Thankful Thursday

A heartfelt thank you to everyone here on my blog and on Facebook who sent me birthday wishes yesterday-I was smilin' all day!
My sister came to town and went to Mass with me, then was kind enough to go to Tim Hortons and bring me tea and a muffin, and surprised me with flowers and birthday cupcakes for both of us; her birthday is tomorrow.

Thanks, Georgia!

Ted had flowers delivered to me at work, which floored me, I was definitely not expecting that! There were also a couple of bearpaw chocolates attached.(nomnom!)

Thanks, Ted!

I love the vase set-up, I will be using them this summer for my garden flowers.

When I got home from work, There was another bouquet of flowers, this time from my daughter and her husband; lovely white roses.And chocolates! (more nomnom!)

Thanks, Jessi and Scot!

 With the internet wishes and phone calls, and all the lovely flowers, I had a most wonderful day, topped off by Ted taking me out for supper. I love being spoiled.... at least, once a year!

Look at all the lovely colors- so refreshing in the middle of winter!

Wordless Wednesday

Here it comes...

Here comes winter.... at least, it looks like it. We'll see how much white stuff this system brings.

Yesterday:

Same view this afternoon:

Looking west:

Looking east:

and same view10 minutes later:

The storms seem to roll along the mountains here, and often don't dump any moisture out here in the middle of the flats where we live. I checked my archives for this time last year, and although we had a little more snow, the weather was similar- alternating between rain, snow, warm, cold, ice, mud.... very different from the January weather I remember as a kid, and even 30 years ago. (I grew up not too far from here, about an hour's drive.)

Ted and I hauled a load of wood on Saturday, we wanted to take advantage of the weather to get up the mountain road before the storms hit and make the roads impassable.

We got a nice load of tamarack (larch); my favorite wood as it's so easy to split. The branches are small and as the trees get taller they tend to not have many branches on the bottoms, therefore no big knots at the branch bases, so it makes for easy splitting. Burns hot, too. 

Ted is busy fabricating a hitch for the truck in the above photo; it's a 1976 Chev 3/4 ton 4X4 and it is going to be my horse hauling truck. He had to put a deck on it as the one that came with it was rusty and ugly.The new deck is quite high, so he has had to design and fabricate a complete system to drop the hitch low enough that the horse trailer will ride level.

Salvaging some steel off the old deck

He's a talented man, my Ted. I'm baking him a cake for when he comes in out of the cold. I'm not as talented as he is, but I can bake. 

Middle of January

Yesterday- the ides of January- was an absolutely gorgeous day and certainly did not feel like the middle of winter. Didn't look like it either.



For all you southerners, this is particularly balmy weather for this time of year in Canada!


When I went out to do my afternoon chores, I had an entourage. The cats followed me around, and the dogs kept bringing the ball and dropping it at my feet with that pleading look that border collies have down to a fine art.

The cats were in fine form, posing and playing.

We are expecting cooler temperatures and some snow, probably on Thursday. But nothing like they are getting in Alberta.

I love living here.

Sunday Stills

Corners- they are everywhere, and are the subject of today's challenge.

I have always admired the artistry of dove-tailed corners, like on this old Kodak tank box my husband recently acquired.

This corner is on a church window that I will be restoring; these are the windows from 1906 that were in the original Catholic church here.

Strong light puts some interest in the corner of the shop that would be otherwise uninteresting.

The best corner of all, the corner of Beamer's eye......

A gorgeous day

Today was one of those days that just gets your heart singing.  A gorgeous sunny day in the middle of winter, the morning dawning with a clear blue sky and the moon in all it's waning glory.

Beamer was hanging out in the top corner of his pen, all relaxed.

When I got home from work I peeled off his blanket and turned him out, then spent about half an hour playing with him. He was almost too relaxed to play, but we did have a little fun. We played follow the leader, where I walked and he followed, no matter which way I went.

Of course, Reba had to follow too; she thinks the horses are her personal wards and she has to keep track of everything they do.
Then we had our little dance,

 and after much coaxing I got him to show me his belly and toes.

(Yes, he does need his feet trimmed! Next week!)

But he was much more content to just soak up the sun.

There is supposed to be snow in the forecast but so far, the sky is still clear, just a little cloud coming up from Idaho. We could use some snow, or there will be problems this year- unless we get a lot of rain. Drought, forest fires, and low water tables are all issues of concern when the snow pack in the mountains isn't deep enough, and as you can see from these photos, there is hardly any snow in the mountains here, and none down on the flats where we live.

Spoiled

Since Merle spends a lot of time in the shop with Ted, and is pretty good at being underfoot, Ted designed a way to get him out of the way. Merle likes to keep an eye on things, so the idea was to get him up out of harms way to a little higher elevation, and when my husband designs something, he does a really good job.
He built a ramp

complete with a chrome siderail, that leads to a little cubby with Merle's name on it.

Just perfect for little Merle legs!

He quite likes his new little kingdom.

And he doesn't share.

Ted showed me all the things Merle has packed into his lair  mancave - things like electrical wire bits, tubing, pencils, you know, all those boy toys!

Wordless Wednesday

From beauty to blustery

This was one of those mornings that just makes your heart sing, warm and still, and with beautiful clouds hugging the contours of the mountains.

I put Beamer out in his paddock, and felt it would be a good day for him to romp around without his blanket on.

By the time I got home from work, about 5 hours later, the north wind had kicked in and the first thing I did- before I even parked the car!- was to put Beamer's blanket back on. Poor boy! He seemed quite relieved to get some relief from the wind. By evening chore time, right around sunset, the mares were performing- and that always means a photo op around here. It was miss Gussie who was putting on the show.

She didn't succeed in getting the others riled up though, much to her disgust.

"humpff! Spoilsports!"

Since the others wouldn't play, she challenged herself by deliberately walking across a patch of ice.

Soooo, all you astute horse people out there, here is a question for you. Is Gussie pregnant? Here is a photo of Coyote Belle taken today: (let's just call her Coyote Belly!)

and here is a profile of Gussie today:

Keep in mind that Gussie is a much bigger mare, and that Coyote Belle was bred 3 weeks earlier than Gussie and has had a foal every year for 3 years in a row. Gussie was last bred 3 years ago. To me, she looks open. Which isn't a bad thing as it means that I would have an extra riding horse this year. But I was so looking forward to two foals!

Sunday Stills

This week's challenge was light painting, and I really had a blast with this one! I set my camera for the night setting, and made sure the flash was off. First I tried candles as my light source.

This one was my favorite of the candle ones. Next, I plugged in my Christmas lights outside- they are up all year round.

This was getting to be fun! So then I focused on the distant lights of town, zooming in on them.

The yard light..

All of the above photos, I moved the camera in patterns. So then I tried using a flashlight, moving the light instead of the camera.

Thanks for the challenge Linda, this one was really fun!

New Year plans

For the last week, I've been battling a particularly nasty chest cold- you know, the kind that starts out feeling like your lungs are getting heavy and filling up, but no other signs, and then days of trying to cough it up.... bleah! On the bright side I now have abs of steel from clenching them during cough spasms. It will be a while til I'm back to normal. This really put a damper on my plans for riding; I was planning on riding both Beamer and Chickory on the last day of 11 and the first day of 12, but spent those days curled up on the couch with a wad of tissue. So sadly, the equines have led a really boring existence for the last week or so. Beamer did get saddled up on Boxing Day so that the wife of the fellow who did my header shot could ride- her second time on a horse. She couldn't stop smiling! Her husband took lots of photos which I hope to get a couple of to share here. After we rode I put Beamer in  the round pen to play while Larry snapped more photos. Can't wait to see them! He said he'd do me another collage. 

The snow in the photo is all we have- less than an inch, it sure has been a mild winter so far. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and the temperatures plummet, but mild weather is in the forecast for a while yet. I'm okay with that. 

I should have the hitch on my truck soon and be able to start hauling to the indoor arena, which means little Miss Chickory will be entering the serious part of her education. One of the things on my must-do list is getting the equine dentist out this spring to do all the horses again; that should run about $700 to get them all done. Sigh. Rio will get branded, once he is sedated to get his wolf teeth out. 

I now have a building to set up as an art studio; Ted's former shop is now mine since he has moved his set-up into the larger shop . I need to get a window framed in, and put in my mom's old wood stove for heat, and build a drawing desk. It will probably be spring before all that gets done as Ted has a lot of projects on the go.  I'm hoping to make enough money doing artwork to pay for my horse habit! 

That isn't a lot of goals but it sure should keep me busy this year. 

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Stills

The challenge to ring in the new year is to post our favorite photo of 2011 and to tell our photography goals. I had a lot of trouble picking my favorite photo. What makes a photo good? To me, it's the one that gives you either the wow factor, or has a strong sentiment attached to it. Since you all have seen my horse photos, I'm going with sentiment on this one- every picture tells a story, and there is a story attached to this one- you'll have to go over to Own A Morgan & QH and click on the label "story"

It isn't perfect, but it shows the love between Janice and her 34 year old horse, Tex.
My goal  is to improve the technical aspect of my photos, which Sunday Stills has really helped with, but I have so much more to learn.