"Monday, Monday...

...Can't trust that day..."

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. It was a banner weekend at our house – no one was sick or injured (unless you count me getting sunburned at the beach on Friday because I sunscreened the kid but forgot about myself), nobody died and only ONE thing got destroyed.

Sadly, that one thing was a necklace design I’d worked on for a couple of hours fiddling with the layout to get it just right and then I left it on my bead board on tray on my bed before we left for the fireworks.

When we got home, I sent the kid upstairs to get ready for bed while I walked my mom to her car. When I got upstairs, I saw my son sitting naked on my bed wearing that look – y’know, the look dogs give you when they know you just found the spot that they pooped in at the back of the closet? Yeah, that look.

I said, “What did you do?”

He answered, “It was an accident and I cleaned it up.”

Okay, now ya know it’s gonna be bad LOL!

Turns out he decided to head to the potty by way of jumping on my bed which, of course, sent all the beads from the bead board flying.

So, scratch one necklace design gone forever because of course my mushbrain has NO MEMORY of what it looked like.

He really had tried to pick up all the beads – but I still found a few that night and the next morning caught in the sheets.

Still, I think was able to reassemble it pretty well – although I don’t think it’s as good as the original design. Even though I don’t remember what the original design looked like LOL!

The ebony wood slices came from my monthly Blog Partner package from Rings ‘N Things. The stick pearls are also from R&T, but I bought those at their trunk show.

The turquoise disks, shell flower pendant and sterling silver seahorse charm are all from my stash. Oh and there are a few pieces of faceted smoky quartz in there, too, for sparkle and ya know, I think those originally came from R&T as well.

I made matching earrings - except I couldn't get my headpins to fit through the holes on the stick pearls (and I was too lazy to go dig out my pearl reamer) so I went with Swarovski crystal pearls and, just cuz you never know what you might find on the beach, I changed the dangles to little silver sand dollars.

In addition to all the fun of the 4th itself, my company and the kid’s YMCA program were both closed on Friday the 3rd so we decided to take off and head to the beach. It was a great day – sunny, but not too hot and the tide pools were just FULL of activity.

As many years as I’ve lived here and gone to the beach, I’ve never seen as much going on all in one day as I did on Friday. I got some great pics, too.

The rock crabs were out in great numbers – especially some of the larger ones like this guy.

Not much action in this picture, but a good shot of a limpet and mussels.

Here's a chiton. This one was actually MOVING when I took this picture - very slowly of course, but moving all the same. NEVER seen that happen before - have only seen them stuck fast to the rocks like they've been there for a thousand years. There are a couple of gooseneck barnacles next to him.

And then there was THIS limpet which was truly gargantuan in size. I’ve never seen one this big before.

Another rock crab – this one trying to run from my camera and get back in the water before I can get a picture.

Two hermit crabs playing in their own private swimming pool

And then I got these remarkable shots of a hermit crab about to switch houses:

Here he is with his potential new house.

And you can see how far he’s outgrown his other shell.

Now he’s trying to drag his new home to a nice, private crevice where he can make the actual switcheroo without nosy paparazzi (aka me) taking pics and then selling them to “Crabs Weekly” magazine.

I really wanted to get out to the major mussel beds to get some starfish pictures, but the tide had started to come in so I couldn’t get as close as I wanted to:

We counted 5 starfish in this picture.

And 7 more in this one. Can you find them all?

And then there was this guy:

He has really taken advantage of the “all you can eat mussel buffet.” He’s HUGE!

Of course, there were a few things that my poor camera skills just couldn’t capture. There was a whole pool of opal eyes but they were just swimming too quickly for me to get a shot. I tried and tried, but no luck. And then the DOLPHINS came by – and I have a bunch of great shots of what the water looks like just AFTER they submerge again. Darn it!

But, I did accomplish my goal of getting at least one picture that I could use to inspire a piece of jewelry:

I loved the colors in the anemones – cool gray-green and dusty rose shading to amethyst on the tips – against the golden sand and glimmering water.

And I used that color palette in designing this necklace:

I call it “Anemone Pool.”

I found this silver mermaid pendant at a bead show and just fell in love with it. I like to think the anemones are the flowers in her "garden."

The necklace is a bit on the short side for my personal taste - and it gets shorter the more you twist the strands up, so I added a 2" extender chain.

And, of course, matching earrings.

It was a GOOD weekend.

KJ