Smurf's Up: New Wave Crave

 Hygiene Hijinks Necklace

Top: Kohl's

Dress: L'Amour by Nanette Lepore for JCPenney

Shoes: Chinese Laundry, DSW

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

Sunglasses: Brigantine beach shop

Fabulous Felt Sweet Seashell Barrette

Blouse: Target

Dress: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Shoes: BCBG, Macy's

Bag: Xhilaration, Target

Sunglasses: Michaels 

Cool Crescent Necklace

Top: Arizona Jeans, JCPenney

Dress: Monteau, Marshalls

Shoes: Christian Siriano for Payless

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

Sunglasses: Rampage, Boscov's

Tourist Trap Necklace

Top: Self Esteem, JCPenney

Skirt: Xhilaration, Target

Shoes: Payless

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

Sunglasses: JCPenney

Brigantine's own Root Beer Barrel: one soda shop-sounding surf shop that keeps on rolling (at least, if the for sale sign out front is to be believed, until someone buys it).

A rolling stone gathers no moss -- but sometimes moss is mighty pretty.

Thanks to Ocean Spray, you can't say "crave" without thinking of that other "c" word -- "cranberries!"  This post is all about blue, pink, and the beach, with a splash of 1980s -- which is to say that it's like 95% of my other posts (even if The Cranberries are not only not new wave, but not from the 1980s).  It's got seashells, a surf shop, and toilets -- reminding us not to pee in the ocean.  Also, Smurfberries, perhaps the most magical (not to mention most animated) marriage of pink and blue, if only in abstract.

Ah, the beach.  Otherwise known as Mother Nature's prize box, it offers a boundless bounty of beauty, yielding every treasure that original hoarder The Little Mermaid could hope to squirrel away in her undersea cavern.  Unlike actual mothers, the beach is laidback when it comes to bringing things home, never saying, "You just got a dead crab carcass for your birthday, Bobby; put that back!"  Well, not unless she wages a hurricane.

In honor of the beach (and collecting), I made this week's stuff with souvenir shops in mind.  I'm sure you remember their wares, are perhaps even becoming reacquainted with them this weekend as you stroll through such spots with your own little ones.  Baskets of shrink-wrapped seashells, cheap sunglasses, and screen-printed tee shirts riotous with palm trees and dolphins crowd every aisle.  We have a few such establishments in Brigantine, and sometimes I like to walk through them, if only for nostalgia's sake.  But my favorite beach shop buy came from a store on the Ocean City boardwalk.  It was a plastic yellow scallop shell trinket box that I found enchanting because I thought it looked like it belonged to a mermaid (Ariel being my spirit Disney princess).  Sadly, I've since lost track of it; unlike my faux sumo wrestler trinket box, it never emerged from my parents' attic.  Sometimes I still think about it, and when I'm on the boardwalk, I peer at the passing shops and wonder if anything like it is waiting within.  I never check, though.  There's no point in trying to go home again when your home is already the beach.