Bullet Bouquets

Note: this is a completely unsolicited review - I saw the product and fell in love.

While waiting for the Garth Brooks concert to start a couple of weeks ago, I was flipping through Facebook and saw the coolest thing ever. A flower pot with beautiful flowers that would never wilt or die, made by Bullet Bouquets.

Photo cred: Bullet Bouquet's FB page

I had to have one of these bouquets, so I told Jay that's what he needed to get me for our anniversary next month.  But I just couldn't let it go - I mean, look at how cute that is!  The .22 brass "soil" and perfectly "bloomed" copper jacketed hollow points.  It's perfect.

Because I couldn't let it go, I placed an order to give to a friend.  You know, to just see if I liked it in person as much as in the picture before I told Jay that he really, really needed to get me some of these flowers that will never wilt.

I literally placed the order on my way home from the Garth Brooks concert.  I couldn't even wait until the next morning to place the order, I was that impatient.

I placed the order early, early on Wednesday morning and had it by Monday.  I probably got lucky in the quick shipping because they are a Colorado company, so the distance was pretty short.

Even though I bought it as a gift I had to open it.  You know, just to make sure it wasn't damaged in shipping.  They had it packaged carefully in bubble-wrap, with the "dirt" in its own little bag to add after the flowerpot was unpacked.  I shouldn't have worried about the packing, because these bouquets are actually very sturdy.

I assembled it by pouring the "dirt" into the pot and let it sit on my desk for a couple of days.  When I started to think that maybe the present I'd gotten for someone else looked really good on my work desk, I packed it back up so as not to give into the temptation of keeping it.

I gave it to Tara to keep on her desk as she's writing and she was every bit as delighted with it as I was.

The quality was great, it wasn't flimsy at all, and I got it in a timely manner.  I definitely recommend this company to anyone who wants to give a great gift to the shooter in their lives.

Kitchen Adventures with GunDiva

While at SHOT Show, Mez and I talked to the folks from Multiple Impact Bullets.  I was intrigued.  Having been in medicine for the better part of my life, I wanted to know what on earth the tethered fragments would do to a body.  I had seen videos of people shooting paper targets with them, and the targets always ended up with a neat little Y-incision like in an autopsy.  I wanted to know what it would do to tissue, only I didn't want to know badly enough to get shot with one.

I considered testing them on a pig body, but came to my senses when I priced what a pig would cost.  Same with a side of beef.  Way too much money for something I wasn't going to be able to eat when I was finished with the testing.  That left ballistic gel.  Ideally, and in a perfect world, I would have bought one of these, but I'm pretty sure that if a dead pig or cow was out of my budget these would be too.

That left me with making my own ballistic gel, as the blocks you can buy weren't big enough to do what I wanted to.  The spread of the Multiple Impact bullet in a .45 ACP is 12", and out of a 12 ga shotgun is 24".  The 6"x6"x16" FBI blocks weren't going to be big enough to catch the spread, and at over $100 a piece I wasn't willing to buy enough to stack to make a big enough block.

So to the Google I went and found this recipe.  It look simple enough, and I had some time on my hands.  I wasn't worried about the depth of penetration of the rounds, I wanted to see how or if the tethers tore through the soft tissue.

I bought enough of the ingredients to make four gallons of the stuff, to be divided into pans that were 19"x11.5"x3".  I figured I could stand them side-by-side and it would almost be big enough.

All the mixing bowls I could find - and I still didn't have enough!

My fridge was taken over by the blooming gelatin.

After allowing the gelatin to bloom for two hours, it needed to be reheated to be poured.

Four gallons only filled two of my pans.  I was hoping for more, but glad to get what I did.

Back in the fridge for thirty-six hours.

Oops, I broke one.

I did not adequately plan for the amount of fridge space that making so much gel would require and condensed all of my food to one small shelf and the crisper drawers.

It was a fun experiment and if I ever decide to do it again, I'll decrease the amount of liquid in the gel to firm it up a bit more and use a better size form.  I think it would have been more stable in a block rather than a sheet.  It mostly served its purpose and we were able to get some video and pics (which will be posted later, as I have a lot of footage to edit and I'm very slow at it.).