Celebrate Life! – Page 136 – I write what I like…

Beekeeping: Informative videos for the new beekeeper

April 7, 2013April 8, 2013 Aynaria 2 Comments

Say hello to one of the newest members of the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association.

This morning, I paid my fee and joined the association. I also requested a mentor to help guide me through the newbie process. Bees, ants and spiders are some of my favorite insects so you know I’m counting down the days until I receive my honeybees! I feel there’s so much to do before my girls arrive.

Currently I’m trying to decide what beehive I should purchase. Being crafty, I do want to make it myself… they’re quite a few patterns/plans available for those wanting to do that and I’m quite handy with woodworking tools but I think I’ll purchase my first hive. I most likely will purchase the traditional Langstroth beehive.

Eventually, if I add more hives, I’ll make my own.

Over the years, I’ve watched numerous videos related to beekeeping and have come to recognize some of the respected bee experts in the field. So while I haven’t had my own bees, I kept my finger on the pulse of this buzzing community. 😉

Earlier today, I stumbled upon a few informative videos that are geared towards a new beekeeper. The first video is focused on installing your beehive. I’ve seen numerous videos about bees, so I’m not new to watching bee installation videos. I never was a fan of shaking bees out of their temporary home to place them in their new hive. I wasn’t afraid of them possibly getting angry…

Azure B., LLC: Installing a three pound package of bees

I was mainly looking for a gentler approach since I wanted to minimize the chances of hurting the honeybees and this video shows that! What’s interesting is that I’d thought of doing something similar with my new honeybees so it’s nice to see an established beekeeper already incorporating this when they are moving them to their new home.

Azure B., LLC: Where to place my beehive(s)?

I really liked seeing a young child involved with beekeeping, such a nice change since I see many kids (an adults too) parked on a chair with their heads buried in a mobile device, on the computer, or watching television!

And added bonus is Azure B., LLC is located in Maryland.

I enjoyed reading Azure’s about page…

as community members, we connect with others on the same path and find ways to make it cheaper and easier for all of us to do better things for everyone.

as capitalists, we buy products and services wrought only from honorable intentions.

as business owners, we reclaim old fashioned values. We cater to our clients and feel blessed every day for their interest and confidence. We work to provide you with exceptional quality, value and service so you keep coming back.

as contributors, we affect change. It’s pretty righteous stuff!

Marbury, Maryland is about two hours away from our location so it won’t be a quick trip for us… However, my daughter and I will eventually make a trip to check out their business and offer helping hands to help them with beekeeping activities. I’m looking forward to the experience.

Too cold for honeybees

April 6, 2013April 8, 2013 Aynaria 2 Comments

It appears it’s too cold to get honeybees, at least at the place where I ordered mine. Those who ordered early will have to wait a bit longer. But this shouldn’t affect me since I’m in the late shipment. I don’t expect my honeybees until early May.

Here in Maryland, it’s still a bit cool and on some nights the temperature has dropped down to in the 20’s F. Since the bees are shipped in from the South, where it’s a bit warmer, extra steps would have been needed to make sure my girls survived our unpredictable nights. You know what? I’m so glad that designing costumes for the Passion Play prevented me from getting them locally. Now that I think about it… I wonder if the honeybee shipments from the local beekeeper are delayed also?

I’m still apprehensive about having ordered my honeybees online, but the site has received excellent reviews so I just need to get over picking up my honeybees from my local post office.

I can’t wait to post pictures of my girls in their new digs. My main reason for purchasing the honeybees is for pollination. I have no plans of fooling around with their beehive for quite a while. I’m going to let them do their thing and I’ll make sure I plant flowers that they’ll just have to visit.

Honor Roll again…

April 5, 2013April 5, 2013 Aynaria 2 Comments

My daughter made honor roll for the third quarter in a row. Of course we both are thrilled about that! I’ve mentioned before, I expect her to do well she has the ability she just needs to apply herself. I don’t accept excuses for poor behavior.

Throughout life, you’ll face numerous milestones and while there might be cases when one has a legitimate reason to feel sorry for themselves, life still continues so you might as well learn how to deal with the challenges that you face. Currently the occasional challenges she faces are minor; not always wanting to do her homework because she might not understand something or teasing at school. I’m hoping that by showing her ways she can handle the challenges she faces now, it will continue to be helpful to her as she gets older.

Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6, American Standard Version

The Holy Bible has a lot of common sense teachings and can be applied to more than just the spiritual aspects of daily life. As her parent, I know it’s wise to prepare her for challenges now. As I told her, running away or pretending a problem doesn’t exist isn’t smart since those problems will still be present when your forced to deal with them and in some cases they can get worse. I gave her examples from my own life both past and current challenges that she’s known that I’ve faced. I didn’t run away since I knew they’d be there, I dealt with them and moved on…

Ringling Bros.

This weekend, as a surprise for doing so well, I’m taking her to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. Saturday and Sunday are the last two days they’ll be in town and I know she’s been wanting to see the event. I haven’t been to a circus since I was a child, so I’m sure I’ll have a sense of nostalgia as I watch the show with my daughter and pay for overpriced popcorn and bottled water. 😉

Homemade crazy bread, fried rice and fruit pudding…

April 1, 2013April 2, 2013 Aynaria 4 Comments

Last evening I gave my daughter two choices for today’s lunch/dinner; Chinese or Little Caesar’s. She chose Little Caesar’s.

Months can go by before we venture into a restaurant, and we rarely frequent fast food joints but I was making an exception today since I really just wanted to hang with her. Last month was the first time she ate Little Caesar. She disliked their pizza, still liking our homemade pizza better than any restaurant pizza we’ve tried thus far. She tried their Crazy Bread and liked the concept, but wasn’t thrilled with the undercooked bread we received. I had to bake it when we arrived home since the dough was partially cook. Blech!

The more I thought about it the more I realized I could make it myself. Since it’s “her day” I asked her if she wanted me to make it or head to the restaurant. She was all over homemade Crazy Bread idea. I have a basic idea of what goes into Crazy Bread. It’s most likely pizza dough. A quick online search showed me what makes Little Caesar’s bread “crazy” and it was about what I’d expected. Garlic, Parmesan cheese, and corn meal are added to the mix. Thankfully, I had all those ingredients at home. My daughter helped me prepare our version.

For the dough, I used the recipe I’ve created for making pizza dough and added some finely minced roasted garlic and some other seasonings.

Homemade Crazy Bread: Raw dough cut into strips

Once the dough had risen, we cut the raw dough into strips…

Then we placed the homemade Crazy Bread into the oven that was preheated to 415 F. The bread baked for 10 minutes. They were removed and brushed with a mixture of homemade roasted garlic oil and Parmesan cheese and placed back into the oven for about two minutes. Results? My daughter loved our homemade crazy bread and even though I made two batches it’s now all gone, she loved them and said it was better than Little Caesar’s version. I’ll definitely make these in the future and I’ll add a few extra ingredients.

This morning, I made vegetable fried rice and my daughter ate some of this afternoon. What did she have for breakfast? I made fruit pudding which was a simple blend of pureed strawberries, blueberries, and bananas. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of that since my daughter ate it before I could take pictures but I do have great memories of today spent hanging with my daughter and bonding. Life passes by so quickly, take the time to hang out with those you love.

This and that; knitting and sewing machine embroidery

March 31, 2013September 23, 2013 Aynaria 5 Comments

This past week has been extremely busy and unfortunately I didn’t even get to sew the Easter dress for my daughter. We had a slight change in plans since my six year old nephew was visiting us and so my free time was spent including him on the activities that my daughter and I do. He had so much fun during his week long visit, and so did we.

We went bowling, made playdough and played with it and we did lot of other fun activities. I also gave him his first sewing lesson.

Urban Threads - Mustang Sally UT1283 — Urban Threads – Mustang Sally UT1283. I didn’t embroider this one, just want to show how it looked before I switched the colors.

My nephew loves cars, so yesterday I purchased this embroidered design, “Mustang Sally” from Urban Threads. Just to clarify, the above Mustang, isn’t what I embroidered, it’s the sample that is featured on the Urban Threads website. They had a few car designs on their site, but he liked this one the most. He wanted his car to be red and since I have plenty of embroidery thread, my “toughest decision” was deciding which colors to use.

Brother SE400 - Embroidering a car — Brother SE400 – Embroidering a car

Yesterday morning, I pulled out my Brother SE400, uploaded the design to my embroidery machine and let it start sewing. My nephew and daughter hovered around while it was sewing. My nephew is fascinated with my sewing embroidery machine (Brother SE400) and was excited to see the design come to life.

Eventually, I’ll write a review about the Brother SE-400. I’m really impressed with the embroidery function. In fact, that’s all I use the machine for, embroidery. The few issues I’ve ran into while using the machine have all been my fault and were easily fixed. With the above design I used two pieces of stabilizer (top and bottom of the t-shirt). When I embroidered the doll design on one of my daughter’s t-shirts, I’d only used it on the bottom of the t-shirt and thought it might actually look nicer if I added it to the top of the t-shirt also… I was right.

My Brother SE400 did an amazing job with this embroidered car.

It took over an hour to complete, but he was thrilled with his embroidered car t-shirt! Embroidery or embellishments are simple ways to dress up a plain t-shirt. The embroidered design isn’t the only item created yesterday.

Yesterday, when we took my nephew back to New Jersey, I was able to complete another small project. This time it involved knitting!

Knitting: Simple ribbed beanie hat for a NICU baby

Since I didn’t drive there, I kept my hands occupied knitting this simple ribbed beanie hat. I’m thinking I’ll crochet some type of embellishment to the hat or perhaps crochet a fancy border onto the hat? Who knows…

My nephew liked the hat and promptly put it on his head. Red just happens to be his color. I must say he looked a bit silly with the tiny hat on his head. I let him wear it for a bit but eventually took it away with the promise I’d make him an appropriate hat. I already gifted him with a knitted hat while he was here, the funny thing is when I made that hat I had no idea who I was making it for. I tucked it away knowing that eventually it’d find a home. My nephew is thrilled since it looks similar to the knitted hat I made for my father (his grandfather.)

I started another knitted hat, but wasn’t able to finish it since I drove back to Maryland from New Jersey.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Easter!

Sewing: Another skirt marker

March 28, 2013April 1, 2013 Aynaria Leave a comment

The past several weeks, my free time has been focused on sewing costumes for the Passion Play. I could have been reimbursed for the material that I’d purchased for the play but I decided that the money and time spent making the costumes would be my gift to the drama ministry at our Lutheran church. As much as I enjoyed creating the costumes, I’m so glad they’re finished! Now, I can focusing on making items for my daughter and myself.

Remember that vintage skirt marker I purchased? I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. I guess it’s not surprising since my focus has been on designing and sewing Passion Play costumes. Also, my six year old nephew is here this week! Naturally, this means my time is limited as I spend time with him and my daughter. We’ve done a lot, and over the next week or so I’ll share photos of some of the things we’ve done. While they slept, I have been able to work on my knitted blanket!

I must say, that I’m looking forward to testing it out since that skirt marker is excellent if you don’t have someone to help you mark a hemline. In addition to that marker, a few days ago I purchased another vintage marker, the only difference is it uses pins to mark the hemline. It’ll be perfect when I’m working on outfits for daughter or when I’m making outfits for myself.

How did I end up with two vintage markers? I wasn’t thrilled with the current I’ve seen in the local fabric stores most seem cheaply made, and are made from plastic. I did some research on “vintage skirt markers” and that’s how I found them. The latest one I’m receiving uses pins to mark hems. Which works perfectly if you have a dress form or someone to assist. I’m thinking skirt marker that uses pins, will be a great opportunity to show my daughter how to mark hems correctly.

Both of the vintage skirt markers were made in either the the 1940s or early 1950s. Since they’re made from wood and metal, they’re sturdier that the current ones I’ve seen.

Homemade Playdough

March 26, 2013March 26, 2013 Aynaria 6 Comments

Yesterday, my daughter, nephew, and I had a lot of fun making playdough.

I gathered all the ingredients; flour, salt, cream of tarter, water, and a bit of oil. I then cooked everything in a large pot. My six year old nephew was excited, and helped me stir the playdough. My nephew is staying with us until this Friday. It works out perfectly, since my daughter is on Spring Break.

In the above photo, the dough started gathering around the spatula, that’s an excellent sign since it means that it’s almost ready. Of course, we had to wait for it to cool. Which was hard for them my daughter and nephew since they were ready to get creative.

We dyed our homemade playdough with food coloring.

After the playdough had cooled, we separated the playdough into sections and dyed it with food dye. This was a simple project, but we enjoyed it immensely and my daughter and nephew were entertained for a few hours while they worked on their creations. Towards the end, they decided to make Minecraft zombies, and let them dry. Once they’re dry, I’ll make sure I post a picture.

You can have fun without being glued to a technology gadget…

This week, my nephew is taking a break from his technology toys. I told him, you don’t need all those gadgets to have fun. I’m limiting their technology time And you know what? He’s still having fun! I always question the amount of time that some Children (and some adults too) spend with technology gadgets. They’re great, and I truly appreciate mine but I can’t help think that they can be a hindrance also since it can reduce social interaction — if you aren’t careful.

Interaction is very important in our household, and so I make that time. Yes, sacrifices have to be made on my part, but it’s worth the effort.