Beach Glass and Heart Stones

Last year, my then 8 year old son found a piece of Beach Glass on the beach at our campground, on the shores of Lake Champlain. This started a love story / passion / obsession for the whole family.

In 2 summers, we have collected tens of thousands of pieces of beach glass, on the shores of Lake Champlain alone!
We have found several little beaches where we like to go on our hunts. We'll swim, look for sea glass, swim again, etc.

It's the ultimate frugal hobby!!
It doesnt cost anything!!
Plus, it makes you discover some beautiful places.
And it REALLY is like a treasure hunt. Every single time I find a piece of beach glass, I feel like I found a treasure. My kids too. You can see some of last year's finds on my FLICKR.

Finding a piece of beach glass is touching a piece of history. These pieces of glass have been drifing away in the lake for decades, being polished by the sand, rocks and water, and have become something that looks more like gems. You never know how old or what it used to be, and guessing is SO fun!! Sometimes, you'll find a piece with writing on it (look at my Flickr for some coca-cola glass and other fun stuff like that).

This is what my kids look like when they hunt for beach glass:



And now, here's this summer's lot!


There's everything on the cloth behind the bowl, AND everything IN the bowl. I put the penny there for size comparison. But the bowl: it's a huge salad bowl!!


Now here are my favourites for this summer:

Look at all the different shades in there! Even for one colour, there's a ton of shades!!

My number one favourite is this one:

A perfect bottle top, found by my 9 year old son (the one with whome it all started!). GORGEOUS and definitely old! I cant believe it's stayed intact!!!

I also like this very light yellowish-lime green piece. It's pretty big and thick, and I was the one who found it.

(hum, yeah, notice I have not yet cleaned them!!)

And I HAD to take a picture of this one too, the peach coloured one. It's the only piece I DID clean, because I wanted to make sure its colour wasn't from sand or anything. But nope. That IS its colour! WOW!!!

The piece on the left of it is also a rare-ish colour in my collection, a type of olive green that is close to amber. I have a couple of pieces that colour, but this one is the only one this summer.

I have beach glass everywhere around my house in jars and such.

And I love the colour so much that is it what inspired me for the kitchen colours we will have!!

Here's my "inspiration board": (LOL)

The aqua will be the walls (like the largest piece of aqua, bottom left of the bottle top). THe lightest aqua will come up in decoration pieces of course.

The white will be the cabinets. I love me some white bead board cabinets.

The different greens will be in accents, tiles on the backsplash, etc. Possibly in curtains and such too.

The darkest browns will be my new (soon) wood floors: I want them super dark, i love it. And my countertop will also be brown. My table is a lighter brown.

So there ya go, that's my kitchen's colour scheme!!

Oh and one last thing... while looking for beach glass, we started finding heart shaped rocks. We haven't accumulated much because we only started later in the summer, and they're harder to find than beach glass (which catches the eye by its colour!). But I plan on using them in a frame, it just makes me happy when I look at them!!


And here's another rock I found that is NOT shaped like a heart, but has a heart shaped spot on it, the colour of rust. Cute!

Anyone else collect Beach Glass or Heart Stones?

Link me up so I can see!!