A Coastal break from all the re-makes

I just thought I would share a few of the pictures I took of the beaches here on the gulf of Mexico, down in southwest Florida. The weather has been perfect for this entire 2 weeks I've been here!
It's very calm in the pic below.

But today there was a little bit of wave action

And the water has been warm and so clear.

The other day I took a break from all the painting I have been up to and road down to Boca Grande, a beach about 20 minutes from here.
The water as you cross the causeway is breathtaking, and absolutely looks like the Caribbean, a gorgeous aqua.

Causeway

And when we were on the beach my daughter snapped this photo of a boat so close we could have swam to it, in the calm and clear aqua water.

She had to yell to me to turn and look, as I was deep in concentration, shelling, as it softly sailed by.

There is a lot of fish in this area because the river meets the Gulf here. Matter of fact while we were in swimming one fish about 15 inches long was just following along with us, checking us out.


This is the beach where once, I saw a huge dolphin come right up to the shoreline in about 18 inches of water and just swim back and forth for about 7 minutes, seemingly checking out two little girls who were playing. It was as if their squeeky little voices drew the dolphin curiously to the shore. It was by far the neatest thing I have ever witnessed.
I love this part of Florida, and although I don't get here often, I count my blessings every day that I do.

Yesterday, Saturday the kids had a bit too much sunburn, so we took a ride up to the cute little town of Venice, where they have all kinds of nice little shops. We enjoyed a nice Italian dinner at Luna ( the previous nite) where they give one person enough to feed 4 people, and the food is great.  Love the bread they serve! We decided to come back  to shop on Saturday.

I really enjoyed this one shop where everything in there was the color beige mixed with aqua. Just so lusciously beachy.
 And I stumbled across the most facinating chandelier I have ever seen. Usually I am not crazy about shells all glued onto stuff, but this thing was awesome!

 It looked like someone took it and rolled it all over one of the shell filled beaches and encrusted it.

 I loved it.
  But the price was 2000 +
This would be an interesting project to work on.

As ordered for mission #1 at Sarah's aBeachCottage Saturday Club, I wore a ruffled shirt (off white), while strolling thru this quant town of Venice, I shopped like a champion, I always have my coffee, and I slugged a "Bahama Mama" in a good ole' Irish pub, enjoying the company of 2 of  my "grown up too fast" kids !

Thanks for stopping by!

If you did anything great this weekend join the linky I'd love to see what you are up to!

• It could be fun
• or it could be work

Whatever you did post it in my weekend linky party!