Bees.

 We have bees again!

Wait - did I even make it known we had no bees? Probably not?

Well, we didn't. Not since early winter (November?). Last year's hives weren't super healthy heading into fall and then they collapsed and disappeared into the wind. *poof* 

It happens. Like, a lot. 

On the plus side though, the husband got the remaining honey out of there before it was robbed by other bees so we got double the honey we would have had. (Fall harvest + all of the honey he had originally left for them to winter on.) And it's some of the best tasting honey ever. I was going through a little jar a week for awhile and then my pants stopped fitting well so I, uhhhh, had to stop eating honey. lol

On the boo-boo side, buying two more boxes of bees is $$$ and they aren't giving off particularly 'robust' signs so far. Grrr. Hopefully they take though. *fingers crossed* 

The husband's birthday was last week and I made him a sign to put by his hives.

I think it came out pretty good seeing as 1) I'm no great shakes at painting and 2) it looked like ass right up til the very end. I just kept putting more layers until I got something that wasn't embarrassing. I thought for sure it was going to end up buried in the trash at some point. lol

So there was a black underlayer, then two applications where I did a mix of three red/reddish colors kinda scraped on*, transferred/drew in letters and stuff, painted that in stages, frowned at it a lot and made scrunchy faces, sanded the edges to bring out the black (which you can't see here), speckled it in areas, little antiquing gel, and then, FINALLY, varnish. (Which would have been better matte but glossy is what I had on hand.) It doesn't photo very well but I'm quite impressed with myself actually, giving my lack of any real painting knowledge. Let us not ponder it too deeply though because I have no explanation for why some bees have eyes, but not others, and only one has antennae. We'll call it artistic liberties.

I got him a couple of other things as well though, just to cover my butt in case the sign didn't work out - so he made out pretty well. :)

*Lake Girl Paints has a paint 'scrape' post where you use CARDSTOCK - no brush needed! - to basically shove paint onto things. It's pretty neat. And an awesome blog all around.

Spring has been quite nice here. MUCH drier and sunnier than normal. I don't remember the last time I've gotten in this much 'sitting on the deck time' so early in the year. And, thankfully, there are lots of flowers around to help the new bees build up their new homes.

Hope everyone is having a nice Mother's Day. :)