busy busy like a bee

There is this chick in my letterpress class who keeps bees. You know, just in her backyard. She goes to beekeepers meetings and she told us that the last one she went to all the men there (since apparently only men keep bees) got into a fight about how to best winterize your hives. The Amish swore they never did anything to protect the hives from the cold and their bees did just fine. Other men were adamant that you needed to use Tyvek to help insulate the hive and keep the bees from freezing, since apparently all the honey bees we have in North America are all imported from the Mediterranean and aren't strong enough to survive our brutal winters. Normal things.

I wish I was a bee keeper.

However, recently I myself have been very busy like unto a bee. Here are a few of the things I've been working on (though not everything since many things are still in progress):

I finished this guest book my friend Autumn commissioned me to make for her wedding this month. Yay for weddings! Yay for books! Yay for being done making them!

They are having 2 receptions, so the book is accordion style and double sided, one side for the Arizona reception, one side for the Kentucky one. I made little title cards for the first page of each side based on the graphic from their wedding invite. I think it tied the whole thing together really well.

Her colors are turquoise and silver with peacock feather accents. Thus the peacock feathers. I bought them at the Farmer's Market this fall so you know they're legit.

All the pictures in the book were taken by Autumn herself of the Mesa Arizona temple, where she and Devin getting hitched for time and all eternity. No big deal. (HUGE deal.)

Here you can see both fronts together (there's no true front and back since it's a double-sided book). Strangely I think I like the more subtle peacock feather on the left best...

We had a branch Christmas party on Saturday and my friend Jacob asked me to make a giant die for our white elephant game. I had a lot of fun with it and was really pleased with how it turned out, so I thought I'd share my pictures of it with you.

I really liked how the mistletoe turned out on this side.

Get it?! The a is her head!

The whole Christmas party itself was a lot of fun—when Jacob decides to throw a party, he really throws a party! There was an ugly sweater contest (which Braeden won!), white elephant gift exchange, delicious food, and at the end we watched A Muppet Christmas Carol, a classic for the ages. Hooray for Christmas! And Christmas parties thrown by Jacob Seifert.