found

 beauty in the breakdown

This weekend I photographed a series of shells I found at the beach last summer and fall. 

I find that over the winter I am constantly thinking about the shore and dreaming of lounging in the sun and sand and jumping waves. I think I could live at the beach. 

I miss the smell of salt water and suntan lotion. 

These help. 

I think I may offer a few as prints someday. They would look nice hanging as a group.

You can see all of them on the flickr set -  found

 treasured

scalloped

urchin 

(okay, didn't find this one at the beach but it is pretty amazing)

vacant

lodged

battered and broken

taken in

Wordless Wednesday - Things in My Yard

Beach Weekend

My Mother-in-law says I 'step in it' all the time and buy 'it' she means luck. 

This past weekend we were fortunate to be given a stay at a friend's parent's beach condo in Avalon, NJ.

What a wonderful time to visit the beach, there is no one there!

I felt like we had the whole town to ourselves.

On each day we visited Cape May, NJ. 

Most of these photos were taken around Cape May and the light house. 

Such wonderful memories...

Can you believe I saw I jack o' lantern sitting on the beach? I almost died!

It's like he was waiting there just for me.

Escape to the beach...

I was getting tired of my old burg this week and felt the need to smell some sea air and jump in the ocean. On a whim we decided to pick up my husband's mom and head down to the shore in Delaware.
I hadn't been to Cape Henlopen in a few years so that's where we decided to go. It's a lovely little state park, cheap to get in and very family friendly.
I absolutely love the beach and if I won the lottery, I would buy a house at the shore immediately:)
Here are just a few photos (can you guess, I'm a big fan of sea gulls).





Whoa, that's a lot of pelicans. I don't remember seeing pelicans at the beach when I was a kid. Maybe I didn't know what they were. I see them all the time now.

I won't be blogging much in the next week. My sister is getting married tomorrow and we're going on a mini vacation to visit and old friend in Oneonta, NY. I think it will be the first time my daughter gets to see mountains, how fun!
Take care, Jen :^)

Back from the Beach

Just returned from 6 lovely days at the beach! We had a ton of fun, well, except for the biting flies on Assateague, sunburn and over priced mediocre food (I know, I'm cheap and picky). Hey, I can't complain - it was vacation!
And it rained a bunch at home so all my flowers and veggies were happy.



My daughter Zoe, singing to the ocean. This was too cute not to share!


Why do I look so grumpy on the ferris wheel? Maybe because I hate paying so much for such a short ride.
The townhouse we stayed at is in the background on the bay side of Ocean City, MD.


This is the closest I got to a pony on the beach! I love this carousel though.


See how far away the wild ponies were. Guess they knew where to get away from the biting flies.


Here's how close I got last year!

I'm way behind on everything. Please be patient with me if you recently sent me an email.

Back from the beach...

When I'm on vacation my two favorite things to see are native animals and art.
The artwork that was my absolute favorite was a 1902 fully restored Herschell-Spillman carousel with 45 hand carved wooden animals of all shapes and sizes. The horses even had real horse hair tails! It is one of the oldest in the United States.
My 2 1/2 year old daughter was fascinated with the sea dragon and had to ride it twice despite my urging to try one of the animals that went up and down.

This gorgeous piece of history is housed in the Trimper
Amusement Park at the begining of the Ocean City, MD boardwalk.










The two other fun things at the beach are wild ponies on Assateague and sea gulls. I think I must be the only person that loves seagulls but I get a big kick out of feeding them and listening to their calls. I didn't have much time to spend with the ponies but I caught a glimpse of these two young stallions by the water.








Okay, now that the fun is over I am back to painting on Monday!
Jen