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For me, the best gifts seem to come with an experience like beach combing. With an assortment of shells and bling at the end of the day, it reminds me of my entire walk on the beach hearing the ocean splash on the sand while scanning the beach for different shells.

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When I see kids getting excited about finding treasures, it reminds me of my first beach finds.

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I got to share the excitement of amazing gifts of the sea on a shell filled beach last week on Cayo Costa with our iLoveShelling cruise with Captiva Cruises.

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The beach was loaded with LETTERED OLIVES, WHELKS and CONCHS (and SUNRAY VENUS and CALICO CLAMS) but I also found an ALBINO FLORID PRICKLY COCKLE (with a red COQUINA inside) and a ROSY WOLF SNAIL (bottom shell in my hand).

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We found a huge live LIGHTNING WHELK too then quickly placed it back in the water.

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My favorite part of this trip was to meet awesome people that love shelling as much as I do.

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Thank you for such a nice day and for your gifts as well :).

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And thank you for sharing your artful eye ;) ….

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Everybody received not only shells but as on every iLoveShelling cruise, everybody received another gift…

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It was a joyous day.

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I hope you all are enjoying a beautiful holiday as much as we are. I’ve been a little occupied with family of course during this season…. and also celebrating a new family member. This was the best gift Clark and I could have asked for. Meet our new rescue kitten Prince Harry (he’s a “hairy” red head, very charming and a little bit of a bad boy heehee) aka Cat 5 (short for CATegory 5 HarryCain- because he’s our 5th cat together and his adopted name was Cain  hahaha). Our 15 year old Dustie (DustBall) loves him already too. I have to admit…. he’s so stinkin’ cute, it’s hard to do anything else but play with him.

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