The Documented Life: Week 33

Week 33's challenge for The Documented Life Project was to "use your under paper in a creative way." All the under papers I used here came from my "sidekick" I used in Orly's class over a year ago. I've been pulling from it for that long!  Orly put the little sidekick books together for us, and the purpose was to place all our left over paint in it. It was full of pieces of blueprints, maps, pages from old National Geographic magazines and other ephemera.  After this week's challenge, I only have one small piece left!  What's even more fun is the back of one of the pages peeks through to Week 34. I'll share that soon!

This week documents our five days over on St. George Island just before school started. St. George is due south of Tallahassee, Florida, on the gulf. It's a barrier island whose bridge pulls away from Eastpoint.  Just a little farther west is Apalachicola.  We always hop over to "Apalach" for a day of poking around great shops and antique stores.  I never come away empty handed (not sure that's a good thing!).   When I was in school at FSU, we'd make some trips down to St. George, and there truly was just about nothing there then, just the Buccaneer Motel (which has gotten a facelift), a few beach houses, and a highly over-priced jiffy store and gas station.  There's a little bit more now, houses mainly, but still not much, and that's its charm.  We stay in a cute little two-bedroom, one-bath cottage owned by a friend of mine. It's one block off the beach, but it's right at a beach access, so we're still less than 100 yards from the beach.  

In between the mainland and the island is Apalachee Bay, world famous for oysters.  On the bay side of the island, there is an estuarine preserve, fully loaded with oyster shells and all sorts of critters from hermit crabs wearing beautiful King's Crown shells to horseshoe crabs.  I'm not particular about my shell collecting.  Much to my husband's chagrin, I have just as many jars of oyster shells as I do more "beautiful" shells. There's just something about the lowly oyster shell that speaks to me.  I keep telling myself I'm going to make some jewelry out of some! 

Here's a great website that talks about the whole "Forgotten Coast" area.  Find out more about The Documented Life project over on the Art to the 5th blog! See more Documented Life posts here.