Home.Home.Home.

THIS is why people come home from vacation..... ahhhhh....

Your own bed. 

In your own house. 

With your own stuff. 

Yes, indeed.

Lest you think that my room is neat and sparse and clean and stuff....  here's the view from another angle. 

And I'm proud of myself - I actually cleaned the bookshelves less than 3 months ago.  

What you CAN'T really see here is that the book shelves line an entire wall in my bedroom-- let's just be happy the man took HIS four or five bookshelves worth of Philosophy materials to his office, m'kay?--and are stuffed with a rag-tag assortment of pictures, bits and bobs, jewelery, a dried pirhana (really!), the horse emblem from my husband's old MustangII named 'Bob' (the car, not the horse), mini hudu shaped rocks from Utah, a multitude of glasses from the kitchen (probably I oughta gather them up and like, wash them or something...) and other sundry things that probably shouldn't be there. 

But it's a small room and a huge bed, so it's what I have.

I've also purposely neglected to show my sweetum's dresser, which is usually (and currently) piled high with bits of paper, cables, legos, art projects, coins, and other manly things. Piled to the point of toppling off onto the floor. But really, it's the only space he makes a mess of, so I'm not complaining.

But I'm not photographing it, either.

And!  For your viewing pleasure! 

An assortment of the shells I brought back from Florida.... washed and arranged oh-so-lovely-like around my coffeemaker with views of the hideous-hated countertop that will YAY disappear this week with a kitchen remodel.  O.M.G. I can NOT wait...  

Yeah.  I know.  It's a lot of shells.  I should add that this is only about 1/4 of my haul.  In fact, I filled 4 gallon sized Ziploc bags and had to buy an extra suitcase.

For shells.

No kidding.

I can't help it.  I see a beach, and I feel like an heiress in a jewelery store.  Oooooh!  Pretty!

Shark's teeth and part of a horseshoe crab...

The shark's teeth hunting is AMAZING at Manasota Beach. 

Better than Venice Beach, which is crazy famous for shark's teeth. 

Better than Casperson's Beach.  Bettter than ANYWHERE. 

Seriously.  This is just from ONE DAY.  And only mine. 

My husband has decided that our finds shall NOT mingle, and has stolen his away.... ???? 

Weird.  He'll share his drink with me, but not his shark teeth.... SUCH a Florida boy.

Ah, the lowly cockles and clams... still beautiful.  Love them. 

And I'm somehow quite adept at finding bones on the beach... these are mostly bird bones (hollow), but the largest one is not a bird, although I don't know what it is, and there's a bit of a back bone there on the left, although I don't know from whom... s'ok.  I still like them.

Lettered Olives and Spiny Oysters and a few calico scallops.  So sweet.

Top left:  Murex.  Murexes?  Murexii?  I haven't a clue what the plural is... Anyone?

...but my Aunt C and I used to find these pretty infrequently at the Nokomis North Jetty when my Grandmother lived there, so it was nice to find a bunch of them.  Even if they aren't perfect.  They are still lovely.

Top Middle:  Shark Eye Moonsnails, some little Augers, broken Florida Conchs (used to find whole ones ALL the time, alas, not so much anymore) and a few others.

A couple of lightning whelks (again, used to find TONS of these), Turkey Wings on the bottom right, the stripe bits... those are Banded Tulip peices. 

The Elusive Banded Tulip... My absolutest favoritest thing to find EVAH. 

Again, that's thanks to Aunt C... I DO have a few whole ones from years gone by, but this time, I searched and searched and searched some more, and could only come up with pieces. 

Sigh. 

One of these days, though... I'll find another one.

And finally, some lovely coral bits.  I kept thinking that I need to find a way to somehow assemble them into one piece of coral... and then of course, I decided to crochet them together.

We'll see how that works out.

Plenty of Florida fun remains in my camera.... But for now, I have to get ready for the kitchen remodel.

Did I mention that the kitchen will be remodeled?

Did I?

Because I'm a little excited....

I freaking HATE my kitchen.  It's hideous.

I'll post pics so you can hate on it too.  And you will.  Oh, you WILL....

But that will wait until tomorrow.

/Julianna