Backyard Honeycomb

And he is 5!

I planned two parties for Eli. One for his friends and one for family.

I was pretty confident I would be fine, because they were just 5 year olds, right? They can’t be too critical of my party throwing skills.

I needed something for them to do and not a lot of work for me, so we rented a bouncy house!

Of course we had to get in and try it out before the guests arrived!

Eli wanted a PJ Masks cake. So I made it even easier and went to Sam’s club and had them make the cake.

We brought out the popcorn maker and made movie theatre style popcorn. Yeah, can’t go back to popping popcorn in the microwave!

I made chocolate covered marshmallows and dipped them in sprinkles. You can’t go wrong with sprinkles and 5 year olds.

A note for next time: I made these last night. I dipped the marshmallows in the chocolate, sprinkled them, and put them marshmallow side down in a tupperware. I sealed the lid and put them in the fridge. An hour before the party, I took them out and put the sticks in. Pinterest was great on giving me the idea, but where to put them after? I poked holes in a paper cup 🙂 I think it worked quite well.

We also brought out the giant connect 4 game. All the 5 year olds didn’t get the rules of the game, but they had fun. The older kids thought it was the coolest thing to have a life size game!

For the beverage, I set out a 2.5 gallon of water and let them have at it. They drained it! I guess bouncing took a lot out of them.

The bouncy house was a huge win! I would definitely do this again.

Every kid bounced for the entire 2 hours!

Look at that wet hair. He played hard! The party was a success! He had a fantastic birthday!

Bandana bib

I have been invited to a baby shower. For a little girl. Hmm…What do make? I haven’t made anything girly, I only have boys in our house 🙂

I made several bandana bibs for Eli, so why not make one for a girl? It just needs to be pink instead of blue. And flowers instead of trucks. 🙂

I have Roger modeling the finished bandana bib 🙂 Roger looks a little rough, but he is clean. He just came out of the dryer. Roger is loved. 🙂

Modeling the front.

The back.

This is a very simple project. It took me an hour to complete.

Cut two different colored fabrics into 12 inch squares. I made two bibs. One with the hot pink and the other with the lighter pink.

Sew the right sides together leaving an inch or two gap to turn the square inside out. Then sew the hole closed by sewing around the outer edge, about 1/4 inch or so.

Fold the corner of the bib over leaving about an inch to show off the bottom color.

Fold over one more time. This lip is about an inch.

I used pins to hold the rolled edge down. The pin marks is also where I will sew .

I sewed a vertical line down. Just a stitch or two.

I used small snap fasteners.

One for each side.

I didn’t take pictures of putting the fasteners on, but I used a spool of thread inbetween the fabric and the hammer 🙂

As you can see the two fasteners.

Make sure you when you fold over the ends of the bib, you have the two different fasteners facing the right direction so they snap together.

Completed.

Thanks, Roger!

Friday Favorites

#1 favorite: Eli’s second birthday party. We loved the bouncy house. We are going to definitely do this again next year.

#2 favorite: Family. With all the 5 year old parties, we have seen a lot of family this week. I love them all!

#3 favorite: Fall. I love the cooler temperatures in the day. I could live in 70′ year round! And the colors of fall? I can’t get enough. Love the browns and oranges!

#4 favorite: I love that my little boy leaves his toys around the house. Everywhere I look there are cars. Cars in my cupboards, on tables, on the Island…Everywhere. I love it!

#5 favorite: Eli took Paul for show and tell at school this week. He loves his dad!

My 44 year old is turing 5!

If you ask my son how old he is, he will say he is 44.

For the entire 4th year of his life, he was 44.

See. 44 years old.

In a few days this little boy will be 5.

I think he had a good 4th year.

I will love my 5 year old, but will dearly miss my 44 year old!

The second birthday party

I wasn’t going to run today, because of getting ready for Eli’s second party. So I talked myself into running 1 mile.

Ended with 9.26 miles.

I don’t normally run this route, but I’m glad I did. There were a dozen antelope, out here just grazing in the field. I didn’t take the above picture, but this is what they would have looked like if I went running with my telephoto lens camera. 🙂

And the balloon blowing begins. Last year we did two balloon arches. 240 balloons 🙂 With Eli’s party last Friday, we decided we only had the energy for one arch. So we only blew up 120 balloons.

We started the day with breakfast. Waffles and ice cream with strawberry sauce.

Dinner was vegetable tortellini soup with homemade crusty bread and honey from our hives.

After dinner, we ALL bounced in the bouncy house. There was a basketball hoop in the house so we all played a game.

I even got my parents in the house!

Eli had so much fun!

I had a lot of fun bouncing with my boy!

Eli opened gifts.

Eli requested an ice cream cake. Again, to make things easier, Dairy Queen made the delicious peanut butter cup blizzard ice cream cake. I have never had one of these, and it was REALLY good. Yes, I cut the cake before taking the picture 🙂

After cake, we brought out the virtual reality game. Yes, this is my brother and this is how he acts ALL the time! This is why our Monday lunches are such fun and I look forward to the first of the week!

We are always entertained with these two!

Remember him??

Between the two birthdays, he received a lot of legos. He couldn’t wait to put them together. He is getting pretty good at following the instructions!

Eli really enjoyed his two days of partying! Happy birthday little Pea!!

Extracting honey from large frames

Our neighbor has several hives and invited us over to watch him extract his honey.

A few of his hives.

Our hives have little frames, his hives have large frames. About 3 times bigger than ours. He starts with cutting the capped wax off the frames.

He put the frames in…

Then turns the hand crank as fast as he can. You can see the honey fly off the frames and to the sides of the bucket.

After turning a few frames, there was a few inches of honey in the bottom of the bucket.

The bucket was then drained into a ….

Lots of honey. And he still had several boxes to do!

The honey drips from the …to the bucket below. The honey will then be transferred to jars and into the cupboard.

We had to taste the honey and it was very tasty!

A new queen is in town and she’s living in a high rise.

The top floor apartment is going to have a queen! That is not all. This 3 floor apartment is becomeing a 4 floor high rise.

Removing the top to check on the queen.

Paul said there are two queen cells. I can only find one in this picture.

That big yellow thing on the edge of the frame is a queen cell. Give it a week and she should emerge!

Since there are two queen cells. The two queens will fight it out and whoever survives will be the new queen.

The four box hive.

Paul had to add a box to the original hive because the hive is growing. We have enough bees that are making honey for themselves, raising their brood, they are running out of space for honey. If we don’t add another box, the bees will leave and find another home.

What do the separate boxes do?

The bottom two boxes with are brood. They raise their young bees here. They have honey on the outside frames for food for them and their brood is in the frames in the middle of the box.

The block above the second box is the queen excluder so the queen can’t go up there and lay eggs. Only the worker bees can go up there.

The third box (above the queen excluder) is a honey box. For us! Mmmm….tasty honey for us!

The top box, the new addition, is the new queen’s apartment.

Back of the high rise. This little hive is doing well!

Harvesting Honey

Went for my run this morning and look who was out? It’s hard to see them, but there were two antelopes enjoying the same field I was running in. .

It was a beautiful morning with clear skies and 44′. A nice day for a run and harvest some honey.

Out of the two hives we have, the big hive has been fun to watch. I don’t know why. Maybe because there are thousands of bees in this hive and only a few hundred in the smaller hive?

Anyway, the end of the year is here and time to harvest our honey. Our honey is in the top box, so we need to remove the top box and shake all the bees out and into the other two boxes.

Lighting the smoker to encourage the bees to move from the top box to the bottom boxes.

This is what a 4 year old does to keep busy 🙂

We have a lot of good frames of delicious dark honey.

Still entertaining himself 🙂

The hive has been reduced back down to a two box hive. The bottom box still has brood and the top box is full of honey for the bees to eat throughout the summer.

A few of the frames.

Look at all that honey!

We cut out the comb from a few of the frames.

Put them into bags. Taped them onto the computer monitor arm 🙂 . Cut a tiny hole out of the bottom of the bag and let them drip.

We let the honey drip into a double sieve. The bottom sieve is finer than the top sieve to catch the wax that escaped from the bags.

The honey drips from the sieve into the bucket that has a spout that will make it easier to drain into jars.

No two hives are the same. Every hive varies in color and had has different tasting honey. This hive has been producing dark, thick, delicious tasting honey. I can’t wait to bottle it up!

Friday Favorites

The first favorite of this week is planning this little boy’s birthday party. I can’t believe he is 5 years old!

It feels like yesterday we were sealed as a family.

I’m so grateful I have the opportunity to be this little boy’s mother. He is the light of our world. He keeps us laughing every day!

My last favorite is getting away with family. We needed a few days without cell signal -except for locking us out of the trailer, I could have used a phone 🙂