The First Monthly PhoenixDown Farm Give Away!!!

First, do not forget to check out my post about the Ask Pony weekly post. Send me questions, my friends, I need them!! They can even just be silly or funny if you want, I am fine with that. Hehe.

Link to post about "Ask Pony":

"Ask Pony!!!"


Now onto the good stuff. This month's give away:


This month I am giving away one of my hand crafted gourd art projects. This one is a tattoo art inspired "Catch All". I have one similar in my front room that I toss odds and ends into that I use often but don't want rolling around on the counter. Like my keys, wallet, thimble, seam ripper and a few packages of shoe laces. It might also work nicely to keep track of your jewelry that you wear often on the rare occasion that you take it off.

This is the actual gourd in question:







This was made from a medium sized bottle or birdhouse gourd using leather dye, a wood burner, Prisma Colour Coloured Pencils, acrylic paint and paste wax. This is made to sit on the counter, not hang on the wall.


IMPORTANT INFO!!!!

HOW TO ENTER: To enter you simply need to reply to this post! You can enter any time between now and the last day of the month. On the first day of next month I will post the name of the winner.


WHAT TO DO IF YOU WIN: You will need to email me your address to ponysmonthlygiveaway@hotmail.com. I will ask you a question in response to your email and you will answer it on this post with the same ID you entered the contest on to make sure I am mailing it out to the right person! Does that make sense? If not feel free to ask for clarification. It must be claimed within 30 days of the winner being announced or it will come up for give away again.


HOW I WILL CHOSE THE WINNER: This will change from month to month. This month I will count all of the entries, I will make cards with numbers on them from 1 to the last number of entries. I will then randomly draw one and then count the replies to that post and who ever made it will be the winner. You can enter as many times as you like, but try to say something worth reading in each one, so I can be entertained.

OK, that is it, good luck everyone!

It's been a busy week, my friends.

My husband managed to get some vacation and things have been a bit nutty around here. It has postponed my first give away by a bit, but I will posting it tomorrow and trying to spread the word about it so I get a lot of entries.

Our big project this week was the Front Room. This was a scary place full of boxes of stuff we had stacked in there when we moved back then done our best to avoid even thinking about. Shockingly Tsu got inspired to get it cleaned up. Several days and a massive mount of frustration later it is almost done.

The biggest frustration was trying to get boxes. The old boxes were in foul shape and we needed to sort and repack some things. I called around, found a place I could get boxes, "Come just after noon and we will have some!" they said. "We should have plenty for you!" they said.

Gr.

We get there at about 12:15, no boxes. "Oh, someone took them all about an hour ago."

I said, "Dang it, I knew I should have given you my name so you could save them for me." and she glared at me, with a cigarette dangling between her lips (I thought it was against the law for people to be smoking in the storeroom of a grocers right next to the food prep area, but maybe I am wrong?) and said, "Well, we don;t do that anyway, we have too many people who want them to save them for people."

You know, that is FINE, I don't have a problem with that. But why didn't you tell me that when I called to ask? I mean seriously? I made special 20 minute trip out JUST to get these boxes and what did I get? THREE whole banana boxes. Big whoop.

This happens every time I need boxes. You would think I would be desensitized to it by now but no such luck. lol. It still yanks my chain. They told me to come back the next day but the next day we were busy and couldn't make it. But I still need boxes so I may just drive up there every few days at about 11 am and see if they have any. Obviously calling ahead does nothing to help. Maybe I should have Tsu swing by on his way home from work and check. Not sure he would, though. Oh well, I guess we shall see. To do the barn and Tiff's bedroom I am going to need a LOT more boxes than I have.


On the bright side, the front room is almost done. If I could find a hide-a-bed love seat it would be perfect. I have this dream of chilling on the love seat in there in front of the fire place drinking hot coffee and writing on my blog. Hehe.

We also finally got up our divider between the kitchen and the front room so that the cats can't use the breakfast bar area as a shorter path to their litter boxes. EW! That has been grossing me out SO bad since we moved back. We put up lattice so I can still see in there and see what Tiff is doing on line but the cats can't get through and it keeps them from spending time on the counters (which drives me absolutely INSANE).

It's great, Tsu is actually sounding genuinely motivated to get things fixed up around here that have needed done since we moved back. I think the ratty condition of things around here is finally getting to him (YAY!) enough to inspire him to work on it.

A horse of a different colour.

Like most people who love horses I have a favorite colour of horse. I have a long list of colours I like, in order. And like most people who love horses I also have colours I don't much care for.

The good thing about my favorite colour is that it is easily one of the single most common colours for a horse ON THE PLANET. The bad thing is... I can't ever seem to GET ONE!!!! And what colour DO I get? One of my absolute least favorite colours.

Now don't get me wrong, I think "The Wrong Colour" is lovely. A lot of people like it, and I do think it is pretty. I just don't really find it appealing and I have had so many ponies in that colour that I am really really sick of it. Yes, it is flashy, eye catching... down right beautiful. But I am done with it!

You see, my favorite horse colour is bay. Plain old boring bay. With or without white (a bay and white paint is pure pure bliss) but even a solid bay makes my heart skip a beat. The deep (or bright, since it can come in any wide range of shades) red of the body, the midnight black of the points and mane and tail... It's just beautiful to me. I love it. Beyond love it.

So what colour do I end up with instead? SILVER bay! There are people out there who seek out silver bay, and can not believe I am so sick of it. You see, silver bay is common in mini horses and ponies. It is genetically bay with a silver modifier. Which means that every part of the horse that would have been black is diluted down to some lighter colour.

Here is an example of a silver bay, my late Shetland sweetheart, Jamie, mowing the dog run:



and here is a picture of him and his mother, Lilly:



and HERE is a picture of Sparrow:



Are you seeing a theme here?

So.... you know I am working towards buying my dream horse. My dream horse is actually a black and white tobiano marked horse... but my back up plan if I absolutely can't get the money together to buy him is to find a Haflinger... and if that doesn't work out then to look into a grade draft type pony/small horse or a Standardbred. And guess what colour Haflingers are? Well genetically they are not silver bay, but they might as well be because visually they look just about the same.

To see what I mean check out this farm and their lovely Haflingers:

http://www.shadygrovehaflingers.com/

Maybe I should just invest in some hair dye, hehe.