The Beach House Gourd...

OK, I'm shamelessly posting photos of older crafts, to beef up the blog and immortalize my thoughts on them forever. :) I painted this gourd for our friends with the beach house a few years ago after our first vacation there. It looks like their beach house, as best as I could do it. Like the beach house sign, I painted two, one to keep.

It's an older home and divided into 2 halves, each with a kitchen, living area, bath, dining area, Murphy beds, porch and screen room. There's a connecting door between the halves so we can interact with each other. We had had so much fun, friends and family came over to spend time with us and we tie-dyed t-shirts and shark-tooth hunted, etc. Their house is right on the beach, go down about 4 steps off the sea wall, walk thru the sea oats on the dune and you're on the beach. We just love it there, there is a constant breeze and it's never too hot unless you're standing still on the sand in the hot sun.

We eat in the front yard at night and watch the sun set, last year I think we saw the green flash 4 or 5 times, it was amazing. Sometimes you can go years without seeing it, it all depends on cloud cover, pollution, the breeze, etc.

This gourd has a secret hiding place in it. If you remove the hose from the front of the house, it releases a wire loop that is holding in the door on the other side, where the flamingo is. This door will come out and you can access the inside of the gourd. I got this idea from a gourd book years ago and have used it a few times. I like to disguise the door in the painting on the gourd so the lines of the trees coming together hide the cut marks.

The 3D mailbox is an exact replica of their actual mailbox in the back yard by the street. A neighbor lady made it for the 3 homes there and she attached mosiac tiles and shells to it, it's adorable and so beachy.

Even the bottom of the gourd has a story- manatees have been known to cruise up and down the beach and one scared the snot out of one of our friends when the large, gray shape next to him popped up! He said he could count his whiskers! Our other friend was busily walking on water to get away from the large, gray, unknown shape. And there you have it, the beach house gourd.

Some close ups...

The tiles are about 3.5" high, and about 2.25" wide. I had a lot of fun finding things to put on the right letters, it was a challenge. My husband helped a lot, though, he comes up with some good ideas. Had to drag out the dictionary, too, because some of the letters were hard. A- What did we do at the beach house that started with an A? Not a lot, as it turns out!

I made 2 of these boards, one to keep and one to give. I have a hard time parting with things I've spent a lot of time on, so I always make 2 if I can.

My first adventure into blog-land...

Gosh, I hope this doesn't end up boring anyone to tears. Maybe if I don't tell anyone about it.... :)

So I've been painting for a couple of weeks now, a gift for friends who invite us down to their FL beach house every year where we have the best times with them. We walk the beach looking for sharks teeth, the black/prehistoric ones, we do crafts, we watch the sun set every evening from the picnic table in the front yard, we have pirate adventures and go on hikes and just have the best 10 days/2 weeks of the year, at their lovely old beach house.
So this year, we decided to make them something wonderful.... well, we think it's wonderful.

It's a board with 10 tiles on it, each tile depicting something to do with our vacations there.

B-Bikini

E-Explore

A-Arts and Crafts

C-Coconut Cups (my husband made one for each of us and our guests the first year.)

H-Hatch- A loggerhead sea turtle made a nest there our 2nd year and she had 147 eggs hatch 2 months later!

H-Horizon for the sunsets we watch over the Gulf

O-Oysters at the local oyster bar

U-Umbrellas cover the beach and our drinks!

S- Sharks teeth

E-Egrets, these are great, fun-to-watch birds!

I got the idea for this from something a lady did for her baby's room- it was a great idea and we had a lot of fun planning this out.

Anyway, this is my first post on my new blog. What a way to start a May!