Belated Christmas

Merry Christmas a day late! I played around with some black background pictures for the first time and I love how they turned out! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

 Jetta was very festive even when I pulled her out of the pasture soaking wet and covered in mud:

Blogger Gift Exchange

I love this secret santa that Tracy at The Printable Pony hosts every year. I love putting together fun gifts for fellow equestrians, just as much as I love what people come up with for me!

This year I got a gift from Rebecca at Diary of the Over Anxious Horse Owner. She did a great job!

And she wrapped everything beautifully!

Well, it's sideways but oh well

I got a awesome set of monogram stickers, as well as one with Maisie and Jetta's name on them. I just have to figure out what all I want to put them on! Also, a pair of adorable socks with llamas in ties which are just hilarious. I absolutely love this brand of socks and already have a fair number of them so these will go nicely with all the rest! And lastly, some horse treats that Jetta has already eaten a large proportion of.

Thank you so much for all the goodies! I love them!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from my little gang! And an update on baby:

Normally she hates selfies!

Age: 5 months
Height: 13 hands in front, 13.2 hands at the hip
Blanket: just moved up to the 60" setting on her baby blanket
Likes: giving kisses, bucking and leaping around, apples, chewing on things she shouldn't be
Dislikes: being told what to do (still), her scary new jollyball, selfies (though she's getting better, she usually pins her ears when I pull out my phone!)
Progress: much better about being blanketed - no longer thinks velcro is awful and is improving about letting me throw the blanket across her back
Next step: getting weaned!


Also, my poor horses. They are so tolerant!

All the Presents

I love Christmas, mostly because I love giving presents and I love spending time with my family and the little traditions that we have.

I'm super excited about the gifts I received, and since I participated in the Blogger Secret Santa, we'll start with those!

Carly was my Secret Santa and I love what she got me! I got a set of gray polos with a very pretty blue velcro pattern. I have always wanted to buy some polos in this style so I'm really excited for them! They're going to look awesome on Jetta. She also got me a couple things from Beka's metal smashing shop - a bracelet with a cute little turquoise horse shoe stamped into it and also a halter tag for Jetta's little nugget!

I absolutely love my presents, so thank you Carly!

Then my parents also got me some cute stuff for the baby... A scrapbook to put all of my baby pictures in, and a Breyer mare and foal. The mare looks pretty spot on for Jetta with a very similar blaze and one hind sock. The foal is (supposed to be) buckskin and they said we'll get it painted for however the foal's markings turn out! I thought that was such a thoughtful gift.

I also got my truck tent! I can't wait to try this out. I'm going to buy an air mattress for it and then it will be perfect.

My roommate got me a foal halter which is absolutely the cutest thing ever - it's so tiny. 

Then, the bf's mom outdid herself and bought me a Pella (the required brand and color for my vet school) palpation jacket! I'm so excited to use it, it's going to be awesome!

Of course I had to buy myself Jetta some presents as well. I ordered some Majick Equipe Color Elite XC boots in turquoise (obviously) as well as some aqua leather gloves. Can't wait until those get here!

All in all it was a great Christmas and I'm so thankful for my horse, friends, family and bloggers!

Happy Holidays and New Year from Jetta and myself!

Christmas List

I always really enjoy reading everyone else's Christmas wishlists, so I thought I'd add my own. I'm someone that always has a huge list of "I-wants" and this year is no different!

Tack

Le Mieux Windsor Halter - I just saw this gorgeous halter. It looks so neat and what do you know, it's in our colors. It'd only have to be for special occasions since I'm not sure how you'd clean it, but it's so neat!

Ogilvy custom baby pad - I can't decide if I want a navy base with turquoise binding and gray piping, or a gray base with navy binding and turquoise piping... But I think I need a dressage and a jumping one in my life.

Since we're going with saddle pads, I think I have a problem. I love these Le Mieux one's. I think I need a turquoise, emerald and plum one.

Majyk Equipe Color Elite X Country boots - as soon as these came out, I knew I needed them. In turquoise obviously. I've heard such great things about these boots and we are definitely in need of an upgrade.

Harry's Horse Dressage Boots - if it comes in turquoise, basically I have to have it. We already have some dressage boots, but I love the color of these ones!

Cambox Helmet Camera - I've been wanting a helmet camera for a really long time and this just seems like a great design!

Apparel

20x60 I need tee - I love this shirt!

G/FORE leather gloves - these gloves are gorgeous. They come in pretty much every color and look amazing, they would be so much fun to have for schooling in aqua!

Coolblast Medallion Shirt - I really enjoy this pattern. It's a bit out of my price range for a schooling sun shirt, but I'd love to give it a try!

Dubarry Glanmire boots - My Dubarry's have seen a lot and I love them but they are definitely starting to show their wear after a lot of hard use. I love this new design!

Miscellaneous


 Truck tent - this would make horse showing so much easier!

Portable water heater - It would be so nice to have hot water for bathing in the winter. I feel so bad using cold water so I try to avoid bathing, but sometimes it just has to be done! Stacey just got this one and gave it a great review so it's going on my list :)

Secret Santa

I think the blogger secret Santa is one of my favorite gift exchanges of the year! Thank you to Tracy for putting it on again!

I got my gift from Emily of Wilbur, Ellie and Emily. 

I love it! I got some adorable Christmas unicorn socks, some horse and human cookies and some Higher Standards leather soap. The horse cookies were even hand made and came in a cute mason jar with a pony on top (it survived the shipping!). The horses loved the cookies which came as a surprise since they don't typically like peppermints, but they were begging for more.

Cute socks!

All the goodies

Thank you so much Emily! I sent my gift off yesterday to my secret Santa so I hope they like it!

The Great Blanket Massacre

Oh horses. I was cleaning stalls yesterday when my brother, who was driving past the pasture, called to tell me that Misty's blanket was half on/half off of her. I sighed and walked down. Sure enough, she had broken both leg straps and had the blanket up around her neck.

She saw me walking down and walked up to greet me which I thought would make my job of fixing the blanket easier. Then Jetta took off at a gallop from behind Misty, which of course Misty has to follow....

Both horses galloped two laps around the pasture while I watched as Misty's blanket came completely off the back end of her. It's like watching a train wreck in horror... I was sure she was either a) going to catch the blanket on the fence or a tree and hurt herself, b) step on it at a full out gallop - which she did repeatedly - and break her leg, or c) trip and fall over it.

Finally she stepped on it in such a way that she got "stuck" and when I walked up both girls just stood there. Jetta with a totally innocent look on her face as if she didn't instigate this whole thing.

While originally the blanket had been salvageable before she started running, after, both leg straps and surcingle straps were broken and the entire neck region was shredded. Definitely beyond saving. Luckily I got her light weight blanket bag from being cleaned and repaired so I got to put that on. Just what I need to do right now, buy her a new blanket! I guess she wasn't satisfied with her Christmas present and thought she needed something better...

Help me?

Such a bad pony... Though I mostly blame Jetta on this one.

Speaking of Christmas, the girls got some hot bran mash for Christmas. I always make it for Christmas and Birthdays, it makes me feel good and the horses love it :) Well, at least Jetta does.

Misty actually rather liked it, but she didn't even finish it before turning to her hay, so I had to give her feed pan to Jetta who licked both bowls clean. Jetta LOVES her mash, she got excited when I let her in her stall and she could smell it on me.

apples

Wheat bran

some molasses

and combine!

"Hm, I guess this stuff is good"

"Omnomnom, this is the best stuff ever!"

Good Start

I don't know why, but I am having a FANTASTIC morning today. I'm just super happy, which is unusual. I guess it's a combination of:

• Sleeping more than 6 hours last night! 
• Getting all imminent homework projects/studying done last night so that I don't have to worry about them today. Feels good!
• Found a forgotten Almond Joy candy bar in my backpack during class. It was delicious. 
• I easily found a parking spot on campus this morning and didn't have to drive around looking for 20 minutes. 
• I get to have a 4 day weekend at home which = two days off of school work and riding my horses!
• Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I LOVE Thanksgiving food. My mom is an amazing cook. Can't wait!
• Took a final exam in one class today and I felt great about it.

There is still the chance that my amazing day will decline, but here's to hoping it won't :)

But really, there's so many things I'm thankful for!

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and also share two things:

First, Niamh had a bunch of tack stolen the other day. I can't even imagine... So if you could go to her blog, maybe see if you have anything she needs that you'd be willing to donate to her, or just offer support. The blogging community really is awesome for things like this.

Second, Tracy at Fly On Over is hosting a Blogger Gift Exchange! I'm so excited about this. I briefly thought about doing this myself, but decided that I was too unorganized to run it, so I was so happy to find that someone else had this awesome idea! I LOVE giving gifts, especially to horse people. So I'm really looking forward to that :) Everyone else should go join too, it will be so much fun!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has had a good Christmas.

My family always goes to see a movie and today was no different - we went to see War Horse. Not bad. I wouldn't count it as a great movie but I enjoyed it and any movie with a horse in it can't be that bad ;)

The ponies here at home got their bran mash as their present which they definitely enjoyed. Overall, a nice relaxing day with the family.

Racin' Reindeers and Other Xmas Related Things

Here is your video overload for the day:



Haha, cute. I feel like Katy would do something like this - "Run!! Run, run, ru... oh food. Nom, nom nom. Running!"



Can I just say that I want to do this? But maybe with a horse. Oh, wait, maybe a pony! Ooh, yes. See this is why I need a pony. So I could torture play fun games with them :)




Ahh, cute. I love Budweiser Clydesdale commercials.



Hope everyone has a great week!

Christmas Pony

I dressed Colton up and took pictures! He was so adorable throughout the whole process, wanting to sniff every object I pulled out to decorate him with.

I sent a picture into Eventing Nation - fingers crossed! I would love to win that vest :) Of course now that I've already sent in a picture, I feel like people probably went way more out than I did and I'm thinking, "Oh, I should have done that. Oh! Or maybe something like that! Ooh, I wish I had done something like that..." It's too late now though. We'll just have to see how I measure up to everyone else (if I make it on the website!)

And thank you to my dad who probably thinks I'm crazy but he still held the pony for me while I snapped photos :)


Here you go! My Christmas Pony:



This is the one I actually sent in.





Yep. Definitely thinking I should have gone more all out. But hey - he's still pretty darn cute! Promise you'll vote for me if I make it on Eventing Nation?

A Good Ride

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. My Christmas was a little crazy, but overall pretty good. I got several great presents that I love!

One of my gifts was a new bridle for Jetta. I have just the cheapy bridles that I paid $25 for and I hate them. They're stiff and uncomfortable and I just don't like them in general. This bridle is from Camelot and I really liked it's quality when I saw it in a tack store and now that it's home I love it even more. It has soft, thick leather, with very nice hardware. It came with rubber reins which felt great in my hands. What I didn't like was that it only came as a crank noseband with a flash, but I won't use it as such. It's kind of hard to find a nice dressage bridle without a crank I've noticed. They're out there, but there's more crank than "normal" nosebands. The plus for this bridle is that it has changeable colored padding - in bright blue, white and black!

It was pretty hard to fit on Jetta, and it's a full size, which is what size she normally wears, so I'm not sure if it's too big or too small, haha, it just depends on the area. The browband might be too small, but the noseband is slightly too large. I have officially decided that I hate crank nosebands (at least for lower level dressage, I have heard some convincing arguments about their use in the upper levels) not only because they forcibly close the horse's mouth, but also because it was sooo hard to get it to fit on her nose! Hmm. I'm going to ride in it once more so I can decide if I want to keep it or not, but overall I really like it. The rubber reins were great because they helped me keep a hold on the reins when she dives down on her forehand at the canter. Here she is unenthusiastically modeling it for me:

The noseband does look super chunky huh? Or I'm just used to the pencil thin nosebands because they looked great on Jazz, but silly on Jetta's mile long nose :)

I had a much better ride on Jetta this week. Our canter was much more relaxed and we had some great walk shoulder-ins again and one super nice leg yeild to the left. The right was a little sticky and our trot shoulder-ins weren't very pretty.

After we schooled in the new bridle I put on my hackamore because I wanted to see how she'd do. Jetta wasn't very happy cause she thought we were done, but she felt pretty nice in it.



Are we done yet?

 I was a little happier because I wasn't pulling on her mouth, but we lost a bit of our steering. I think I'll just ride her in it every so often and see if it improves. Otherwise, it'll just have to wait until I'm working with a horse that likes it better.

Overall, today felt very productive and I can't wait to head back to school so I can start riding daily again!

Christmas Gift Ideas

What should you get for your horsey significant other? There are a lot of things out there that you can get for horse people, where should you even start? Here are my top picks:

Cute brushes, comes in pink and blue,
complete sets or individual pieces.

Cute! I've never smelt the perfume, but it's horsey
themed so it has to be good!

A cute way to make bran mash quick and easy.
The perfect holiday treat.

LOVE these hay bags. They come in a bunch of different
prints and colors. They're useful and cute!

These magnets are very pretty and appropriately
horse-themed. They come in this pattern, as well as
hunter/jumper and dressage.

These picture frames are very elegant. You can
customize it with a name plate with the horse's and/or rider's name.

 These are just a few things that might make a good gift. Both Dover Saddlery and SmartPak have great gift ideas. Visit Behind the Bit for what not to get! This is funny :)