“Be gentle in what you do, and firm in how you do it” Buck Brannaman

So, weekend recap. I normally like doing these on Tuesday, because sometimes Mondays are just.too.damn.difficult to wrap my poor brain around, let alone blog coherently on the same day…

Friday night, I rushed after work to set up for the craft fair at my friend’s place. Made it home around 6 p.m., slapped makeup and a dress on, and we cabbed to my husband’s work Xmas party. We had a great time! Drinks, casino games for charity, food, dancing…What’s not to like! I had been feeling tired, generally put-upon and draggy but just felt totally livened up!

Fancy Christmas party!

We got home around 1 a.m. and then the next morning up bright and early for the craft sale.

I was tired, no doubt. It was kind of a long day, but I sold all of my products with three exceptions: 1 lip scrub and 2 foot scrubs. Not too shabby!! I’m not sure if I will do it again, I liked making them more than selling them, to be honest.

Craft sale- bath/body

No Oats riding on Saturday, as I was at the craft sale for the whole day!

Sunday I went riding and Oats was in rare form…Excited to go down to the ring, squealing a bit and kind of jumping around on the way down. Part of my brain was like hmm…Should I have been longing him before I ride, as he’s had two days off?

Anyways, he settled down fine in the ring, with only a few head-tossing moments when Donato was thundering behind us in the canter (large horses cantering with us is a FIRECRACKER moment for Oats, and he generally starts losing his shit when that happens) so I pulled him back down to trot to prevent any major bucking or leaping sprees.

He was pretty good though, otherwise. We worked on straightness at the canter on the diagonal over a pole, and then trotted a small vertical (funny, we first trotted to it and he slammed on the brakes, he -and I- had gotten distracted by someone walking past the indoor arena waving a blue jacket!) But we pulled it together, and re-approached from the right facing away from the open side of the indoor and did it twice, successfully.

He was so tired after though, I was surprised my little Oats was huffing and puffing. To think of it, I was sweaty and out of breath too! hah.

We are apparently in the middle of a tropical storm right now, so I expect tonight’s lesson might not go…smoothly…But we shall see!

What you imagine, you create

Weekend update- rode Oats on Saturday and he was SO BLAH! UGH.

Yummy cookies!

Just…not rude or anything scary or dangerous, just ‘blah’ and completely phoning in his ride. I was bummed, because he was literally ‘sparkling’ with energy Tues/Wed, and I felt his energy decline in my lesson on Thurs- though he was still cooperative, and then Saturday? He just felt like, ‘yeah yeah yeah whatever’ and that’s how my ride went. Fell over a few crossrails because he couldn’t be bothered to pick up his feet. Blah.

Maybe Oats does best when he gets to spend 12 hours at a horseshow on the weekend? Because it seemed to *really* liven him up for some of the week! Hm…

Thursday was a good lesson- not without it’s bobbles- me forgetting to ride to one x-rail and us kind of landing in the middle of it, me trying to push him through a short gymnastic at the canter and bailing out halfway through, him having a coughing attack in the middle of our course…But you know what, it actually rode pretty well after our ‘bobbles’ and I felt pretty fine about it.

So, after his VERY unenthusiastic ride on Saturday, I decided that I would *gasp* take him out of the arena on Sunday and attempt some weenie trail riding. I mostly hate trail riding, it scares the bejesus out of me. I have had MANY bad experiences, and the roads around the barn are so so so busy- motorcycles, buses, big trucks, tons of cars, bike races, dogs, kids, etc etc etc. NOT relaxing.

Well, the good news is that we didn’t quite make it to the road, hahah – we rode past the ‘scary barn of terror’ that Oats was petrified of (wind chimes, flag flapping and going nuts, creaking doors, farm equipment?!!!) and made it like halfway…And then he refused to go forward, and started thinking about rearing, so I made an executive decision and hopped off, led him past it- with 1 big spook! And got back on…And had to repeat the ‘get off, lead past, get back on’ procedure a few times.

We made it to the end of the road, and then Oats didn’t want to go home! He tried to charge off and take me to the road, which is NOT where I was planning. So, hopped off, led him back, hopped back on and managed to ride safely back to the arena. The girls were in the outdoor stomping on ice that had frozen in the puddles, so Oats and I joined it and stomped some ice too! Me on his back, and him enjoying himself, haha.

So, we tried. That was that!

It was still incredibly nerve-wracking. UGH.

And what else did I get up to? Some cookie making & decorating, and preparing my items for the craft sale a friend is having this weekend (at her house). Check it out! I’m looking forward to it, I have bath/body items that I like making for fun, so I figured why not see if I can sell any?

Craft sale goodies- nice enough to eat!

Bath & Body- Crafty time~

Not only do I love riding, like running and being active, but I love crafts. Normally my crafts involve glue guns but I have been maturing in my skills…

So, earlier in the season I experimented with lip balms. I made peppermint ones and they were a success!

Now I’m combining my lip balm skills and adding in a lip scrub, so now people (friends, family, loved ones) can not only have a nice pepperminty lip balm but also a smoothing scrub to start things off!

Bubblegum lip scrubs and lip balms

This makes great little gifty things for Christmas.

I call my lip scrubs ‘Bubblegum’ lip scrubs and dyed them pink!

It’s so easy:

• I used 1/2 cup white sugar,
• 1 drop pink food dye,
• 1 tsp vanilla (white),
• 1 tbsp coconut oil, and
• 1 tsp cocoa butter (melted).

Mix the whole shebang together, add your pink food dye, and voila! Bubblegum lip scrub. Parcel it out into cute little containers. I used jam jars, with the labels removed and the lids spray-painted blue. Just boil them first!

Gifts

This also feels super nice on your hands, if you want to make a bigger batch to use as a really nice gelato-type of hand scrub.

Next up- I am going to try my hand at making a peppermint foot scrub with salts. Should be good!