Hobbies

Gardening Hobbies

Tomato Gardening 101

If, like me, you live in the Southern part of the country then you’ve probably recently come the conclusion that “winter” is just not going to happen this year.  In central Texas, the last frost date is usually sometime mid-March, and since the 10-day forecast shows balmy temps in the 60s and 70s for our […]

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Food & Recipes Hobbies

Our Homemade Holiday Gifts (2015 Edition)

When I got married three years ago, this long-time only child had the privilege of marrying into a gigantic family.  My husband is one of 7, and between his siblings and their spouses, my extended family, plus friends, neighbors, and coworkers, our holiday present budget looked destined to skyrocket. So, we started giving out homemade and diy presents […]

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Food & Recipes Hobbies

Mis-Adventures in Canning

When life hands you peppers, make pepper jelly. At least, that’s all I could think to do with a bumper harvest of more than 50 serrano peppers from the single plant in our raised bed garden this fall. So like a good little diy-er, I ordered a canning kit, and started scouring the web for […]

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Hobbies Money

The Lazy Way to “Extreme” Coupon

As some of you all might remember, around a year ago, I tried my hand at the “Extreme Couponing” game.  I went as hard as I could for a couple months there, but found that (due to a lack of stores that double coupons in my area and my general preference for eating fresh, organic, unprocessed foods) […]

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Beekeeping Hobbies

Why The Internet-Famous “Flow” Hive Is a Terrible Idea

Because I’m a beekeeper, anytime someone hears something interesting about bees, they tend to tell me about it.  For that reason, I’ve probably been sent the Indiegogo page for the Flow Hive well over twenty times by now. And I’m not the only one, apparently.  The thing has raised a startling $12 million dollars so […]

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Gardening Hobbies

Update on our Wicking Raised Bed Garden

It’s been a few months since we shared the process of how we built our wicking raised bed garden in the front yard, and we’re in full harvest season! We typically get this sort of bounty about 3x a week. We went ahead and tore out our remaining lettuces last month, as the heat had made […]

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Beekeeping Hobbies

Beekeeping 101: Replacing Your Queen Bee

There ain’t no drama like queen bee drama cause queen bee drama don’t stooooooppp. When we went into our hive for the first time this spring to see how the bees were doing after the winter, we got a nasty surprise.  Our queen had gone rogue. Meaning, our original queen – the one we got […]

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Beekeeping Hobbies

So…how much honey does a beehive produce?

It’s about the eight-month anniversary of this blog.  Hooray!  And since that time, one thing has been very consistent. I get a LOT of search traffic from the terms: “How much honey does a hive make?” “Beginner Beekeeping Guide” “How much does honey weigh?” “Backyard beehive setup” “Laws and restrictions backyard beekeeping” “How hard is […]

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Hobbies Money

Becoming More Mustachian…

This post may be old news to those of you who are already long time fans of the Mr. Money Mustache blog.  But the hubs and I recently started reading it and found it really jived with our existing philosophies on work, hobbies, and money. If you’re not familiar, MMM’s basic idea is that most retirement and savings […]

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Gardening Hobbies

DIY Garden Signs: Grilling Skewers + Wine Cork

As I bragged about yesterday, we’ve finally completed our wicking raised bed garden – a project I’ve been wanting to undertake for a couple years now!  When all was said and done with veggies in the dirt, the hubby pointed out that it might be nice to add garden signs for what each thing is. […]

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