the box!

I fell in love with this box, and after 12 years it's still one of my favorite items I own! Each day I just love seeing all the different shells and when I open it up to get my jewelry, I smile, because there are my beautiful children, with their young faces smiling back at me! (Now that they are teens, its even more special!lol!) How time flies! Sure, I have lots of scrapbooks that I drag out and look at occassionally. But I see this picture everyday, reminding me of the wonderful memories we shared at the beach every time I open it up to take out my jewelry!

Through the years friends and relatives expressed how they loved my box, so when I began my Etsy Shop, I decided to create them for others. Now, they are my top selling items and I have even personalized them for beach side or beach themed weddings as Bride gifts or bridesmaid gifts! It's been fun to share what has meant so much to me and be able to offer it to others!

Summer is now approaching quickly, and the kids will be out of school soon. We are all anxiously awaiting our family vacation and making new memories!
After 22 years, we still enjoy that wonderful week or two that we leave behind the soccer fields, ice rinks, and all the other sports that fill our lives, replacing them with swimming, relaxing, baseball, kite flying, and long walks on the beach. Ahhh, I can't wait for this years vacation!