I stole seashells from the seashore. And I made a wreath!

The Bakers went to the beach this weekend. The boy child had pink eye, so we were unable to attend church on Sunday; we decided to make the day great anyway and went by Dunkin Donuts (coffee for me) and Starbucks (coffee for Shannon and "coffee" for Fin), stalked the base housing neighborhood like creeps, and then headed to the beach. Fin is quite afraid of the water, but LOVES the sand and the shells and the rocks. Wyatt loves EVERYTHING about the beach. He wore Shannon out running up and down the shore, into the water, up the dunes... And who knew??!?! The beach is absolutely fantastic during the spring!! It's not so hot that you think you're going to pass out, and the water is too cold to swim in- yea! This girl hates swimming in sticky sea water! Fantastic weather for just playing in the best. sandbox. ever. AND it was empty- a few people here and there, but we had the beach pretty much to ourselves! 

Anyhow, I enlisted Finley's help in collecting seashells and rocks to fill our glasses that previously housed pine cones. I told her to only pick out the most fantastic and beautiful ones she could find, but she kept loading them up into the bag. She seemed to think they were ALL the most beautiful and amazing things she's ever seen, and you know what? I'm inclined to agree. 

So 25 lbs worth of seashells and rocks later, I have 3 full glass urns and a wreath! I washed and dried our loot, separating the rocks and the shells. For the wreath, I started with a cheap straw wreath form- these are 3 or 4 bucks at Michaels everyday. 

 I wrapped it in ribbon, hot gluing just a dab every time it came around, and then I RAN OUT OF FREAKING RIBBON. Seriously. See that tiny section?? It's 4 yards. Not feet. YARDS. Yeah, I'm not buying it either. I think I got jipped on that spool of ribbon. Anyhow, I finished it up with fabric and spaced out my largest shells first, gluing them in place and following up with smaller shells to fill in all the gappage until it was nice and full. Then I added some more on top of other shells to add dimension.

 I picked up this letter B at Michaels for super cheap. I was going to buy a wood unpainted letter from the wood section that wasn't even cute, and then I found this hook and liked the font way better.

 Just 4 little tiny miniature screws to pop off and voila!

 Okay, I say voila with hesitation because I can't decide if I like it, but that dang hot glue is merciless... on my fingers and on the letter B apparently. It's going to take some effort to get it off without damaging the wreath, so I'm going to let hubs decide when he gets home.

 I still felt like it wasn't completely done, so I took some twine and criss-crossed it around the whole wreath.

 I like it.

So for now, it's hanging in the foyer. We have double doors, and I only made one because WE'RE MOVING!! Did y'all know this? Well, we are. Not far. Just on base. And none of the base houses have double doors, so we'll just stick with the one. And of course, I used up all the ribbon wrapping PART of the wreath (stupid!), so I didn't have ribbon to hang it with. I should have waited to post until I had it hung all nice with ribbon, but then I realized it's April 4th. It's been an ENTIRE month (jeez, there's a lot of capitalization going on in this post) since I last posted. A WHOLE MONTH. It's not that I haven't had my fair share of projects, I've just been lazy about posting. I'll work on that! Anyhow, so I decided I should just go ahead and post or it may never happen. 

See you soon (maybe!) Happy shell hunting!