Thank you for your replies & ideas! I really sort of figured it would take several days to get that 'beachy' look. I've used the tumbler a time or two, with just water and a drop of detergent, ran it about 30 minutes or so, and that did a wonderful job of cleaning up the glass, making it sparkling clean, and took off all the sharp edges, so it was safer to mosaic with. So now I think I will try the just sand method. Sure wish I had access to a cement mixer! By the way, I've never run the tumbler with any rocks in it, so I have no idea what kind of noise that would make, but the glass with water made hardly any sound at all. Thank goodness!

Bump! Thought it might be a good time to bump this. Tomorrow I have some nieces coming over to bake & decorate cookies with me. They are 12 & 14, the babies out of 17 nieces and nephews. I am grateful they still want to bake with Aunt Becky. So today its been a flurry of activity to take down Thanksgiving and put up Christmas. Right now I have gingerbread cookie dough, linzer cookie dough, and almond cookie dough in the frig chillin'! I have the ingredients out to make the dough for sugar cookies too.. Last year I could not bake fast enough to keep up with the cookie decorating crew, but I have a couple less coming tomorrow. It'll be a sad day for me when the nieces outgrow this. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the moment. Happy Baking!

Roselin's Chocolate are a favorite here.. Chocolate Snickerdoodles~Roselin CF 1c butter 1 1 /2c sugar 2 eggs 2 1/4c flour 1/2c cocoa 2 tsp cream of tartar 1 tsp baking soda 1/2tsp salt 1 tsp vanilla 2T sugar 2 tsp cinnamon Combine butter, sugar, vanilla, and eggs. Cream well. Sift all dry ingredients except 2T sugar and cinnamon. Add to egg mixture and chill dough for at least one hour. Roll dough into balls about the size of a walnut. Roll in combined 2T sugar and cinnamon. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes. Makes 4-5 dozen

It's funny to see this exact same discussion going on since 2006 when I redid my kitchen. The statement that all granite requires sealing is false. My mother said (and still does) "you just can't have anything nice". You know the stereotype of men not being too concerned about everything being cleaned up right away, and making huge messes when cooking that may take a day or two to clean up from? Spilled liquids, oils, vinegars, etc left overnight? Cleaning with whatever cleaner is in front, under the sink? That's us, but there are *two* of us that way. So the ability to withstand that sort of treatment and still look great when we scrub everything down was requirement #1. I got a large number of samples, unsealed, and brought them home and abused them. Oil, wine, vinegar, lemon slices, tomato sauce. Left overnight. Left a few days. Some of the very light stones soaked things up like a sponge. Some took a few days to get a soaked-in stain. And one that we liked was like glass. Nothing phased it. And it was a pretty unique pattern that we both liked, having that "natural stone" feeling that we both loved. It's four years later, innumerable multicourse dinners for 10 later, high-temperature stirfries, 8 types of vinegars, 5 types of oils, bottles left on the counter over night. Sangria or fresh lemonade in the summer so citrus fruit remnants pile up. That's a really long way of saying that there are some stones you can not seal, can abuse, can clean with whatever, can use green scratchy pads on, and still clean up to look as good as the day they were installed. It's pretty, too: It's called "iguana green", it's from All-granite in NJ, it was pricey but compared to the subject cost of living with a beatup countertop that we hate on a daily basis it made sense. And except for there being a backsplash (finally!) and trim around the window, it looks exactly the same.