2014 Missouri Honey Princess!!

This weekend was the start to an amazing year as the Missouri Honey Princess. Friday night I got crowned by the 2012-2013 Honey queen. She was the person who inspired me to become the honey princess. I had gotten to travel with her and see her speak at different occasions and it really sparked an interest in me. After myself and the new queen got crowned we had to give a short presentation introducing ourselves and what we looked forward to in the upcoming year. I think my presentation went great. I had a power point with pictures of me with my bees and doing talks. After the crowing ceremony we had a reception where we got to meet and talk with people. After the banquet and reception myself and the new queen got to go make little favors for a veteran's presentation the following morning. This made for a very late night and let me tell you the sun came early!! The next day we attended the different presentations put on by some very knowledgeable beekeepers.

Photo Taken by Eugene Makovec 

Our conference was located in the Lake of the Ozarks at the Lodge of Four Seasons hotel and resort. It was a pretty fancy and neat place to stay at. I played my part as the average tourist with the camera around my neck snapping pictures of the gardens, the beautiful view of the lake, and the interesting wood art around the hotel.

The Japanese Garden (below)

Even the ashtrays are fancy :)

A cool wood carving in the Lobby

A real fire right in the center of the Lobby the smell was heavenly

Yes there was a 3+ story water fall in the middle of the hotel!!! 

View from our room balcony. 

A beautiful Russian beehive. Instead of having multiple layer's of boxes they have bigger frames and are all in one box. Very interesting and beautiful. 

Now it's off to Louisville to get my American Degree!!!! Post will be up soon about that :)

Did You Know??????

I mentioned on Facebook the other day that the next 2 weekends are going to be pretty exciting for me. This weekend I'm getting crowned as the Missouri Honey Princess and the following weekend I will be receiving my American FFA Degree in Louisville, Kentucky. Becoming the honey princess means that I will be representing the Missouri State Beekeepers Association and promoting honey throughout the state of Missouri. I am super excited for this opportunity. I love beekeeping and have enjoyed previous opportunities of teaching people about my hobby. So I thought I would post some interesting facts about bees and beekeeping that you may or may not know. Hopefully this weekend I will get a post up about how the state meeting went and a picture of my tiara and sash.....yes I said tiara and sash. Never thought those things would be apart of my life. It's funny how things in life work out!! I hope you enjoy and if you ever need someone to speak about bees/honey to an organization call me up :) 

• Honey is the only food, humans consume, that is made by an insect.

• Bees contribute over 14 million dollars to the value of U.S. crop production. 

• A beehive is made up of almost all females. The workers and queens are all girls. The drones are the only males.

• Bees must visit approximately 2 million flowers to produce 1 pound of honey.

• Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years

• An average worker bee will only produce 1/12 teaspoon in her lifetime

• Honey has natural preservatives so that it won't EVER go bad.

• Honey contains all the substances needed to sustain life, enzymes, water, minerals, and vitamins. 

• If the honey bee became extinct the world would no longer have almonds.

• Honey bees are assigned their jobs based on their age.

For more facts and information about beekeeping check out the following sites:

American Bee Federation

Missouri State Beekeepers

National Honey Board

Leave My Town Alone

The past week the state and national news has descended upon my town. I wish I could say it's for a good thing like someone winning the lottery or finding a UFO but no it was for something bad that happened. At first it was surreal and kind of interesting that our little town was featured on even the Kansas City news but then when CNN had a story on their home page of their website and their truck showed up in town that really became kind of crazy. Now if you were to Google Maryville, MO you will see articles from the Miami Herald, LA Times, USA Today, CBS and NBC news.

Some of the news vehicles in town.

The truly sad part about this whole thing is that this Anonymous group posted this very creepy video and has basically threatened our town because they didn't accuse the boys who committed the crime.

 A quote from them:

"If Maryville won't defend these young girls, if the police are too cowardly or corrupt to do their jobs, if justice system has abandoned them, then we will have to stand for them," Anonymous said on a YouTube video."Mayor Jim Fall, your hands are dirty. Maryville, expect us"

SCARY RIGHT?!?!?! I don't know if the video is still up but all it is, is the mask (below) and a computer generated voice talking.

 Now because of this the news and social media has blown this whole thing out of proportion. I would tell you to read one of the stories but I honestly don't want you to because they are full of lies and exaggerations and it breaks my heart to see them try and destroy our town. People from different states are posting on social media sites like they know what happened. YOU DON'T LIVE HERE SO PLEASE SHUT YOUR MOUTH AND QUIT SPREADING LIES!!!!!!!! A girl in my nursing class said on FB the other day she was interviewed for one of the KC news channels. It truly pissed me off because she is from some other town and wasn't even living here at the time and had know clue what happened until now.

Next Tuesday the Anonymous group had said at first they were coming to protest on our courthouse lawn but as of today they have changed it to Tuesday night and instead of a protest it will be a vigil. I'm not looking forward to being in Maryville then because every freaking news person in the country will be there. They were there yesterday for a press conference and it was crazy then. But it also has an element of scary associated with it because what if they do something bad while they are here you never know with people today. I just wish that it would all go away and we could go back to being some little town known by few.

Tonight my mom was reading on FB where the Volleyball team in Maryville was wearing all pink to the game tonight to support a woman in the community who had breast cancer. There were comments on that post of people saying bad things about the other thing that was going on. They can't even let something good happen in our town without bashing it.

So please, please, please pray for my town and for everyone in the community. Please pray for people to stop spreading lies. Please pray for people to stop threatening our citizens. Please pray for the officials who have to deal with the ridicule. Please just pray for peace.

Weird, Unique, Special

Yesterday Liz from Buckaroo Barbie posted a post titled Weird and she described several things that she enjoyed or that made her unique! She encouraged everyone to write about their oddities. So I thought i'd give this a shot. I wrote a similar post awhile back where I listed thing that make me happy. (Here) I encourage all of you to share what makes you different and unique!!! I'd love to hear them. If you do it please put the link to your post in the comments section and I'll check them out!!

I absolutely with the biggest passion in the world hate sweet or hot tea. I can't stomach the stuff. Unsweetened Ice tea on the other hand I could live off of.

Some days when I'm in class and feeling stressed out, instead of listening to the teacher, I scan the internet for recipes and blogs about baking and dream about opening a bakery where I make cookies, pies, and cupcakes all day!

In tough situations I tend to psych myself out and think about the worst possible thing that can happen.

With everything in the world going on today, I find myself thinking many times a day how nice it would be to own a big chuck of land somewhere in the middle of nowhere and just be alone..... or maybe with a cute cowboy :)

I always regret watching Junk Gypsies!!! It makes me CRAZY!! I just want to go out and buy lots and lots of junk and do cool things with them :( I WISH I HAD MY OWN HOUSE TO DECORATE!!!!!!

I would rather spend my money on a new shot gun and ammunition than makeup and Sperry's.

I'm in love with and wish I grew up in the 50's. The colors, the cars, the music, the clothes, and the kitchens just make me swoon.

I collect cookbooks. The older and more worn out the better :) I already have around 40.

If you were to follow me in my car you would see me stop along side the road in many places. I try to take my camera everywhere and so I stop and take pictures of things all the time.

These are only a few things that makes me weird or unique :) I do hope you all share some of your oddities. 

Disappointment

Just a warning:

(I am now stepping onto my soap box)

What do you think is the worst feeling in the whole wide world? Well to me it's disappointment. Not just that feeling of when something you are expecting to happen falls through and changes abruptly, but when the people who you trust, respect, and even love disappoint you. It feels like they take a knife right to your heart and try to rip it out! I don't know if i'm blind, naive, or just plain stupid but in the cases of people that have disappointed me it's come to me as a complete and total shock. For me it's always been people who have been very close to me and who have meant a lot to me in my life. I have to say that it really just makes you want to cry, pray for them, and try to understand why they did what they did. Unfortunately in my cases it has cost me many a friendship and I think has really scared me as a person when it comes to friendships, trusting people, and keeping true to the person I want to be.

I guess what I'm trying to say and from what I've experienced is that the people you grow up knowing sometimes turn into people who you never thought they'd be come and do things that you never thought they would do. An example, I know that your supposed to be young and dumb and your apparently supposed to live by the motto YOLO (you only live once), But for me I've never been like that and I've always been more, if you will, mature than most of my peers and have chose not to participate in immature activities. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, and I don't feel that I will die if I don't have a boyfriend every second of my life! I like to blog, I love to bake, I love to take pictures, I love going to bible study and church, I love following rodeo, and I love to listen to old music to name a few things. Does this make me a bad person? Nope it means that I stand up for what I believe in and don't try to conform myself to fit some stupid society standard! Do I hide my true feelings about a lot of what I like? You bet I do. It's not cool to like half the things that I like and I'm just not 100% confident yet in completely opening up. I'm sure trying but it is truly a hard and scary thing to do! I am getting there though. Blogging has honestly helped me open up a lot. I have finally found people, who I have never met in person remind you, who I have more in common with than people I've tried to be friends with for years!

Back to the disappointing thing. So many people I have known who have disappointed me have tried to conform themselves to be what society things is "cool" and have changed themselves to fit in. What is so confusing to me is why they would want to hide the true selves just to fit in with the rest of society. In so many cases people end up regretting what they do. I just wish I had the power to stop them and help them see that it's ok to be a little different from everyone else. That there are better people to associate with and that I don't care how bad you think your life is alcohol is never, I MEAN NEVER, a way to solve your problems! Also I wish they would think about what they are doing now and how it could effect themselves and those that they love. Do you want to bring them that type of pain?

 But until I find a way to help them, and the courage, I guess all that I can do now is pray for them.

Deep Breath

(Down off soap box)

Thank you for listening to my rant!

PS If you want to disappoint me and do something that is stupid please don't expect me to be OK with it and know that we may not be on good terms anymore. Just an FYI!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It was so ironic that what's going on in my life right now 2 of my favorite bloggers were writing about some of my same feelings. I really wish you all would check out these 2 girl's blogs. They are two awesome sisters who I guess were feeling rather inspired in the same night because they both wrote about similar topics and did a great job of expressing their feeligns. Below are the links to their blog posts I'd like you to read.

Adrian Buckaroogirl- An Opinion
Buckaroo Barbie- How to be a Bad Ass

Happy 4-H Week!!!

Happy 4-H week everyone. For almost 9 years I was a proud member of the Mt. Tabor 4-H club. I served as president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary, some of those more than once. While I was in 4-H I was involved in many different groups including cooking, photography, geology, goats, sewing, arts and crafts, scrapbooking, and many other groups. I also got to attend 4-H summer camp 2 different years in Trenton, MO. I did demonstrations at both the coutny and state fairs, and sent countless projects to the fair. 4-H introduced me to public speaking, livestock showing, and many friends all over the state and made a huge impact on my life.

 

How many of you were invovled in 4-H? I'd love to hear some of your favorite memories and stories!

Autumn Book Challenge Link Up

Yesterday, Kelsey from Keeping Up With Kelsey, posted on her blog a list of books she will be reading starting now until December 31st. She is doing a link up with Semi-Charmed Kind of Life who is sponsoring an autumn book challenge. I love to read and am always trying to find new books to read so I thought I would give it a shot. I'm not going to be all official with it but I still am keeping the topics of the books, the time frame to read them, and the points you can earn by finishing each book just to see if I have what it takes to complete it. A few of the rules included that the books had to be over 200 pages, a book can only be used for one category, and you can only have 3 out of the 13 books be books that you've read before (I have none). So I spent the day finding books that fit each category and sounded interesting to me. Below are each of the 11 categories and the list of 13 books I will have to read by December 31st. You will be able to follow my progress on a new page on my blog titled Book Challenge. I really encourage everyone who loves to read to get involved and try it!!

1. Read a book that does not have “the”, “a”, or“an” in the title (5 Points)

a. Brave Enemies- Robert Morgan

2. Read a book that has been featured in Oprah’s Book Club (10 points)

a. The Untethered Soul- Michael A. Singer

3. Read a book that takes place in the state where you currently live (10 points)

a. Rainbow’s End- Valerie Comer, Annalisa Daughety, Nicole O’Dell, Cara Putman

4. Read an epistolary novel. (a book written in letters, emails, diaries or docs) (15 points)

a. One Thousand White Women: The Journal of May Dodd- Jim Fergus

5. Read a book first published in 2013 (15 Points)

a. The Signature of All Things- Elizabeth Gilbert

6. Read a book with something spooky in the title. (15 points)

a. Salem Falls- Jodi Picoult

7. Read a book with “air, “water”, “earth”, or“fire” in the title

a. Gone with the Wind- Margaret Mitchell

8. Read a book on which a television series has been based on.

a. MASH- A novel about three Army Doctors- Richard Hooker

9. Read a fiction book that has someone’s first and last name in the title (25 points)

a. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle- David Wroblewski

10. Read two books by the same author (30 Points)

a. Somewhere to belong- Judith Miller

b. In the Company of Secrets- Judith Miller

11. Read a fiction and non-fiction book about the same topic (35 points)

a. The Girls of Atomic City- Denise Kiernan–Non Fiction

b. Skeletons at the Feast- Chris Bohjalian