Sunday, July 3, 2011

with great honey comes great need for containment

So we have a lot of honey.

Yep.

And Ball jam jars are ugly. Sorry if you don't think so, but I do. I feel like I might as well be putting our honey in old margarine tubs.

Unfortuntely, normal looking jars can only be found online. (Container Store, you have let me down big time).

For our last batch we bought a variety of jars, most spectacular of which were the glass honey bears.

Beekeeping supply catalogs will tell you that plastic squeezie bottles or squeezie bears are fine for honey containment, but they just look cheap. Cheap honey is what I buy at Safeway. If I'm calling the honey mine, it's gotta be well dressed.

So then we have the jars but at home labeling was more trouble than it was worth (think laminated coating and circle-cutting) so I gritted my teeth and ordered from Vista Print.
I have a grudge against Vista Print because they're snakish. I don't think that's a word, but that's adjective I'm going to apply to their business methods.
The free-business-cards they sell are super ugly, and not really free unless you're willing to wait 'til next year to take delivery of them. Their prices aren't the lowest around, and they sell weird stuff like baseball caps and website hosting, and that's just...well, weird.

But gosh darnit if they didn't have the best "small circular sticker" prices, so I placed my order and will wait by the mailbox until these little babies arrive:

It's a simple label in a sea of filigreed flowery labels. Stylistically it's a nod to mandarin orange growers, Fiestaware and London Underground all at once, which happen to be 3 things I like, and relate to honey, sorta (okay, the UK and tea and honey is a weak link, I admit that)

(Rabbit trail note: The bee in the center will most likely appear in permanent form on my upper arm sooner or later.)

Tomorrow we'll harvest some more honey (fingers crossed) and by the time it's done processing, all the new packaging should arrive. Kismet!