1000 VIEWS!!!!!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Today I hit 1000 views on this blog! That is incredible! I've only been public for a little over 3 months!

THANK YOU!

In celebration of this special event, I am hosting a giveaway! I will be giving a set of three (3) Traditional Scale Hay Bags to one (1) lucky winner!

The hay bags are handmade, pattern by Desktop Stables, colors chosen by me, and sewn (that's right, the seams are stitched, not glued!) by a dear family member, who is known for her excellent needlework (name withheld as she is not interested in receiving requests for custom orders).

The set comes with one (1) black and white polka-dot bag, one (1) green swirly bag, and one (1) black glitter holly bag.

All bags are equipped with three (3) jump rings for easy hanging. They do not come with a hanging strap. Hanging straps are easy to diy, and are best left for the winner to design, as one style does not usually fit every stall. I use a loop style, a friend of mine uses a hook, I know someone who just glues them up, etc.

They do not come with hay. You can make your own hay in several ways. I use the hay I buy to feed my guinea pig. You can get a small-ish bale of timothy at Walmart or similar store for around $5. This will provide you with enough hay to "feed" several herds of model horses. You can also clip some grass from your yard and dry it, or use some very finely shredded green/yellow paper. 😉

Entries close after one week. The official closing time is midnight (EST) on December 7, 2022. Contest is only open to US residents, excluding AK & HI (AK, HI, and international friends, keep reading! There is something special for you too!). If you miss the deadline by like 30 minutes, I'll still count it. Remember this is supposed to be fun, not stressful! I will post the winner within two (2) days.

To enter, simply comment on any post posted between November 30, 2022 and December 7, 2022 (that includes this one!). If you don't have a Google account, don't worry! Just comment anonymously, and tack your handle down in the comment.

You can enter once per post. If you make two comments on the same post, you will only get one entry for that post. You can make a comment on each and every post posted during the aforementioned time period. 😊

I will use whatever name you give yourself in the comment in the winner announcement post. The winner will have 48hrs to contact me via email with their full name and US mailing address. I will then package up the hay bags with a Christmas card and ship them off to their new owner! If the winner does not email within 48hrs, a new winner will be chosen.

I will be using Random Name Picker to ensure fairness. I will take plenty of screenshots to accompany the winner post. Feel free to browse around the website, it's pretty great! This is the same website that HorsieMama uses for her giveaways.

For my international viewers:

I tried really hard this week to get an at-home printable designed for you, but I did not get it finished and had nothing but problems, so I temporarily abandoned that plan for today, and made something else. I designed a custom set of bingo cards for you! These are model horse themed, and you can play online or print them. To play online, you can send them to your partner and they can shuffle the cards up by going to the "HELP" tab at the top. There is a dropdown. There are 30 card variations, so you can play with loads of friends. You can only cover the squares if you have a model/item in your collection that matches the square. Hopefully you can translate them to your language, but I'm not sure.

The bingo cards are not a drawing and are free to everyone, international or US based. I will continue working on the at-home printable (it is for mini equine coloring and painting books) but I have no promises on whether or not I can get it working. I'm not very good at that sort of thing! 😅

Here is the link to the base bingo card. Remember, this is just the base and you can get up to 30 different variations by going to that handy little "HELP" button.

Once again, THANK YOU for helping me get here!

Final Countdown. . .

We are ten views away from 1000! Can you get me there? Link your friends and family over, and show the world what you are reading! Link this blog to your social media sites!

Psssst. . . there's going to be something tremendously fun when we hit 1000! Let's make it tonight so we can celebrate BIG tomorrow!! 

Ashton!

 I finally got my Ashton! You may remember the last time I ordered him, yeah, it was a disaster. My TSC didn't have him in again until a couple weeks ago, and I finally went out there today. I ended up bringing him home, even though he does have a couple little flaws. I was worried I'd never get another chance! I'm very happy with him. :) He has nice dappling, and his shading is really good. I took a photo of his left side, but it was blurry, so I will have to retake it later this week.

I am showing him as an Australian Stock Horse. You can see his OMHPS profile here: SDS Sugar Daddy - OMHPS :)

SDS Sugar Daddy, Barn Name of Ransom, Australian Stock Horse Gelding.

Updates and Light Housekeeping

Hey there all! Happy small business Saturday. I had a nice Thanksgiving post lined up, but I realized too late that I had made some mistake and it was no longer in my blogger account. I must have deleted it on mistake. So, happy late Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a fantastically fat day.

I have the basecoat on my SM CM, but I don't have any photos right now. I'll be sure to get some before I move onto shading so that you can see her. I'm playing around with some gold tones at the moment.

The Merry and Bright BB really tempted me this year, but I reined myself back in. I only loved the Django (although the Corbin's pattern is gorgeous!). I would have gotten one if Django wasn't the most popular. The odds of trading for him is slim to none. It did make me scratch my head, though, as to why they used Mirado AGAIN after him just being in the Halloween BB. I've been looking forward to Cassidy's next appearance, but I guess not yet. She doesn't really fit the Driving Forward theme, so I doubt we will see her in the SM line-up, unless they use her as a LE.

Chadwick was not a temptation for me. I don't collect glossies (says I, after announcing my love for the aforementioned glossy deco Django) and I dislike his weird cheesy palomino color. He'll probably look waaaayy better irl, but I didn't feel the need to risk it. I like the mold though, I have Winx on it.

Last bit of news. We are approaching 1000 views, and I am planning something fun! I will be saving the big bash for the one year anniversary (public publish anniversary, not private creation anniv.), but I think that you will all really enjoy what is coming!

You all are truly awesome. Just look at what you've helped me accomplish! These are screenshots taken from my Blogger Stats Dashboard at 4:09pm on November 26, 2022. They demonstrate the quantity and statistics on the view averages.

This is the list of countries that have visited my blog.

These are the devices that have logged on.

These are the browsers.

The list of referring URLs.

136 blog views so far in the month of November.

934 blog hits in just about 3 months!

Thank you. Thank you for being a part of my dream. Thank you for being who you are. You are the best.  ╰(*°▽°*)╯

SM Standing Stock Horse Custom: The Birth

As I mentioned in my last post, it's winter. Dead cold, white and slushy, icy and frozen, winter. A couple days ago, I was at my desk, and looking for a project to inspire me. I thought about polymer clay, I thought about needle-felting, etc. I finally settled on a SM body I had laying on my desk.

Rough shape, huh? Yeah. She used to be a whiteware paint and play Boomerang before someone used her as a test piece, and well, let's just say she'd had a rough go of it. I cleaned her up and sanded her, and took her off to the "priming chamber" AKA an old Bath & Bodyworks box in my basement.

The first coat of primer did wonders. I don't have a photo of the second coat.

After drying, she sat on the toolbench all of this morning, getting a little more air circulation.

Now she's upstairs, sitting on my laptop while I am typing. She's ready for her basecoat! I am planning on her being a flaxen chestnut overo, but she may decide otherwise. ;) They are often very opinionated! I will be chronicling her journey along the blog. I plan on taking her slowly, enjoying the process, and taking loads more time than I need. I want her to be a fun time filler, not a stress based deadline.

Winter Has Come

And with winter comes the snow. My town was hit with a snowstorm last night, and it is to be continuing all day, and well into tonight. Here are some photos of the current conditions.

This is the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended) for where I live. It is not uncommon to see -15F to -20F degrees in January. We get large snow drifts that close up front doors and bury our mailboxes frequently. 

There are two sets of photos, one from two days ago, and one from today. The first set is from two days ago, when we got a light dusting. ⬇

It is not at all uncommon for me to look out my back window and see a herd of 20-40 white-tailed deer standing out there. This is one of the newer herd members, I believe she joined the herd a couple months ago.

These photos are from today. ⬇

This image was taken prior to two more flurries, so the snow is deeper now.

This is a spring onion planter, that now looks more like an abominable snowman/porcupine mix.

Even my pets are all snuggled up! This is Dexter, my 14yr old Tuxedo DSH.

Rosy, my 2yr old Black DSH.

And everybody knows Blanche, my 3yr old Broken Lemon Agouti American Guinea Pig. She is peaking out of her cozy hidey-hole box. I didn't have a veggie snack for her, so she didn't trouble herself with fully emerging.

On a model horsey note, I have seen that the stock images for Giorgio, Poppy and Olly, and Kit have surfaced, so I will be updating the JAH photos post with those ASAP. Thank you!

2022 JAH Photos!

My JAH arrived in the mail yesterday! It is chock-full of good stuff. I took photos, they are not super-nice in quality, but they will do. I will make an attempt at re-taking them this afternoon, because morning light is so bad.

Nothing surprising here on the CC page.

I had heard rumors of a black Croi, but to my knowledge, there was no photographic proof. Now we have it!

The Bay and Pal are glossy, and I think the grey are too, but I am not 100% on that.

I like that centerpiece!

The Million Dollar Question: Leak or Test?

So I got my "Winter" Catalog from Breyer yesterday. The winter one differs from the Holiday one slightly, mainly in the cover picture (Holiday has Snowbird, Winter has Adamek). I was casually flipping through the pages until I hit page 55. Can you tell what caught my eye?

Sorry, photo of a photo, so it's quite grainy!

Two new classics!!! I don't collect 1:12 scale anymore, but I've been drooling after a bay Malik for awhile now. If this is going to be released next year, count me in!! I am dying for him! I really hope he's not a test, but he still could be. I like the ASB as well, I would consider getting him too to go beside Zephyr, my 70th Anniv. Saddlebred in Traditional scale.

If anyone finds anymore information, please let me know!