Here is the material for the sand. A small amount of noice is fed into the bump input. A large amount of displacement from cellular gives the little sand dunes effect. For coloring, I skip the built in diffuse. Instead use Clay to get more even lighting. The standard diffuse will make surfaces too sensitive to light angle for realism. The color of the sand is a blend of two tans driven by a noise node. Finally, the overall specular highlights are done with alt specular but I could have used the built in. I like to handle specular in a separate node because I often do special effects with multiple nodes on it. This one is simple, though. If you want more sparkly sand, raise the specular value and lower the roughness.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)