Painted Monogram Sign

Jessica and I both get girlier and girlier each week, and I find there's nothing to which I can't picture adding a flourish or a monogram. This time, it was our garage. Allen built this garage with his own two hands (and those of several good friends), and I came along and stuck M's and clovers to it. (For what it's worth, Allen likes the M; the other elements, he says, are just another thing making our house "Girly as ****.")

Here are the supplies you'll need to gussy up a garage, front porch, or foyer:

• thin birch plywood (mine is about 24" x 40", because that's what we had laying around)
• wood stain
• polyurethane
• an image you like
• a big sheet of carbon paper, optional
• painter's tape or masking tape
• a charcoal pencil or chalk
• oil paint - the kind you get in a pint-size can at the hardware store
• a paintbrush

Stain the plywood your desired color - I think I used Minwax Special Walnut. Staining and sealing instructions are in the second half of this post. Wait to polyurethane the board after you've painted your design.

Beginning Beekeeping - Getting the Bees

Nothing (besides the veil) will be as damaging to my little effort to remove the "weird" stigma from backyard beekeeping as the fact that I ordered a three-pound box of bees via the US mail. It's only one way to acquire bees ... but it's a weird one.

So how else might you get bees? Well, you may have spotted a feral hive in a tree that you want to ... adopt. There's plenty of online advice for that, and ... good luck to you. Feral bees are likely to be well-adapted to your area. When bees are swarming, they have no hive to protect, making them pretty docile. Some beekeepers have pheromone-baited bee boxes placed around their neighborhoods, to lure feral bees.

Beginning Beekeeping - The Equipment

Backyard (or rooftop, or fire escape, or whatever) beekeeping seems to be picking up steam, but I still found it maddeningly difficult to find a good primer online. A good beekeeping book is crucial, but I also like to do free research online whenever I begin a project - even a big one - and a simple primer on the equipment you'll need would have been really helpful in estimating what sorts of costs I would incur.

So this post is just that. I'm going to go over the basic parts necessary to assembling a hive. In the next post, I'll discuss where to get the bees. Frankly, that's as far as I've gotten. My bees seem to like their new home; they've been busy building comb, and I'll continue to add bee-related posts as they develop their colony and I inevitably screw something up.

Beginning Beekeeping - An Introduction

We've got bees in our yard, yall. And we put them there on purpose.

We have a huge backyard, and I've always hated that we don't do anything with it besides put a party back there a few times a year. I've lobbied unsuccessfully for chickens for years. I've waged on-and-off campaigns for yard-dwelling goats and alpacas, but gained no ground against steadfastly anti-livestock Allen. I bake, I love sweets, I love food. Why not use our yard for something interesting and fun that makes food?

I've brought up beehives here and there, and Allen decided he kind of liked the idea. I researched and started making serious plans to start a hive in the yard. Six weeks after buying a book on beekeeping, we've got a hive with worker bees and a queen.

diy: boxwood wreath

I fantasize all year long about warm fires on hearths, holiday parties lit by candles, making pralines and truffles to give as gifts, and every other Christmas cliché. Spiced cider with rum, anyone? (To be fair, how could you argue against that?)

A lot of of my infatuation comes from the romantic atmosphere that flickering candles, spicy and citrus-y fragrances, trumpets at Midnight Mass, and ethereal, soon-to-go-by-the-wayside decorations conspire to create. The string of cranberries will be eaten by the birds, the cloved oranges will be tossed into the compost, and the tree will be chipped into mulch. It's in part its ephemeral nature that makes a light-strung cottage so appealing.

This project, too, is ephemeral - you'll throw it out sometime in January, but no matter, because it's inexpensive, it's easy, and you get to keep a boxwood plant in the end.

diy: staining concrete

I spent last week digging up one of the gems the last owners left for us, a walkway covered in pebbles and haphazard concrete pavers, trimmed with lovely little scalloped concrete borders - an adorable little trailer park aesthetic. I wish now that I'd taken a picture, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Once I'd dug up the pebbles, which have now gone to reside in my shoes, we were left with a broken, cracked concrete walk. The cracks no more of an impediment to walking than the pebbles were, and the cracks not as bothersome to me as to OCD Allen, I decided I could live with the walkway if it weren't so bleached and dry-looking. That's where acid stain comes in.

Atlanta: Garden*Hood and Flat Earth Designs

As I've finally become a sort of gardener, I really appreciate garden stores that not only offer infinitely better service than the big box stores, but also emphasize real design in the garden. Garden*Hood has filled the space left in Atlanta by the Urban Gardener, a casualty of the great drought a couple of years ago. Garden*Hood has a great, knowledgeable staff - but the store's strongest recommendation is their focus on contemporary design in the outdoors.

To that point, I'm also enamored of their garden furniture, made by Atlanta company Flat Earth Design, helmed by artist Richard Taylor.