Beach Wins

Do you remember back a ways when I said I'd give a few beach pins a test on our vacation? Well, I did! A few. Two. I got too busy playing in the waves, building sand castles, and burning my skin off (worst sunburn of my life) to try some of the fun picture ideas I saw. But that's okay because I have some awesome memories and we all had a blast. But, I can report on the two beach pins I did test out. 

Beach Pin Test #1

http://www.iheartnaptime.net/dirty-little-secret/

The idea is to rub baby powder on skin to get the sand off. I was skeptical. But I brought some baby powder to try anyway. 

Results:

No picture here, but...it worked! Amazingly so in fact. That's the coolest trick ever. Even if you aren't taking a baby to the beach, grab some baby powder. It's worth it just for yourself. 

Beach Pin Test #2

Still not sure who to give credit to for this photo and idea. 

Remember Braizee's results? 

Her 7 month old twins demolished their pool. After reading and seeing her results I decided that when I tested it I was going to do the following:

• Dig straight down: The hole in the first picture is pretty abrupt. What I mean by that is that the sides are more vertical than sloped. More like a regular kiddie pool. 
• Fill the whole bottom with water: With the "vertical" sides, they were able to get a generally uniform depth of water in the kiddie pool, and they filled the whole bottom with water. I imagine this will help to keep the plastic in place and hold it against the bottom and sides of the sand hole. 
• Tent stakes: Extra hold in the sand! 
• The trench: The pinner described digging a trench around the main pool hole to put the edges of the plastic in, and then burying the edges well. This is the key step, I'm imagining, to keeping the plastic liner from getting pulled in. The weight of the sand should help to keep the liner in place and to make it much harder from getting pulled in. 
• Shower liner and Tarp: I'll buy a shower liner, but I also have a tarp that is much bigger and could make a bigger kiddie pool if we wanted. I'll bring that too in case the shower liner is just not quite big enough. 

In the end I forgot to get tent stakes, so I skipped that one. I also only brought the heavy duty shower liner (passed the thin shower liner up figuring thicker and more sturdy was better for this), and left the tarp at home. But, I did do the others. How did it turn out? 

Results

It was a huge success! Darrow loved his own personal ocean to play in. I was surprised at how easy it was to dig too big of a hole. The first time (we did this twice, on two different days) I almost dug it too wide. You don't need a huge pool really. Our pool ended up being about 3 feet wide. Maybe 3 1/2 feet. It was about a foot deep (not the water, the hole). We made sure to try and make the bottom of the pool even, and to make the sides of the pool vertical. That worked really well and actually wasn't too hard to do. We made sure to dig a good trench around the pool to tuck the edges of the shower curtain in and piled a good rim of sand on top. The water warmed up so nice, it was like bathwater! After the babies were done in the pool and it was time to pack up and go home, it served as a nice place to wash sand off our hands and feet. We were able to get 2 days use out of the one shower liner, and probably could have used it more times, but we weren't really interested in hauling it home (it was sandy, and had started to turn a gold color rather than clear) and then storing it until we get back to the beach (which isn't a common occurrence).

If you're taking a trip to the beach anytime soon, I definitely recommend either or both of these ideas. They were great!