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liralenBeen exploring a few things that I've been wanting to do for a while, lately. One of which has been taking advantage of the warm weather, and the other was trying new ways of painting things.
AND there's now pictures of the beekeeping equipment!
Timothy gave me a lot more than he'd said over the phone, but he was also having trouble selling his extra equipment. I'm tempted to turn one of the boxes into "comb" honey frames, so that the comb can just be built right into servings.. *laughs* No need to collect frames, but them and spin them... though I'm probably getting ahead of myself, as I just have to get the bees to *live* in the dang box year-round to start.
It's kind of fun to see all the stuff... the metal bars that run across the box is a "queen separator", it keeps the queen in the lower levels of the hive, so that she doesn't lay eggs in the honey sections. The wooden box with the tiny pallet is a floating feeder, that allows a keeper to feed the bees sugar water. The float stays on the surface of the syrup and allows the bees a place to land before they sip the sweets.
In the painting department... I've been taking watercolor base I bought from Daniel Smith art supplies, and painting it on the covers of composition notebooks. The ones that are on sale now due to the beginning of school. We got these for fifty cents. *laughs* And so I paint the white base on top of the black notebook cover, and do two coats to make sure it's good and thick. Then I paint on top of it!
And I have an instant, completely customized notebook for notes! *laughs* For writing in ideas, to-do lists, and logs of what I've done, it's absolutely perfect. *grins* We bought about a dozen of the things, and I'm happily basing them. *laughs* Just lots of small ideas for the covers and it's a lot of fun.
John's been asking for a bee on his. *grins*
The other thing that Jet and I have been doing is making root beer. We have a bottle of extract, and just put together sugar, water, flavor, and baker's yeast. We bottle the result and let it sit in the garage for four or five days, and then we have good, fizzy root beer for cents per bottle. It's been fun, and really, really good over vanilla ice cream for really fuzzy root beer floats!
On our second batch already, and I'm contemplating a lemon-honey ginger beer for my next experiment. H-Mart had *huge* hands of ginger, and it just takes a couple of ounces for a whole gallon of the finished drink.
So we've been amusing ourselves with swimming, movies, and just playing Jet bought a set of Munckin Impossible cards, and he's really been having a blast with those since the Gaynors. *laughs* And it's actually very playable with just the three of us, and pretty fast too compared to groups of five or six.
AND there's now pictures of the beekeeping equipment!
Timothy gave me a lot more than he'd said over the phone, but he was also having trouble selling his extra equipment. I'm tempted to turn one of the boxes into "comb" honey frames, so that the comb can just be built right into servings.. *laughs* No need to collect frames, but them and spin them... though I'm probably getting ahead of myself, as I just have to get the bees to *live* in the dang box year-round to start.
It's kind of fun to see all the stuff... the metal bars that run across the box is a "queen separator", it keeps the queen in the lower levels of the hive, so that she doesn't lay eggs in the honey sections. The wooden box with the tiny pallet is a floating feeder, that allows a keeper to feed the bees sugar water. The float stays on the surface of the syrup and allows the bees a place to land before they sip the sweets.
And I have an instant, completely customized notebook for notes! *laughs* For writing in ideas, to-do lists, and logs of what I've done, it's absolutely perfect. *grins* We bought about a dozen of the things, and I'm happily basing them. *laughs* Just lots of small ideas for the covers and it's a lot of fun.
John's been asking for a bee on his. *grins*
The other thing that Jet and I have been doing is making root beer. We have a bottle of extract, and just put together sugar, water, flavor, and baker's yeast. We bottle the result and let it sit in the garage for four or five days, and then we have good, fizzy root beer for cents per bottle. It's been fun, and really, really good over vanilla ice cream for really fuzzy root beer floats!
On our second batch already, and I'm contemplating a lemon-honey ginger beer for my next experiment. H-Mart had *huge* hands of ginger, and it just takes a couple of ounces for a whole gallon of the finished drink.
So we've been amusing ourselves with swimming, movies, and just playing Jet bought a set of Munckin Impossible cards, and he's really been having a blast with those since the Gaynors. *laughs* And it's actually very playable with just the three of us, and pretty fast too compared to groups of five or six.
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Date: 2011-08-15 12:45 am (UTC)The root beer sounds yummy. I remember going to a dinner theater once when I was a kid that was doing a gay 90's melodrama, and they served homemade on-tap rootbeer - I was so enamored of it, I drank so much I almost made myself sick. Since then most of the commercial stuff has always seemed a weak imitation.
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Date: 2011-08-15 01:38 am (UTC)Ooooo... that sounds like *great* root beer!! We love being able to make our own.
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Date: 2011-08-15 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-15 12:48 am (UTC)And mmmm homemade soft drinks. I'm mostly holding off on trying those because... I would drink too much!
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Date: 2011-08-15 01:39 am (UTC)Yeah! Having Jet in the house helps immensely as he'll drink most of it, but yeah... I know the temptation! *laughs*
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Date: 2011-08-15 01:20 am (UTC)Also, I love that custom notebook!
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Date: 2011-08-15 01:40 am (UTC)Thanks! I was tickled with how it turned out! Whee...
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Date: 2011-08-15 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-19 01:30 am (UTC)YES!!
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Date: 2011-08-16 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-19 01:32 am (UTC)