diy: beach memories in a jar

i know not everyone wants to sit down & glue pictures to paper & write stories. scrapbooking is not for everyone. my best bud christina takes ALMOST as many pictures as i do, but never does much with them, other than having them printed out. and that's okay. me personally, i like the stories that go with my pictures just as much as the pictures themselves. (and i'm kinda crazy about paper & stickers as well)

i'm not gonna lie, i have no idea how long ago i saw this idea featured in a country living magazine. (truth be told it could have even been a southern living or martha stewart magazine.. i don't remember) all i know is it stuck with me.

what is this idea? well, what the woman in this article had was a wall in her living room, covered in shelves, lined with clear glass spice jars. and those little jars were labeled with a place & a date &  filled with about a handful or more of sand. there were jars with snow white sand, black sand, volcanic rock, pebbles & everything in between. it was like a snapshot of each trip her family had made.

i decided to put my own spin on it. i liked the little jars, as they were more 'space friendly' but i like collecting shells as well, and i obviously couldn't squeeze shells into those little things. (not to mention i have a slight fascination with mason jars.) so i figured i could upsize to a mason jar & put a little sand as well as some shells in it.

(there are some jars that have just shells. we found so many at st. joesph's state park i couldn't part with any!)

so back in... 2005 i started my 'beach jar' collection. i have just a handful of jars. a trip to st. simons island, ga. two to cocoa beach. one to port st joe beach, fl. one to mexico city beach, fl. they each have a little sand & some shells we collected, along with a label on top of where it was & the month & year.

sometimes i feel a little silly whipping out my ziploc bag & scooping in beach sand as passersby eye me, but in the end it's worth it to have a little time capsule of our trip that sits on my dresser as a reminder of lazy happy family days :)

xo-k

ps- in case you are curious.. we only take shells that do not having living creatures inside them :)