It's Embarrassing

... what our dining set looked like until a week or so ago.  It really is.  It was bad.  It didn't start it off bad.  I'm fairly certain it's circa 1980-something based on the style and the fabric on the chair seats.  I got it from my parents when I moved to my first apartment in 2002; they purchased it for me secondhand.  It was actually in great condition at the time.  Not totally my style as furniture goes, but in my first apartment with a huge, empty eat-in kitchen, "free" and "gift" were very much my style.

Over the years, there was obviously some wear and tear, especially on the fabric.  Most happened in recent years, though, after Eric and I got married.  Having three cats who loved sleeping on the very nubby, very loose-knit fabric created a situation where I didn't want my guests sitting on the chairs, which had become completely interwoven with cat hair.  And then at some point, something spilled on a chair.

And we'd been using the table to make soap and candles, and the overspill of molten soap and essential oils had marred the surface.  Also at some point, someone (*cough* Eric) left something on the table that leaked and caused water damage to the wood.

I grew to hate that dining set.  Despise it.  It made me scowl every time I looked at it.  Scowling isn't a great look for me.  People get intimidated.

So it was long past time to refinish it.  Since both Eric and I pretty much hate painted wood, the natural solution was sand and stain.  Lots of sanding.  Using quite a few belts and even more squares of sandpaper.

Have I mentioned sanding kind of sucks?  Especially when the damned chairs don't come apart and they've got rounded bits and close-together bits and a bunch needs to be done by hand?  It took for-freaking-ever.

Boo for sanding.

On the other hand, yay for staining.  We decided to go with a much more modern and formal "Kona" stain that's not black, but a very, very dark brown, dark as night.

A good coat of polyurethane, and that was done!

In the meantime, at night when I couldn't be outside sanding due to chill and lack of light, I was inside reupholstering.  I've never reupholstered a single thing in my life before!  Had to make new cushions too.  Personally, I think I did a damned good job.  We chose an also formal fabric that we ordered from JoAnn.com.  They didn't carry this particular fabric in store, but did you know you can order a swatch of their online fabrics for $3?  We discovered it while fabric shopping, and it's a stellar idea.  In this particular instance, we discovered that we loved it even more in person than online.

Seats back on the chairs, and all done!  The set was all ready for our Kenucky Derby Party!

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First Inspection

After nearly a week of waiting, on Sunday we were finally able to go back into our newly-occupied hive and see how it was doing.  Apparently, everyone's healthy.  We saw that they were doing a good job drawing new honeycomb out on the blank frames.

Plus, there was lots of brood... cells with eggs, larvae & pupae.

And there was a ton of capped honey for the bees t eat too!  And some pollen-filled cells in an awesome bright orange.  We saw a few bees coming home with legs covered in orange pollen too.  It was amazing.

We gave them a bucket of sugar syrup to eat to help with their comb building, and left them to their work.  While I worked on some other stuff, Eric planted our new honeysuckle for them.

So far... being a beekeeper rocks.

The Residence has Residents!

Remember this post?  The beehive we built and I painted last June?  Well, it turned out to be too late in the season to get a strong bee colony going, so we had to wait until now... and this past Monday night... we got our bees!

We got a nuc, which consists of five frames of honeybees with drawn out honeycomb filled with various stages of brood and a laying queen.  In essence, the NUCleus of a hive!

Per instructions received from experienced beekeepers, we opened the door of the nuc and put it on the actual hive overnight.

And then Tuesday morning, we installed the bees into the hive!

Now we have the incredibly difficult task of leaving the hive alone until Sunday, when we can check on the bees and see how they're doing in there.  More photos will come!

(Over)due for an Update

The aquaponics system is absolutely flourishing.  Mostly.  We have a couple little sprouts that are hard to photograph that we think might be brussels sprouts, but I'm not convinced those are/will do well in the rock bed.  We'll see.  Worst case, they'll go outside in the backyard veggie garden (which will be well-fenced this year so we don't give the bunnies a brussels sprout buffet, sorry, bunnies).

The beans, though.  The green beans are happy.  Ecstatic, even.  Check this out.

See all those extra leaves and tendrils starting?  Happy, I tell you.  Meanwhile, in the foreground, those are some of the leafy greens.  Spinach & mesclun, I believe.  Look how tall they're getting!  And leafy!  In fact, in some spots they're starting to get the actual lettuce-type leaves, the serrated ones.

See 'em?

The cukes are doing well too.  Not as huge as the beans, but starting to get the secondary leaves.

They're budding there in the middle of the initial leaves.  These are pickling cukes, so it'll be fun once Eric takes up making pickles.  Once we have actual cucumbers, that is.

And just a quick overhead view of all the leafy greens and tomatoes, just to show how they've proliferated.

Salad in a bed of rocks!  Oh, and in case you're wondering about the fish, they're still doing well.  Holding at 4 fish, which are eating well and getting bigger by the day.  I wouldn't expect goldfish to get that big, but they're definitely bigger than when we got them.

My, How You've Grown

Just a quick update.  Day 7 and the tallest of the broccoli and mesclun and/or spinach sprouts are 1.25 to 2" high.

I measured.

Leaves! And a Grade School Science Experiment

Remember in grammar school when we were given birdseed, paper towels, and plastic bags?  We wet the paper towels, put the seeds between two layers of them, and sealed them in the bags... and sprouts grew.

We did the same thing here the same night as we scattered the other seeds in the aquaponics tub, only with green beans & cucumbers.  Today, we opened 'em up.

They grew a ton in just 6 days and rooted right into the paper towels, which was pretty funny.  So into the rock bed they went!

Meanwhile, we noticed yesterday... leaves!  Leaves on the shoots in five days!

And today, they're just going crazy!  A ton of growth.

And if you're wondering about the fish, we're down to five, as we lost three while the system stabilized, but those five are doing well.

Negative 2? Really?

Yes, really.  Apparently.  It's cold out there!  The "real" temperature on my way to the office this morning was 19 F, but the wind chill was -2 F.  This is not acceptable, especially considering the fact that the day before yesterday it hit 67!  I took a 40 minute walk at lunch!  Today?  Today I brought a book.

I mean, don't get me wrong.  I like to read.  But we're doing a Biggest Loser challenge at work, and the more exercise I can get in, the happier I am.  I'm competitive that way.  I'm also 43 and way too unfit for that age.  I've gotten sedentary and careless, and it's time to buckle down and turn it around, so I am.  Not doing too shabby, either.  Just the cold is a bit of a hindrance, since I prefer walking to most other exercise.

Anyway, getting fit also means eating better, and so I'm doing that too.  We tried last summer; I posted about our vegetable garden and all that.  Unfortunately, the local fauna got most of the veggies rather than us.  There's this groundhog in the area, our friend dubbed him "Spud," who's a brazen critter, and huge.  He ate all of our tomatoes just as they were getting ripe and gave our cucumber plants crew cuts before the cukes could even grow.  It was crazy.

Well, this year, we're planning better, with more garden boxes, and fencing everything in properly.  Plus we'll have the honeybees, so things should be well pollinated.

In the interim, though, we'd like fresh veggies sooner and we'd like ones that are completely protected.  Which is why Eric set up that awesome aquaponics system.

That was Sunday.

Guess what?

Two degrees or no two degrees, as of yesterday... we've got germination!  These are photos I took yesterday.

That's two days, people!