Happy Little Cottages By The Sea

Cottage Charm, Coastal Calm

Georgia

Mermaids in Our Midst: Lisa with Plan It Green Designs

It is very important to us here at Mermaid Cottages that our cottages are as green as possible. Mermaid Cottages aren’t just about cozy, inviting interiors you know! Being green includes our landscaping as well. Planting for our region’s conditions is super important, and our go-to garden expert helps us do it all!

Lisa Watson is the founder of Plan It Green Design, and she is the wonderful person we go to for all things green! Lisa is our garden design consultant. She helps us with our planting and horticulture care and her goal is simple…use renewable, local, and eco-conscious resources while designing outdoor living spaces and gardens.

 

Our Headquarters, Mermaid Manor! Photo thanks to Lisa Watson

Lisa is a gardening guru! She has helped Mermaid Cottages create beautiful outdoor living spaces at our headquarters, Mermaid Manor, as well as our Tucked Inn at Tybee Cottage. We love her philosophy of re-using, recycling, re-seeding, and rethinking design to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Lisa definitely helps us make more sustainable choices for a better future, and we are so proud to count her as a member of the Mermaid Cottages family! Even better, Plan It Green Designs will be at the 2012 Tybee Island Energy and Water Fair this weekend! Make sure you stop by (it’s FREE) and visit the Plan It Green exhibit as well as the other more than 30 exhibits!

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If you need help making you home and garden greener, or just want to learn more about our lovely Lisa, check out her Plan It Green Designs website, give her a call at 843.290.9017, or check her out on the offical Plan It Green Facebook Page!

Thank you for all you do Lisa, for Mermaid Cottages and for our planet!

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The 2012 Tybee Energy and Water Fair is Coming!

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Looking for something to do this weekend that is fun as well as good for the planet? Look no further than Tybee Island! This Saturday, February 11, is the Tybee Island Energy and Water Fair!

The Energy and Water Fair is an event designed to educate everyone in ways to conserve and reuse community resources.  Conservation is so important. We only have what the Earth has given, so we should know how to better take care of our resources! The Community Resource Committee is holding this fabulous event, and it’s not to be missed! There will be local vendors, scientists, and organizations participating.  Fair-goers will enjoy more than 30 exhibits and 8 workshops, plus free events for kids. There will even be free and confidential document shredding along with electronic recycling available at the fair! Learning ways to Use less to save more is easy and fun! Just look at this schedule of events!

WORKSHOPS

  • 9:30 – 10:00: Lester Wiggins, Savannah Tech Construction & Maintenance Technology, The Future of Solar Energy in Our Region
  • 10:10 – 10:40: Dr. Clark Alexander, Skidaway Institute, Sea-level Rise & Coastal Erosion in Georgia
  • 10:50 – 11:20: Anna Smit, Southern Alliance for Clean Air, Benefits/Challenges of Offshore Wind
  • 11:30 – 12:00 Pat Prokop, WTOC Weatherman, History of Climate & Use of Fossil Fuels
  • 12:10- 12:40:  Julian (Solar) Smith, How to Use Solar Energy
  • 12:50 – 1:20: Keith Freeman, One World Sustainable, Solar PV Potential in SE-Residential and Commercial
  • 1:30 – 2:00 Tonya Bonitatibus, Savannah River-keeper, Interconnection of Our Waterways & Their Uses
  • 2:10 – 2:40 Dr. Joe Richardson, Tybee Island Beach Ecology- Diverse, Seasonal, and Interesting.

ALL DAY EVENTS

– David Loxsom, Atlantic Recycling Solutions — Electronic Takeback

– Sam Kirkland, Wind Turbines of South Carolina — Exhibit

– Wes Jackson, Solar Cooker Demo — free sliders

– Scott Kilpatrick, Savannah Shredder, Document Destruction – confidential and free

– Lester Wiggins, Savannah Tech, Solar Power Generator — Exhibit

– Tybee Charter School — serving goodies

– Silent Auction

This fair is FREE to the public, so don’t miss a minute of the fun! Come on down to the Tybee Gym (next to Memorial Park) from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and learn loads of ways to lower your water and energy bills, as well as other things you can do to take better care of our planet. It’s the only one we’ve got! We hope to see you at the 2012 Tybee Island Energy and Water Fair!!

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Mermaid Sighting: Mary Kay’s Merman

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we mentioned mermen being few and far between as far as sightings go? Well, color us wrong! Mary Kay Andrews has done it again! Just look at this sighting…

How fabulous is that! NeptuneTriton? Whether you prefer your ocean gods Roman, Greek or otherwise just doesn’t matter…he’s magnificent! Thanks so much for sharing Mary Kay! He’s fabulous!

Have you spotted a mermaid? Well, we’d love to hear about it! Send your sightings and stories to diane@mermaidcottages.com. Your sighting could be the next featured right here on our blog! We can’t wait to see what you’ve found!

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Paw4Vets Fundraising Success!

We had an incredible turn out last Saturday for our Paws4Vets fundraiser! If you didn’t make it, you missed a lot of fun and friendship! Saturday, January 28th, Seaside Sisters on Tybee Island totally “went to the dogs!” We gathered there to help raise money to support Paws4Vets and to help fund the training of one very special puppy. Jimmy, an 8-week old Golden Retriever puppy named after our beloved Jimmy Kelleher of Seaside Sweets, will be trained by the wonderful people at Paws4Vets to be a service dog; he will go on to be the companion of a soldier right here in the Savannah area.

Through the Paws4Vets Assistance Dog Placement Program, our Veterans and Active-Duty Service Members (or their dependents) with physical, neurological, psychiatric, or emotional disabilities can receive Psychiatric Service Dogs, Mobility Service Dogs, and Rehabilitative Assistance Dogs free of charge. All Paws4Vets Assistance Dogs are trained by federal inmates within one of five federal prisons and/or the Paws4Vets Wounded Warrior PTSD Intervention and Assistance Dog Training Program. It’s a wonderful thing, and Mermaid Cottages is proud to sponsor such a great cause!

Saturday was certainly amazing! Paws4Vets founders Kyria Henry and her veteran father, Terry Henry, other service dogs from Paws4People, and soldiers from Ft Stewart and the surrounding area with service dogs came out to celebrate and help in the effort! Mary Kay Andrews was there as well with a fresh haul of wonderful vintage lovelies in tow, and pen in hand, ready to sign books for fans. There was an amazing silent auction full of treasures on which to bid, which included, among other things, a signed copy of Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible!  Mermaid Cottages was there with our Beach Bum Biscuits and tee shirts. The proceeds from the sales of those items, as well as 10% of each purchase made in Seaside Sisters that day, went to the fundraising cause! And, to top it all off, there was a bake sale to end all bake sales. It was a wonderful day!

We were also honored to see GiftShopMag.com and SavannahNow.com feature our fundraiser on their sites! Make sure to head over and read the posts. We are so excited about them!

In all, the fundraising efforts raised $1000 to help Paws4Vets! Thanks to everyone for coming out to Seaside Sisters and supporting this great cause! We couldn’t have done it without you!

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Mermaids in Our Midst: Bliss and Happiness Reign Supreme at Mermaid Cottages

We love hearing from our guests! Every note, email, and phone call warms our hearts. It’s especially touching when we get to hear from our regular guests that return as often as they can. It means a lot to us to hear why they keep visiting, and just what makes them come back. We recently heard from just such a guest!

“Dear Mermaids, we first stayed with Mermaid Cottages back in March 2007. We immediately fell in love with Tybee and the cottages on that very first trip and have been on a whirlwind tour of your homes ever since! We have stayed at Nora’s (twice), Sea Largo, Castaway, Breeze Inn, Dutton Waller (twice), Blue Heron and now most recently, Brooks Cottage. We feel like we are at home the minute we arrive. Every detail is so lovingly taken care of by Mermaid Cottages. The homes are sweet, spotless, and cozy.

Just some of the many beautiful Mermaid Cottages!

In all of these years and all of these homes, we have never once run into a problem or been dissatisfied in any way. As soon as we are “on island” we immediately begin to relax and breathe it all in. As I’ve mentioned to Diane before, bliss and happiness reign supreme there. Hectic lives are forgotten. It’s even difficult to discern what decade we’re in, as Tybee has a knack for transporting us to an era before we were even born…and make it feel completely natural to be there. Each home has its own story, its own soul. Our favorite is simply the one we’re in at the time. We have truly loved them all.

Brewster and Bella enjoy the breeze at Dutton-Waller Cottage.

Our pups, Brewster & Bella, begin to get excited the minute they see our Tybee overnight bags come out. They know they are in for a treat (literally!) as all the homes provide Beach Bum Dog Biscuits! They love the fenced in yards and screened in porches. They too are on vacation from their work as certified Canine Good Citizen aide dogs. They train hard and play hard, but when in Tybee, they go local and relax along with everyone else. They love taking walks around the island, meeting new friends, and napping under a palm tree. We are eternally grateful that Diane, the Mermaid Cottages staff, and thoughtful designers have taken the time to preserve this very special slice of Americana and in turn share it with folks like me. And we are truly blessed to live close enough to come and be a part of it as often as we do.

Mermaids for life, Melissa & Alan C.”

Brewster and Bella love the porch at Brooks Cottage!

Wow, thank you so much Melissa and Alan! It’s letters like this that warm our hearts and make us smile. We are so glad to know we are doing exactly what we set out to do…make your escape to paradise as perfect as possible! Thanks so much for sharing, and don’t be strangers. We hope to see you and the pups again real soon!

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