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I know that a Texan complaining about winter is a lot like a Canadian complaining about summer, but man… we’re heat-acclimated… cold sucks. It sucks even more when it won’t stop raining.

Indoor and covered arenas aren’t that common in Texas, so when it gets really cold (which for us is 30’s) and wet (it’s never going to stop raining) we’re basically just grounded. I got to ride my horse two whole times last week. In the freezing cold and blistering wind, wearing pretty much every layer I own, and the second day was in drizzly sleet/rain. That was quite enough for both me and Henry I think. Of course, then it rained all weekend so now even though it’s warmed up a bit, it’s too slick and muddy to ride anyway. Whatever, I give up.

Luckily Friday’s mail day completely saved my otherwise epically grumpy mood. A package from PS of Sweden AND a package from Mango Bay! Plus on Thursday I had gotten my Aztec Diamond shipment from their awesome after Christmas 50% off sale, and Henry’s omeprazole. The PS package contained the blue Metallic Rock browband and a High Five breastplate, which I had to immediately run out to the barn and try on Henry. I’ll cover the details of the breastplate in a separate post once I get to play with it a little more.

So much fun stuff for me to sit inside and stare at lovingly – or in the case of the breastplate, hold up to my face and inhale deeply for a few minutes at a time for some leather aromatherapy. Take that, winter.

 

 

 

And guess what this beautiful bundle is? Since SO was home when it got delivered (not that I’m stalking UPS or anything) I immediately made him open it and send me a picture.

Ta-da!!!

The only semi-perk of no real barn time is that there’s plenty of gym time, so I’ve been able to stay on track with the fitness goal pretty well with swimming and spin class. I completed week 1 of 0 to 1650 and started week 2. I used this program a few years ago when I was triathlon training to increase my endurance… it worked great then and is working just as well now. Week 1 Day 1 was hard, but week 2 Day 1 was so easy I skipped some of the rest breaks. The improvement comes so quickly and easily with swimming, I wish riding was like that! Brandy and I braved the “Ice Storm” (there were tiny icicles on my deck furniture) Saturday morning to hit spin class with what is, so far, the only instructor we like. We’re basically stalking him at this point as he travels from gym to gym for classes. At the end of every class he makes sure to tell us to get some protein within the next 30 minutes, so Brandy and I went to brunch after class and this happened. That’s protein, right? My hot chocolate was worth every calorie.

Otherwise the weekend was a lot of hand grazing and hand walking and warm grain mashes for dinner for Henry. He really loves his dinner in mash form, and I really love sneaking in as much water as possible in what is a higher colic risk time. I get a “free” half bucket just from soaking his dinner. Luckily he’s a good drinker anyway but a little more never hurt.

This week looks very un-promising for me riding wise. Today everything is still really wet, and I start barn-sitting tomorrow so I won’t have time to go out to the barn again until Sunday. Luckily Brandy volunteered to be his adopted slavewoman mom for the week and throw him extra hay, give him his Omeprazole, and ride him if it ever dries out.

 

I’m off to a good start with personal goal #4 for 2015. Yesterday we figured out our itinerary for our Belgium/Paris trip in March and booked our flights. I never squeal with excitement about anything but I’m squealing myself senseless on the inside right now.

A couple days/nights in Paris, a day and a couple nights in Brussels, 3 days and 2 nights in Gesves. At least one tack shop trip planned, a few farm tours (Nabab de Reve, anyone?), and the sBs Selection Show. That’s basically as good as any horsey vacation can get, and even better to be doing it with a couple of good friends. Many eternal thanks to Rising Star Farm for the opportunity… it’s once in a lifetime. Of course, I really really hate flying so I might need a whole suitcase full of Xanax, but it’s worth it. Especially for the food, and I think my friend and fellow traveler Michelle agrees…

This is why we’re friends.

Looks like I’ll also be in Philadelphia at the end of January for the AETA trade show/market. My friend Megan, owner of Luxe EQ, asked me to come along to help scout new product lines and check out all the new products coming out from her current suppliers. I am very flattered that she trusts my opinion and thinks I have good enough taste to want to bring me along. Three days roaming around a giant room full of cool horse stuff? Um… yes. Yes times a million. It’s both extremely awesome and extremely dangerous, especially when you check out the companies that will be in attendance. I have a feeling I’m going to look a lot like this the entire time:

I’m sure I will take a few thousand pictures and find at least a couple dozen things that I NEED. Brace yourselves, blog land.

On a different note, thanks everyone for all the supportive comments and messages from yesterday’s post. Henry got a nice big serving of hay last night and both blankets, since we got a ridiculous cold front. He’s warm and toasty with plenty to munch on.

Henry also says thanks to auntie SprinklerBandit for selling his mom some new dressage boots. He loffs them. Well, I loff them, which means he’s required to love them too.

 

As you have probably already read, barn/blogger friend Brandy of Auf der Autobahn and I joined the gym in December and have been hitting spin class hot and heavy. I used to spin all the time but haven’t in a year or so, and as I get back into it I’m starting to remember all the fun experiences you only get by partaking in spin. And since it’s the beginning of January, aka Gym Season, I figured now is the time to publicly explore all that spin has to offer.

The people:

 

Or even worse, the instructor who thinks he’s in the Tour de France. “C’mon team, who wants that yellow jersey? Let’s go get it!”. You have got to be freaking kidding me right? “Hill climb! The Alps are beautiful!”. I’m sure they are. Unfortunately we’re in a tiny stinky room in a semi-decrepit old gym in the middle of Austin. And no I do not want to high five you after class, I’m never coming back here again because you’re obviously a complete nutjob.

We had a lady in last Saturday’s class who looked like she walked straight out of an 80’s Jazzercize video… short hair with the sweatband around her head pushing the hair up, big bright white sneakers and a super colorful top. I think she considered herself Queen of Spin, because she WOOHOO’d just about every two minutes. At 10:00am. On a Saturday. I spent the entire class daydreaming about choking her out with that damn sweatband.

 

 

The experience:

 

Right before your heart explodes, when you’re on death’s doorstep, motivational exercise quotes start flashing before your eyes in rapid succession.

 

 

 

This is also when you think, “I’m not sure which is stupider – me or spin class. What a bunch of idiots we all are…”

The aftermath:

First you go home and whine about it. Bonus points if you also whine on facebook.

But the fun really begins when you wake up the next day

 

 

and you’re not so steady on your feet.

But hey… you can burn 400-800 calories in an hour long spin class. So get your butt to spin and have a few more donuts, it’ll all equal out in the end. And if you eat them right before class you’ll probably puke them up anyway.

I wish my weekend recap was filled with reports of riding and lessons and horsey things. Unfortunately Texas has decided to participate in winter this year and it rained boatloads so I haven’t been on my horse since last Tuesday. I have given up.

On Friday I went out to handwalk and deworm and give Henry his monthly Pentosan shot. The dogs were thrilled to tag along but they were really the only ones happy to be out. I stood there and let Henry graze until my hands went totally numb, then went home.

I also bought some winter riding gloves, because if anything has become obvious to me in the past month, it’s that I’m woefully unprepared for any weather below 60 degrees. I just bought the cheapie $10 Ovation gloves, hoping they’ll work for as (relatively) little as I need them. Of course… if it doesn’t stop raining I’ll never use them and they’ll last forever!

Saturday was spin class (worst ever due to ridiculously annoying people – but that’s a story for another day) then a field trip also to be discussed later, then our barn holiday party. The party was great fun although we discovered that Auf der Autobahn can’t have tacky nice things, because within seconds of opening her ever-so-classy white elephant gift of a horsey wine bottle holder, she dropped him and broke his head off. Then his head was relocated to a slightly different position. Personally I think it was an improvement.

Sunday morning SO and I got up early to go to the junkyard! Weird, I know. But last week when I was leaving the barn I kinda sorta killed the left front wheel on my car…

And because it’s a car that a) isn’t made anymore b) has weird parts, I couldn’t find any place in town that had a new wheel that would work. We could buy one online and ship it, but that would be expensive and take a week, so we decided to try our luck at the junkyard. And whaddya know – they had ONE car just like mine, so for $50 we took home the wheel, which had a pretty decent tire on it, slapped it on my car, and voila. The junkyard is magical.

I took a couple of hours in the morning to watch some of the GM clinic online, which I still haven’t really completely organized my feelings about. In some ways I love him, in some ways I don’t, but the videos are an education in themselves, regardless of whether or not it’s all applicable to you and your sport.

Then I was off to check out the place I’ll be barnsitting several times in the coming months. Such a cute little property – totally my dream place! And it’s full of gorgeous Trakehners, including this studmuffin. Taking care of a big gorgeous black stallion and earning money for the Belgium trip at the same time… such a tough life I have. Plus kitties and adorable dogs and a mini!

I’m sure I’ll get many candids of him during my time there, but that’s next week. For this week, hopefully it’ll just stay dry enough to ride Henry. We’re supposed to go XC schooling and to an eventing derby this weekend, weather permitting. I’m not holding my breath…

Is winter over yet? Apparently Texas isn’t far enough south to escape this one.

First of all – a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to make a logo (or many logos) and send them in. There was a total of 42 different logos submitted! I never expected that kind of participation. I also never expected to really like so many of them… picking a winner was no easy task. As you may have read in some follow-up posts after the original contest announcement, due to the level of quality and participation I decided to offer prizes to the top two runners-up as well.

When I tasked y’all with the job of creating a logo, I didn’t give you much direction. Really that was because to be honest I had no idea what I wanted. As they started to roll in and I paged through them, the criteria that I really found myself putting forth were:

Is it pretty? Meaning – is it clean, are the colors (if any) ones that I like, if it’s a picture do I like the picture.

Is it COOL? Does it look like something I could have done myself or is it totally beyond me.

Is it original? Did I get several more logos in almost the exact same style. Was it personalized or was it just generic clipart.

Is it us? Do you look at it and immediately get a sense of Henry, or me, or things that I like.

Did it speak to me? Of course this just has a lot to do with individual preference. Some things I immediately loved and some things I was more meh about.

Is it easy to use? How well/cleanly would it embroider, how easily could the shape of it be worked into the blog, etc.

So without further ado (and in reverse order pageant style for maximum suspense):

Second Runner up: Karen M of Bay with Chrome. This one really struck a chord with me because it’s my very favorite picture of me and Henry. You had me from hello when you used this picture. And it almost looks like a stamp, which I thought was really cool too. Karen wins the Ogilvy baby pad from Luxe Eq.

 

First Runner-up: Britt G from Our House on a Hill. Looove the splish splash and the fact that she used my second favorite picture ever. It looks like an eventer and I know it’s us. Unfortunately the embroidery people were less enthused about the splashes. Still, Britt… you win a gift certificate for a Firefly custom bonnet up to an $80 value!

Grand Prize Winner: Rachel R, who is not a blogger but a reader! Rachel took one of Henry’s pictures, drew it in a cool swoopy outline, and added two of my favorite accessories. My pony + my favorite things? That’s a done deal. I also really liked the soft colors she chose, the simplicity of the logo matches my personal style and will embroider well, and it’ll be easy to incorporate into the blog. Rachel wins the Firefly logo baby pad, a Mango Bay belt, a Kastel sunshirt from Luxe Eq, and snap-on rein stops from PS of Sweden.

Winners, keep an eye on your email inbox over the next few days so I can get in touch with you about your prizes. Congratulations and Happy New Year!

To give you guys an idea of the enormity of this task, here are most of the other entries. Not quite all, because some of them only had small variations like text or shape, but you get the idea. Thanks again for making it such a great contest.