And Now: The Moment You've All Been Waiting For . . .

Grand Prize!

I am so happy to announce the winner of the First Ever Toxic Housewife Contest!!  I received a lot of fantastic and creative business-name suggestions via e-mail and Comments after posts; thanks to those of you who took the time to think up such great names!  From those suggestions, I narrowed the list down to my top 9 favorites, then asked Bee and S.B. to narrow it further.  We decided on the top five, and opened it to voting.  And, thanks to all of you who voted, the results are as follows:



With 12% of the votes:

Fat Cat Cookie Co.

Tied, each with 16% of the votes:

The Snickerdoodle Express AND Bite Me Cookies

With 37% of the votes:

The Cookie Momster

And the winner, with 45% of the votes . . .

Congratulations to J.S. (with perhaps an assist from Big Bro Bob?) for suggesting the winner (and for putting up with my uncreative nicknames for them)!

I am so excited to have a fresh new name to work with, and I really appreciate everyone's input on it and the logo.  And now I'm putting together business cards (that almost even look business-like!), and which list my title as 'Queen Bee'.  I sort of wanted my title to be 'queen bee, worker bee, all around busy bee', but Bee -- who was the only one around to give feedback -- thought I was getting a little ridiculous.

I think Sugarbee Cookie Company is adorable, though it tells me how little you all know me, since I am decidedly not.  Still, I'm sure a stranger would rather order from a business that sounds 'adorable' than from a business that sounds like it's based out of a trailer park.

Perhaps everyone had bees on the brain just as much as did I; hence, 'Sugarbee' was a particularly fitting name.  Speaking of bees:

See that?  We now have two hives going!  That's because on Wednesday we caught a wild swarm!  It was most exciting: Bee noticed a cloud of bees in the field behind our house that eventually clumped onto a bush.  I suited up and went out with a box and whapped the branch above the swarm until they all fell into my box, then we brought them back to our house.  Of course, it wasn't as straightforward as I make it out to be, seeing as how I had to hem and haw about it and hesitate for awhile and just guess at what I was doing, but I was lucky in that a skilled beekeeper happened past and stopped to give me some assistance, so it all worked out.


Bee and I were thrilled to death to catch a wild swarm, since this meant we now had $100-worth of bees for free.  Of course, then I had to rush out and buy the materials for a second hive, which ended up costing $180 . . . so I'm feeling a little sick to my stomach right now.


I opened both hives today to check on their egg-laying and honey production.  The first hive is doing great (I think): several frames are full of brood and honey; it won't be long before we'll have to add another box of frames to their apartment complex.  The second hive is already building some cells, though I get the impression from my research that I'm supposed to remove these particular ones . . . so I'm actually not so sure how this hive is faring.  They're a lot more active than the first hive, with a significant cloud of bees around their box at all times; I'm hoping they just need a few days to settle down.


I'd love to show you pictures of the frames inside the hive, but I've yet to master holding my camera with bulky bee gloves on, and I'm still too nervous to not wear gloves, like the pros do.  Hopefully I can get some shots soon, though.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I must buzz off to work on the Sugarbee Cookie Company website and to finish baking cookies for the winner of the First Ever Toxic Housewife Contest!!  


(PS -As both a 'thank you' and an evil incentive to keep everyone contributing, all those who suggested a name that made it into the top five will be getting a prize, too.  You know you want it!)