a veil for my husband

No, it's not drag night at the Schwarzhold. We (Elie) have begun keeping bees.

The bees arrived last night, which was also Eva's Harry Potter sleepover birthday party. Timing is everything, let me tell you. Being the procrastinator than I am, I was icing a cake, sewing a beekeeper's veil, and threading the ties through dress-up capes all in the 5 minutes before Eva's guests showed up. All turned out well, except for the Potter cake. It was supposed to have the gryffindor crest, but I had an icing malfunction. I include the picture below so that everyone knows that things do not always turn out beautifully in blogland. Fortunately, renaming it "gryffindor poo" made it just fine in the eyes of my soon-to-be eight-year-old.

Back to the bees. We're keeping them for honey. (Maybe that goes without saying?) They came in the mail in a meshed create. There were 15,000 of them in a 18 x 6 x 12in. space. Having them there in a box on my porch was revolting, terrifying, and completely interesting. Elie dumped all of them into the hive (best party show ever) and didn't get stung once. He sprayed them down with sugar water first, so I guess that really works. Amazing. Creepy. Bees.