First Step

ABUZZ: A couple weeks back, the MPA crew attended a lecture about bee keeping near SeaTac airport, which is close to our 'campus.' Inspired by the presentation, we have since acquired a hive, which sits in a pile of pieces in our basement at the present.

We are gearing up to get it going this spring. In the meantime, we've started learning more about bee keeping. An online resource, "The PerfectBee Introductory Beekeeping Course," seems a great place to start. 

This morning, we began with Section 1.1 The Science of Bees. Lesson 1, "Why Bees Rock," was an engaging overview about just how interesting and important bees are.  For example, bees are a perfect example of 'mutualism,' defined as "A way for two organisms of different species to share a mutually-beneficial relationship." Clearly, the honey bee and flowering plants represent one of the most successful examples of mutualism in nature, the lesson points out.

Here are a few things CJ learned today. ...

The activities of honeybees in the creation of honey is often referred to as "eusocial." According to PerfectBee, eusociality "is characterized by strong levels of collaboration and often a division of labor putting humans to shame!" Honeybees working in eusociality are able to produce honey in an extremely efficient manner.

The smallest known bee species in the world is Perdita Minima, a species native to the southwestern United States. On average, Perdita Minima bees reach a size of two millimeters. Meanwhile, Megachile Pluto, a species native to Indonesia, can reach a size of a whopping thirty-nine millimeters, making it the largest known bee species in the world.

While the image of hives is widely associated with bees (especially honeybees), most species of bees live in solitude. Species of bees that usually live in solitude include Carpenter, Leafcutter, and Mason bees.

And here are a few things Annabelle learned. ...

Bees are responsible for the majority of our diets. While they most obviously produce honey, they also pollinate many of the plants we eat, allowing them to spread and grow at a much higher rate than if they had to rely on the wind. In fact, almost 75% of plants around the world depend on animal pollination, most of which comes from bees.

The average worker bee female will produce 1/12 of a tablespoon of honey in her lifetime. That may not sound like much, but once you add up the shear number of bees in a single hive, a single colony can produce 100 pounds of honey or more in a single year!

The honey that bees produce is extremely good for your well-being, including many vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. The substance they use to make their hives - propolis - is also believed to be good for one's immune system. 

BACK TO THE STACKS: In our ongoing 'let's visit the library' phase, yesterday we checked out the White Center branch of the King County Library system. 

Photo: King County Library System

The kids spent two hours playing a Smash (Nintendo video) game with other teens. I took the time to work on our taxes and read a book.

Huge fans of the musical "Hamilton," we just couldn't pass this picture book up when we saw it on a shelf.

It was an engaging book, and we learned a couple of things about Eliza that we didn't know, including the fact that the Hamiltons were foster parents to a couple of children. From the musical, we knew she had founded an orphanage after Alexander was shot and killed, but we didn't know she had also started a school bearing his name (Hamilton Free School). 

SOCKET TO ME: This afternoon's work involved a little wrench-turning. The mailman brought a car part we'd been awaiting, a hydraulic strut that keeps the tailgate door from slamming shut on you when it's open.

I looked at the existing one and the new part, and felt like it was something the kids and I could tackle. It looked like it was just a matter of removing and then reinstalling three bolts.

Honestly, the only challenging part of the project was finding the right socket and wrench to hold said socket. After trying a dozen or so, we finally found that a 10 mm one was the right size.

The actual replacement/repair itself only took 10 minutes. The kids felt pretty good when we were done. I told them that the part was only $35 or so, and can they think of any reason at all why they wouldn't attempt a repair like that themselves rather than pay someone? (I also told them it would likely be a minimum of $50 if they paid a mechanic to make a fix like that.) They said they would definitely think about taking on simple repair jobs by themselves, so yay for that!

Fun and Games

FAMILIAR FAVORITE: Lately, the kids have become regulars at the Tukwila branch of the King County Library System. It's a pretty building - lots of natural light and modern furniture. And there are books, of course. But what has attracted CJ and Annabelle have been their teen activities after school. Friday, the kids play video games in a conference room with others their age. 

Now, I know, you might be thinking, "WHY THE HELL is the LIBRARY offering VIDEO GAMES?"

Well, this particular library is about a block and half from a high school, and it's in an area geographically where there's not much in the immediate vicinity/walking distance to do, and it's definitely a working class neighborhood, with a whole lot of kids without any supervision after school. The library has homework help four days a week, craft activities, and on Fridays, a little over an hour's worth of video games. Kids come in droves. Clearly, they feel welcomed and comfortable there. Is it a little noisy with all those teens there? Sure. But I love the fact that the library is a part of the teens' routines. They are developing positive feelings about frequenting libraries, and to me, that seems like a great thing.

MODELING: We have a cake project coming up that is going to involve a sculpture atop it. In the past, we have used fondant for small sculptural pieces, and gum paste for larger ones. Each of those options has pros and cons. Fondant won't really hold its shape - it tends to try to return to the marshmallow it once was. Gum paste will hold its shape, but it dries so fast, working with it is hard, and it tends to dry with wrinkles and cracks that aren't aesthetically pleasing.

We watch lots of cake decorating shows, and one thing we've seen them use over and over for sculpting is modeling chocolate.  We decided now it was time to try to add that tool to our aresenal.

I found a recipe online on a website called SugarGeekShow.com. The process to make modeling 'chocolate' seemed simple enough ... melting candy melts, mixing in corn syrup and color, and then letting it set up, kneading it, and so on. 

This morning we fired up the microwave and gave it a go. We carefully measured out a half pound of candy melts and one-sixth of a cup of corn syrup. Those were mixed and then the stuff was spread on plastic. 

We waited about an hour and kneaded the still pliable concoction. We tried sculpting it, but I think we were a little too eager. Our models were super schlumpy. We'll let it set up some more and try again tomorrow.

MINDFUL: On a recent trip to 'binwill' (the Goodwell outlet where everything is in big bins you have to dig through, Christian recently picked up a new-to-us game, MindTrap.

It's really all about riddles. Some involve math, others involve careful listening. Rather than play it in teams or a competition mode, we recently just pulled cards and read them, and talked about possible solutions. I think these kinds of challenges are good for brains of any age!

Feeling Groovy

RACING STRIPES: So, what do we at MPA do when we're mostly snowed in for a few days?

We get crazy and paint retro racing stripes on our dining room wall, that's what we do.

When we heard the forecast that big snow was coming, I made sure to get to the paint store to order supplies, so that we had something to work on while house bound. In our case, the supplies consisted of a gallon of glossy white paint, and three poppy shades of green. ("Oh, the Kermit colors," as the manager at the paint store referred to them when I picked the order up.)

I love space/atomic age decor, and we have been incorporating it little by little into our new-ish MPA 'campus.' This project wasn't so little. It involved re-imagining the main wall in the dining room.

Once upon a time, a perfectly nice piece of furniture occupied the space.

This great old mid-century modern cabinet offered lots of storage and had nice bones. But it was more mid-century than modern, and the dining room needed some punch. :) So we sold the cabinet to a woman who was SO thrilled to have it (she had one exactly like it and her adult son wanted one so badly and she was over the moon when she spotted my ad on Craigslist - happy to the point she offered to pay more than the asking price [which I declined]).

Anyway, once it was gone, we could get to updating the space. 

For months and months, I'd looked for something to put in that space. I wanted wall hung cabinets and was dead set on them having to have curved corners. Let me tell you, that's not easy to find. But lo and behold, one Saturday morning I was browsing the website of our favorite salvage yard and there was the answer!  They had two used upper kitchen cabinets - each with a rounded corner on its end. Hooray! We went and bought them.

They had a little water damage on the bottom, so that required some sanding and filling. Actually, we had to sand the whole darn things, because we were going to be painting over the birds eye maple veneer. 

We also had to add some veneer where there was none, on each end. Then we had to carefully fill the transition from new veneer to old, and camouflage the center seam between the two cabinets. 

Christian crafted a new top to the cabinet out of A-faced 3/4 inch plywood. He routered the edges, because they just *had* to be round, like the corners. 

Once the cabinet was mounted, it was time to talk racing stripes. We had to decide on the scale of them. We messed around with various configurations before deciding on three stripes, all green, in 4-, 5- and 6-inch widths.

The project also involved mounting five floating shelves. We bought them at IKEA but had to cut them down to size for length, so they'd fit between the stripe and the end of the cabinet.

 Then the real fun began - painting!!

 The middle stripe was first. 

 Even with just one stripe done, I was already loving it!

 The curves were the trickiest part. No way to tape those off, really, so they had to be free-handed.

A few days later, the project was complete!

I know it's not everyone's style, but we're super happy with it.

It was a fun, rewarding way to spend Seattle Snowpocalypse 2019.