Memory Can

It is so hard to find the perfect vacation souvenir.  Often they cost a lot and break quickly or you end up with a closet or dresser of shirts that say I went here.  While I like getting the occasional shirt, they aren't something I want an entire closet of.  So, I try to think of better ways to take home vacation memories.  A few years ago I went to the Black Hills with the husband and we got a few bottles of wine and while on a hike I took a grocery bag of dirt from a river bed home to fill the bottles.  While we all know about putting sand in a bottle to remember a special trip, maybe adding a candle to the top if we feel it's right, but what else can we create from our collection? Before adding the sand I had to filter it out for rocks, I did get it from a river bed.  I ended up with a large bag of rocks.  So, I grabbed and empty soup can and started hot gluing them to the side.  Now I have a cool vase, pencil jar, penny toss, or paperclip and rubber band container.  

Every-time I look at it or someone asks about it I can re-count how we hiked into a picturesque area where we had to remove our shoes to cross a river and how cool the mountain water felt.  I turned something that normally gets tossed and something that came free from a beautiful moment and created an amazing souvenir!   

So, the next time you are on vacation and looking for a way to take a part of it home with you, I challenge you to get out of the gift shop and create something from the trip itself!  The warm feeling comes from the memories themselves not the amount we spent on the things that remind us of them.