Between Christmas, the blogger gift exchange, a lucky giveaway win, gift card useage, and some offers from a couple of companies for product reviews, there have been many additions to my Horse Stuff and Riding Clothes collections. I love it.

I got home from barnsitting on Saturday to find a package in my mailbox from Renate at Grain Before Groceries, which I excitedly ripped open. I started with the card, in which she said that at first she dreaded getting my name because it seems like I have everything. I know exactly how she feels, I actually kinda feel sorry for anyone who gets me in a gift exchange. But she should not have worried because she did great… first up were these adorable note cards with a corgicorn on it, created by Alyssa.

And not just a corgicorn… a Quinniecorn. I might have to put a unicorn horn on Quinn for Halloween next year to recreate the majesty of the notecards. She also included a box of Stud Muffins that sings a horse related Christmas carol when you open it. I squealed and clapped my hands, SO rolled his eyes. I’m sure Henry is enjoying the treats as much as I enjoy the singing box.

Christmas itself was quite the boon too,  lots of new stuff to use and review. SO got me the Back on Track quick wraps…

and extra Samshield liner that I asked for, plus more socks, a fluffy butt corgi mug (corgi gifts were a theme this year)

and this shirt, which I specifically asked for because it’s fantastic and because he’s always delighted to buy anything non-horsey.

From family I got cash and gift cards. All the cash went to the bank but the gift cards got used to buy some things I’ve had on my “wish list”, including a new rain coat for riding (I opted for the Kerrits Free Rein Trench)

a stall guard with Trainer’s barn logo for shows from Deco Pony (to match the one Bobby and I bought for her)

and an uplanned purchase, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that when Asmar put their merino wool sweaters on super sale, two of them added up to almost exactly the amount of my remaining gift card. I’ve completely fallen in love with merino wool this year thanks to my Kastel shirts, so now I’ve got 4 merino sweaters to rotate through.

Bobby got me a couple of “inside joke” t-shirts, plus this awesome corgi Christmas sweatshirt that I wear pretty much constantly at home.

I was also lucky enough to win one of the Christmas giveaways that Horse Collaborative had – a pair of Signature Spurs. Pretty excited to have a fancy pair of roller ball spurs with my name on them (literally) headed my way. I want to keep my current ones for daily use and save these for shows, so I think I need some fancy spur straps for them – suggestions? I’m wavering back and forth between Mane Jane and Spur of the Moment.

I also got a couple pairs of breeches to review, including the red ones from Aztec Diamond. Sadly it seems as if ADE has changed their fit a bit – these are tighter in the hip and thigh than my others, which is not so good for my body type. They’re wearable but it’s a bit… unsavory. They’re still stupid comfortable though so I’m hoping either my ass will shrink or they will stretch a bit.

There were other things too which I’m sure I’m forgetting… OH… Hillary sent me these coloring book pages which are kind of my new favorite thing ever:

And wifey Beka sent me some awesome navy blue unicorn decals (and a baby Merlin!) for Black Betty, although I won’t put them on until I can get her painted and transformed into Betty White. I can’t waste these beautiful creatures.

I’m headed into the new year well-armed with awesome stuff.

This was pretty fun to look at last year so I figured I’d pull some numbers for this year too. This is my first full year of blogging, since I started in May 2014. Not surprising then that a lot of the numbers are significantly higher than last year’s.

Let’s start with most popular posts, based on number of unique views

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone who had internet access during October that the “when does control become abuse?” post is clocking in at just under 55,000 hits these days. What a huge headache that was, but I still feel it was a valid discussion and a lot of good came of it, so I don’t regret it. I’m also glad that the Black Friday sale post was well received because oh my god that consumed my life for a couple of days. I’m not sure if I’ll be tackling that again or not… I still haven’t recovered. Y’all sure do love sales.

The next question is: where are they all coming from?

Craziness.

My top referrers are the same this year as they were last year, proving that SprinklerBandit is still omnipotent.

Then there are the general numbers, blah blah blah…

And then we get to the nitty gritty: NUMBER OF GUEST POSTS FROM BOBBY?

Because I’ve been bugging him for months to write an AEC recap of his fabulous win for y’all, but I guess he doesn’t love you enough to put down his wine glass for 10 minutes to write one. What a jerk.

Yet what was the most watched video on the blog this year? Shitshow Episode Two, naturally.

 

Considering last year was the first year I’ve ever written down goals for myself, I’m probably really tempting fate by doing it two years in a row. But I’m a) ever-optimistic b) dumb, so here we go.

Qualify for a Novice 3-Day – I only need one more completion, so we should be good on this I would hope.

Compete in a N3D  – This is more tricky, but if I save all my pennies and the stars align just right, we’ll be in Flagstaff in July.

Place at N3D – This is taking it perhaps one step too far, but we’re gonna choose to dream big.

Move up to Training – We’ll see how the year goes, but if we’re ready, I want to do it. Granted, the tables at Training still make me want to pee myself a little. And by a little I mean a lot.

Make an actual 15m circle – Not oval. Not trapezoid. Not rectangle. CIRCLE. 15m. Not 18m. 15m. Why is 15m so much harder than 20m?

Go to at least one dressage-only show – And only whine about it a little bit. And try not to scare the DQ’s. Ah, forget that part, I don’t really care if I scare the DQ’s.

Keep Henry happy and healthy – You’re welcome for the $$$ fetlock juice, please do not require any more in the near future.

Get a 4-legged bun in the oven – pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaase?

Get the trailer 100% road-worthy – Poor Black Betty has been on hold for a while.

 

Be more fit – Seriously, for real this time. Henry would really appreciate it.

Be better about budgeting – If I want to go to Coconino, I have to start saving now. Arizona is far away and that shit is not cheap.

Buy a truck – Also another reason that better budgeting is required, since a truck has become necessary and my car is about to croak anyway.

Do a little better about balancing horse stuff with real life – I have a serious one track mind.

Get another tattoo – I’ve had that planned for a while.

Live boldly – We only get one go around, so might as well get the most out of it eh? I want to seize every opportunity I can and do things I haven’t done… especially the things I think I can’t. I want my default answer to be “why not?”.

Last year I ended my goals post with a quote that I thought summed up what I wanted for the coming year. I tried to do the same this year but couldn’t really come up with a good one. Instead I wandered over to my mom’s Pinterest account (which is still up, thank goodness) and found that she had made a quotes section of her own. I picked a few of my favorites from her favorites, because it only seems fitting to start the year with a little wisdom courtesy of her.

Some of you might remember how my fancy smurf-blue Optimum Time watch died literally AS I walked into the start box at Greenwood. It did this weird funky number thing before the display completely died so I just figured the battery was dead. While the timing of it’s demise couldn’t have been worse, I thought it was no big deal.

I got a new battery about a month ago and finally last weekend I remembered to ask the SO to change it for me. Because me plus electronics is a really really bad idea, just ask every laptop I’ve ever had. He whisks the watch off to the garage, where all of his fancy tools and gadgets are, and comes back 20 minutes later and says “I dunno what’s wrong, but it’s not the battery.”. Well crap.

A little investigation reveals that I’m 3 months past the end of the warranty period. I tried the oh so fancy re-boot that Optimum Time suggested (hold all the buttons down at the same time, which is really hard BTW, until something happens). Nothing ever happened, so it was suggested I send it in. To THE UK. Shipping both ways plus repair fees? Might as well buy a new watch.

I must confess, I really only used the stopwatch feature of my watch anyway. I didn’t particularly like the beeping at intervals thing or the counting down thing. I’d rather just check my time at a couple spots on course and focus more on learning my pace than on listening for beeps. For interval work I just keep an eye on the time. I’m just not fancy about watches I guess. Or I just don’t want to set all that crap up… that could be it too.

So I did what any other logical human would do – proceeded to whine about it to everyone. My options were:

• pay to ship it back and forth to the UK and have it repaired for who knows how much (minimum $50 at the best case scenario I would guess)
• buy a new watch ($90)
• wait until a used watch comes up for sale
• buy something less fancy (read: CHEAP, because the Great Coconino Penny Pinching has already begun) that will still work for me.

Luckily Hillary came to the rescue (or just wanted to stop the onslaught of whining… whichever) just before I added the cheap one to my cart on Amazon and offered to send me her old OT watch. Bloggers are the best. Bonus points – it’s yellow. Still fitting in with my color scheme.

Stupid Smurf watch… RIP. Your life was short and tragic, despite living in your original box and being used like 10 times. But welcome to the family, Sunny! May you fare better than Smurf.

 

Ok, he’s not fat, but… when your horse was way too thin last winter and is at a pretty perfect weight this winter, it turns out that none of his clothes fit so well anymore.

His quarter sheet

looks more like a cape.

His blue sheet, which I bought new for him last year, went from a little roomy

to a few inches of butt hanging out.

His green blanket (also bought new for him last year)

has suffered the same fate.

I had to let all of his belly straps out at least 8″ when I pulled his blankets out this season.

But considering he looked like this a year ago

and looks like this now

I am not complaining.

But he’s still not getting new clothes. Sorry kid.