Turtle Treasures

On man it was just the best!!!   We had a great time!

We sold lots of turtles and just had a blast.  It was wonderful and crowded and just even better than I imagined.  People were so excited about all the beautiful jewelry and my booth was a big hit too!  We met so many beach glass lovers from all over the country and even the world.

I made a huge show piece turtle with all kinds of beach finds.  It got lots of attention and was sold right away, but we got to keep it for display all day Saturday.  Everyone loved my little turtles too and so we very, very busy with customers, which is good thing, but I didn’t have time to enjoy the Festival lectures or shop at all.  My friends loved the lectures and all showed me what they bought.

All the artisans were so nice and their “stuff” was just fabulous!!!  I just couldn’t get enough time to see everything!  I was like a kid in a “candy store” and just so pumped up checking out all the booths.  I tried to get everyone’s business card and checkout where their beach and sea glass was from.   It was all just so cool!  The glass from Santa Cruz and the stuff from England with all the colors was just super!  I just loved it all.

I was just the most amazing experience!

It was GREAT!!!!!!!  Thank you family and friends!

Erie here we come!   I’m about as ready as I can get.  All I need is some more sleep!  Everyone is so excited!

I have all my turtles packed and tonight we’ll load them all in the truck!  I’ve just been finishing up bits n’ pieces of stuff today!  We have to make an errand run tonight.  The store where I got my shoes forgot to take that security ink thingy off!  And I need a few things laminated at the office store.

My mind is already in Erie though!

We sailed near downtown week before last on our last sail of the year.  I  gave up the helm to take a couple pics of the Convention Center.  I’m so excited!!!! I feel like I’ve been working and plkanning for this coming weekend all year!!

I can’t wait to meet all the crazy sea  and beach glass artists and lovers!!!!

My family has been very supportive, especially the hubby! Thanks to you all!  Thank the Good LORD!

See you in Erie!

bonnie

We had a great extended weekend in Erie!  The weather was great finally!  And I got to do a lot of beachcombing along the Presque Isle beaches.  It is so much fun walking the shoreline with the waves crashing and the wind blowing at you!  The seaweed wasn’t too bad and the yuck carried onto the beach by all the recent storms has been cleaned up for the most part.  It was just beautiful!

I treasured the few bits of time I had the beach to myself, but I did get a kick out of the beach glass lovers that are just as addicted to finding that special piece as I am.  This one young couple came and “hogged” in on my spot and the guy wanted to go, but the cute chick in her little bikini kept saying, “just one more piece” over and over again.

I get that though.  I think I should get going, it’s lunch time or dinner time, or I told John I’d be back or I NEED to PEE, but then I find “one more piece” and I’m still at it!  Because that next piece might just be that “special” one you’ve been looking for.  Yeah, just one more!

catching the glass

We left for Erie as soon as we could last Friday May 1st.  I was anxious about going and leaving my family after a whole week of family things with the death of my father and his funeral, but so anxious too, to get away!

We got to camp before sunset and so I gave John a quick kiss and headed for the beach.  It was nice out and I ran into my beach bum friend Judy for the first time this year!  We are friends by accident.  I was picking up a bag full of trash a couple years ago and she wanted to thank me, but the wind kept blowing her words away and so she chased me down and we just hit it off sharing heart stuff right off the bat and cleaning up the beach together!  We have a special, just summertime friendship.  It was great to see her and her husband too, who left us to chat away!  It was great to share heart stuff again after such a week, while the sunset helped us say good-bye to another day.

Saturday was so windy, just crazy how windy and cold.  I didn’t care and braved the elements a couple times to see how glass getting was, but it was just lousy out.  But Sunday afternoon it warmed up a bit after a very chilly, my hands are freezing morning, and was just glorious.  I found a place that was bringing me in some glass, nothing special but you know constant with almost each wave.  I didn’t have my boots on and I saw this really big, really nice piece of green tumbling in the surf and it just wasn’t getting in and I was so afraid I’d loose it so I just went in and got it!  Lake Erie is still pretty chilly but it was so worth it! I got it!  I got soaking wet for a piece of green beach glass!  Yeah, what fun!

We headed home by 3:30PM and met the family at the local summer hang out, Young’s Custard Stand.  It was Mother’s Day and I got to end my day by loving on my dear mom and getting a hug from all my kids and grand kids.  I know I’m blessed, very blessed!  Thank you Lord for green beach glass and grand kids!

Me and my grand kids!

As my Dad lie dying this past Sunday evening, May 3, 2009, surrounded our mom and all us kids I thought how he wouldn’t be here to say Happy Father’s Day to again or Happy Birthday, so I just said “Happy Forever Dad!” And that’s just what he has now “Happy Forever.”

I will always miss him here on this planet, but by Christ’s shed blood I too someday will share in his “Happy Forever!”  Thank you JESUS for that!

I spent the weekend in Erie after a rough week getting Dad into a nursing facility and mom who has Alzheimer’s, moved over to my sister Pat’s.    I felt like I NEEDED to go!  I felt like I needed to get away!  It was a weekend of reconnecting with summertime friends..some of them are going through VERY rough things too!  I heard about a mom with stage 4 cancer that’s still in her 60′s,  a camper who lost his job and had to give up his families site,  a family who lost their Father, and an elderly couple who both passed away, and a family dealing with a rough divorce situation…rough stuff!    But everyone was doing what I was doing… taking healing from God (even if they don’t actually KNOW it like I do) in a place that is just filled with the wonder of HIM.   I walked the beach singing and crying my heart’s praise and petition!  It was life restoring.  I found some beach glass too! Nothing special, but enough to cheer me up and making hunting fun!

Saturday night while I was peacefully sleeping in our camper, my Dad was fighting for his life.  He fell in the nursing care facility and collasped a lung.  They said he almost died on the way to the hospital and the efforts of the paramedics who made a puncture in his chest to let air out that was suffocating him, saved his life.  I  couldn’t have done much if I had been home, but needed to get home when I heard this news.  You have to get back to LIFE…just as it is.  Dad is seriously ill in critical care at the Med Center.  My prayer for him is that God will have mercy on him.  And I KNOW He will for “His mercies are new every morning.”  I pray that for you too and my friends who have rough things in their life!  And in quiet moments I remember that wind blowing off the lake, the sound of the waves, the pebbles and sand, and the healing and peace that place brings my heart and I am grateful…very grateful!

I just did my first “show” with “Turtle Treasures.”   I didn’t have much time to prepare, but I did get to make some new products and it was such a great learning experience doing this show.  Home Depot and the Beaver Co. Times sponsored this local show to raise money for Habitat for Humanity.

I had lots of help setting up, and am so thankful for my family’s support! Although we had to rethink our layout as we had been told we had a corner booth.  It all worked out and we actually got to display turtles on two sides of our booth, the front and then the back.  I guess they didn’t get enough craft vendors to double up the aisle.

I’m kind of glad it was a one day thing though, because of the learning curve.  I tried to get set up to take plastic, but it was all so last minute that I didn’t have time to get that going.  I think I could have done better if I had as this was the first year they added crafters to the “Home & Garden” show and many people weren’t prepared to buy much.

I did sell 13 turtles though and people just loved them!  All day long we heard about how cute and adorable they are.  We had a special section for my “Black N’ Gold” pebble Steeler turtles, named “Terrible Turtles” in honor of Myron Cope’s “Terrible Towel” by my sister Pattie.  People got a kick out of them and we even sold a couple.

We sold many as gifts and some for people’s garden, patios and of course bath rooms.  Somehow people like cute little creatures in the bath.  You know frogs and of course turtles!

It was a good day and I look forward to trying this again.  It was fun to meet people and to hear their stories.  One women bought a turtle for her mom who is going to have chemo soon.  The special turtle was named “Survivor.”  And one women bought a cute little all black pebbled one to remember the great times she and her late husband had vacationing and picking up special rocks and pebbles on the shores of Lake Erie!

“Turtle Treasures” are unique and just very special.  I was proud of my product and the display and thought for the first time out, we had a good day!  I’m thankful to God for blessing this endevor.  It is especially fun to share something that is a part of a place that is just so SPECIAL to me, my “home away from home” at Lake Erie!