My husband's favorite island is Maui. My favorite islands are the Big Island and Oahu, mainly because I have so much family there...wait a minute...is that why he loves Maui so much? No family?!? He says, "NO! I love to kiteboard." Uh-huh...
Anyway, each time we take the kids to Hawaii I am so anxious for them to love all the same things I do, shave ice with ice cream and sweet beans (so far they've just taken to the shave ice with ice cream), snorkeling, the food, the swap meet at Aloha Stadium, and of course the beach. We love to body surf, boogie board, lay in the sun, build sand castles, play games...and when I say "we" I mean all of us except the 4 yr old. She loves to find shells and only find shells. She can spend 6 hours looking for shells, shell bits, shell parts, and plastic/glass that she thinks are shells.
Here she is looking for shells at the black sand beach. Nevermind that there are large turtles all over...she is looking for shells.
And here she is after she found some shells, dancing for joy!
Here she is looking for shells at another beach!
NOTE: Check out the random boy on the right lying "beached" on the shore. It was truly odd. He was just rolling around in the shore...maybe he was looking for shells. You can click on the picture to get a closer look.
Anyway. Of course she wants to keep all the shells. Usually I make her leave them at the beach, but this time, she literally spent most of her time looking for shells and I didn't have the heart to throw away her hard earned treasures. So, I found a ziplock bag and she collected shells our whole trip.
What to do with all these little shells? They weren't big enough to actually use for decoration. So we decided to buy wooden jewelry boxes and glue the shells to the box. We had enough shells to make 4-5 boxes I think. We painted some and we left some plain. We basically took that "Tacky Glue" that comes in a gold bottle and put on a thick layer on top and the girls actually placed every shell on the box top. If there were some gaps, we filled it with sand. Then the glue dried clear and those shells are really stuck there!
These boxes turned out so cute. And when the 4yr old's preschool teacher found out that she handpicked each of those shells, it made the present that much more special.
I'm sad I gave away all the shell boxes (this is my mom's). I smile each time I see them because it reminds me of the simple life of a child! This is one of the times I was proud of my MOM-hood. I was able to turn something my daughter thought was special into something I thought was special.
On a side note, my husband isn't so crafty, but he has other talents. Take a look at the picture of my son below. He took it at Sunset Beach on Oahu. If you click on it, it's even more spectacular.
Mahalo for stopping by and
ALOHA!
Great idea as always :)
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