Month: November 2013

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Merry Christmas (from 2012)

Merry Christmas (from 2012)

Mr. Oats, myself, Gidget and Ian wish everyone a happy holiday from last year! I hope to take another fun photo this year just like this. Maybe some snow will make an appearance?

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Crafty crafts!

Had a lovely craft day on Friday with a colleague and her adorable black pug ‘Pearl’. Giget was a bit put out by the sudden appearance of Pearl, but no matter!

We made bath bombs in a variety of shapes (snowflakes, shells, leaf, small animals) in lavender scent (blue dye) and cucumber scent (green dye). It was a lot tougher than I remember. The salts kept cracking when I forced them out of the mold and we over-spritzed the mix to prevent this from happening–and then couldn’t get them out of the molds. I was hammering at them like crazy!

Haha, it was a lot easier when I made them years ago with my mom and sister. Oh well, we had some wine and dogs and a good time.

Then, Ian and I made up hot-chocolate mixes as gifts (something to eat instead of something to keep is the key to this Xmas!). I bought all my mixes and chips at Bulk Barn–love that place!

We did up a whole bunch of baggies of hot chocolate. Flavours included:

  • Silent Night Cider- cider mix with butterscotch chips
  • White Christmas Peppermint Hot Chocolate- peppermint hot chocolate with holiday coloured chips (red/white/green)
  • Feliz Navidad Aztec Spicy Hot Chocolate- spicy hot chocolate with greek yogurt chips

Yum yum yum!

I am also planning on making Christmas pretzels. 

Horse show #9- Not so triumphant

So, Sunday we trailered back up to QMS for a hunter show that marks the beginning of the Cowichan Winter Series. And how did it go? Well…

We warmed up pretty well, and then went into the indoor for a brief warm-up over the fences. Indoors is much tighter, twisty and the jumps come up a lot faster. We had a pretty ok warm-up, with some disunited canter and a bungled last jump in the line.

My courses were pretty easy, and I was feeling ok until…I went in for my course and got a refusal at the second fence–an oxer on the diagonal. They were pretty oxer-happy!

Picked up my canter and re-did it fine, then continued on course with 1 or two ugly fences. The next course went alright but it wasn’t fabulous. Then it was time for the equitation course, and I was freaking NAILING it! Until…I got the old ‘slam on the brakes and pop over from a standstill’ from Oats, and then we demolished the fence. And then proceeded to next diagonal oxer and performed the same awkward maneuver- and I jumped off, because I was SO not into having him leap over it from a standstill AGAIN.

WTF? So….What the heck?! Why do I fall off at horse shows? My show nerves clearly got the best of me, and all I could focus on was finishing the course. UGH. That means racing through it as fast as I possibly could.

We had entered the flat class and I was kind of not looking forward to it. To my ultimate surprise Oats was so good! He was honest, he was kind and he was so chilled out about it, I was shocked. This was the pony who had been excused from EVERY flat class I had entered him in due to bad behaviour- bucking, rearing, running backwards, everything.

He was a perfect gentleman. We placed third out of a fairly large field of 15 or so. So, our 9th show wasn’t really a triumph for jumping (man, I haven’t done that poorly at a show, ever?) but he really surprised me and was great for our flat class. Funny eh? The thing I’m better at (jumping) is kind of a disaster and the thing I’m afraid of (flat class) was perfect. How odd!

Ohh well, you win some, you lose some.