Beach Vacation Memories

My husband and I love collecting seashells during our beach vacations.  So far, we've only had two beach vacations together (the first being our honeymoon!) The shells we collected during our honeymoon (at St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands), originally were just laid out on our dresser.  After collecting more shells during our last vacation with my parents (in Myrtle Beach), I realized I couldn't just keep piling shells on top of my dresser!  And I wanted to keep the shells from the different vacations separated.  I had seen a pin on pinterest that inspired me.  In the original pin, it was suggested to collect sand during different beach vacations, and layer the sand in a large vase and mark where each layer was taken from.

For this idea, you will need a separate vase for each location you have collected shells.  I rather like my hand writing, so I just wrote on the vase in permanent marker the destination location and year.  If you don't want to do that, you could use things like stickers or stencils from a craft store.  Simply put the shells in the vase, and you're done!  

I hope to collect many more shells on many more beach vacations with my husband, and each time I'll add a new vase to the collection.  For now, these vases are just on my bookshelf, but I hope to someday have one long shelf filled with an assortment of vases with shells.  Goodwill is a great place to look for unique and different vases to add to your collection.  (Just make sure your biggest shell can fit through the top of the vase!)