Everything I'm bringing home from Cape Cod

I’ve never been very good at leaving Cape Cod empty-handed.

Not because I need another souvenir, but because I love bringing home little pieces of a place that means so much to me.

A faded Cape Cod sweatshirt. A vintage fisherman. A strand of beads that looks like it could have been tucked inside my grandmother’s jewelry box. Postcards. Something quirky from a flea market. Salt water taffy, obviously.

The things I bring home from the Cape are rarely precious. They’re usually a little nostalgic, a little kitschy, sometimes vintage and always something that makes me smile.

This summer’s haul feels especially Coastal Granddaughter.

There’s the perfectly preppy plaid tote, a gold whale, a straw hat that belongs near the water, a Cape Cod sweatshirt, vintage nautical treasures, lobster everything, old-school postcards and the kind of little finds you only notice when you’re willing to poke around.

And tucked right in the middle is my book, Coastal Granddaughter: A Photographic Love Letter to Cape Cod and the Islands, which might be the ultimate version of bringing the Cape home with me.

That was really the idea behind the book from the beginning.

I wanted to bottle up that feeling of Cape Cod, the weathered shingles, hydrangeas, lobster rolls, roadside treasures, beaches, boats and all those wonderfully imperfect little details, and create something you could leave on your coffee table and return to whenever you were missing it.

Maybe that’s why I love collecting these things so much.

They aren't really souvenirs.

They’re little reminders of summer. Of wandering without an agenda. Of places we return to year after year. Of the people we were with when we found them.

And sometimes, of a place that feels a little bit like home, even when you’re hundreds of miles away.

My rule for the perfect Cape Cod keepsake?

Bring home the thing that makes you feel something.

Even if it’s a lobster.