I love the Design Seeds web site and I loved this bee image they posted a few days ago. I love the color pallet - so nice to see natural colors instead of the bright yellow and black usually associated with bees. It makes me super excited to get back to beekeeping in a couple of weeks! I have ordered 2 new packages of bees and pick them up later this month. So far it looks like I have lost 2 hives - one I was really surprised by but the other one I really didn't think would make it through the winter.

Photo Credit Design Seeds

Disney Cruise 2012

Jake, Kaycie, Riley and I were the lucky recipients of a 7 night Disney Cruise to Mexico. My mom and Dad gave us this awesome gift for Christmas. We spent 2 nights at the Disneyland Hotel and a day at Disneyland then boarded the Disney Magic.

Disney Cruise Top 10-

1-Watching lots of movies in the theater with Jake. Jake also loved watching the Jungle Book in the cabin. I think we watched it about 4 times and he was singing the Bear Necessities song all the time.

2-Watching the movie Lilo and Stitch on a huge outdoor screen while Jake and Riley were in the swimming pool.

3- When our waiter asked my mom how she wanted her steak cooked and she thought he was asking her name so she kept saying Diana. He just looked at her with a very perplexed look on his face and kept asking her how she wanted it cooked.

4-Admiring Kaycie who went to her kids club "the Edge" on the first night all by herself and made tons of friends. By the end of the cruise I would walk to the lobby with her and she would say - that's Aaron he is from Australia and he is the booking director-. She knew a ton of ship gossip and all sorts of secret passages - there was a door almost right outside our cabin that went directly up to the buffet -who knew?

5- Jake working deals in the market in Cabo San Lucas - It seemed like he had been shopping in Mexico for years.

6- Getting Riley dressed up for Pirate Night.

7-We had an awesome room, a fantastic balcony and free ice cream cones, soda and french fries.

8- Zip Line -lets be honest I kind of hated it but it was awesome watching Jake and Kaycie. When we got to the first line Kaycie and I were talking about how nervous we were and I looked around for Jake and he was first in line, being hooked up-- then off he went....not one bit nervous flying through the air from tree to tree.

9-Watching Kaycie feed a dolphin a fish from her mouth, Riley swimming on the dolphin's stomach and Jake, the first one to go again, riding around the pool on the dolphin's back.

10- Helping my Mom prepare to give the gift (she bought a fun little Mickey Mouse countdown nutcracker), watching how excited they were when they opened the gift and preparing to go on the cruise by taking the 3 of them to Cracker Barrel for dinner and excursion planning.

Disney Cruise Bottom 3

1- I had a terrible migraine for 3 of the days and that caused me to miss the thing I was most looking forward to--Pirate Night with Turkey Legs and fireworks. Makes me so mad!

2-I had a minor tear filled nervous breakdown on the first night at dinner - this, along with steak cooked Diana (see top ten #3 above) and Kaycie having a crush on our assistant server Glennford which caused constant giggling whenever he brought anything to our table, made me certain that our servers thought we were crazy! Oh well.

3-I had to pay Jake and Kaycie $25 each to have their picture taken with a Disney character.

It was totally worth it.

OLW March 2012

So, I am still about 2 months behind on my One Little Word projects. I just finished up the project for February. The assignment was to get out and take pictures of images that represent our OLW for 2012. As a reminder my word is Refine. I did not make it out to take pictures so I decided to pull my images from magazines I had around my house. It was so much fun. I was able to find photos for many of the areas I hope to "refine" this year. - my home (clean and redecorate), cooking, my little honey business and a few other things.

I also challenged myself with a couple of extra projects to complete during the month of March - 1-lights out by 10:00 to "refine" my energy level

2- total house detox to "refine" my house

3-1 week without TV to refine my time management.

The results of the extra challenges are mixed - lights out by 10:00 was awesome, I felt so much better in the mornings and was able to make it to work almost on time. House detox not so good - I will be continuing this in April. No tv for a week was a total flop - oh well letting this one go for awhile maybe I will try this one again during the summer.

Stuff does not make us prepared -

Oh my gosh - I love this post I read on the zen habits blog - www.zenhabits.net
I feel like it so applies to me right now - I feel so overwhelemed with my possessions some times and the effort it takes to maintain them. I need to print this out and read it everyday! - Love it!

Empty-Handed, Full-Hearted

Post written by Leo Babauta.

We often load ourselves up when we travel, because we want to be prepared for various situations. This burden of being prepared leaves us with our arms full, unable to receive whatever is there when we arrive.

It leaves us tired from carrying, so that we are not happy when we meet someone new on our travels.

What if we traveled with empty hands, ready to embrace new experiences, receive new foods, touch new people?

We might feel less prepared when we leave, but the preparedness is an illusion. Stuff doesn't make us prepared. Having empty hands but a heart that is full of love leaves us prepared for anything.

This doesn't just apply to taking a trip, but to living each day. Each day is a journey, and we load ourselves up with material possessions, with tasks and projects, with things to read and write, with meetings and calls and texts. Our hands are full, not ready for anything new.

Drop everything, be open to everything.

Enter each day empty-handed, and full-hearted.

Sent from my iPad

Remember to buy these...........

I saw these fantastic greeting cards at Barnes and Noble tonight while picking up a copy of the Hunger Games to replace the copy someone loaned me. Someone in my house decided it would be fun to chew up the cover - ruby foo is awesome!
Anyway - this card line features shelter dogs. The back of the card has the dogs name, how they ended up in a shelter and their special personality traits - I thought they were brilliant! I need to remember to by buy these the next time I need a card.

On The Road

I spent 4 hours in Sacramento today. It was a super fast trip. The weather was yucky so it was nice to get home.