Farm Hunting

Given our imminent move to Michigan, we started with our house search. The first one was a bust, hilariously so. My foot nearly went through the floor in the kitchen!

Today was much better. We visited the heart of fox, hound and horse country in Michigan; Metamora!

This house and surrounding acreage is perfect! Now I just need it to stay on the market until we are ready to buy. Frustrating!

Guest Blog Post!

I am a featured guest blogger over at author and scientist, Dan Koboldt's blog.
While I am amused at being described as a horse expert, is there any overlay between horse professional and educated horse enthusiast? Can that make me an expert? Either way, I'm marrying my love of both sci-fi and fantasy writing, and horses, and guest blogging about the use of horses in fiction!

I hope that other writers come away informed and educated, that was my main goal and I was incredibly honored that Dan asked me to contribute!

Craft Projects

One thing I suppose I should mention is the crafts that I've been doing that have a distinctively horse flavored theme. On a whim I decided to start making my own saddle pads. I love saddle pads, I'd have a ton of them if I could in all of the colors imaginable, but that's -expensive- to do a lot!  I have some very basic sewing skills and thought to myself, it can't be -that- hard to make them. 

Turns out, there are a few guides online, and I found one that wasn't re-purposing an old pad, but making one entirely from new material. I modified it for myself since I didn't have scrap fabric lying around the same way that the person writing the instructions did. 

This is the first pad that I made. The upper fabric is an upholstery style fabric in a pretty purple-gray. I added plum and silver trim and it looks NICE. It's got wool backing and cotton batting for extra cushion and should hold up nicely. Time will tell on that one, since I haven't washed it...

This is the second pad I made. It was a gift for my friend Cortney who has been looking for hot-pink accessories for her bay Arabian mare, Amira. Everything she had found was pony size or had zebra stripes. I found some nice flannel and fleece and made her a pad with black trim and pink and black ribbon. She LOVED it, which made me feel great! I had many less mistakes on this one than on the first!

I've got a third pad started that I tried a different quilting pattern on. I love the fabric on it! I'm worried, though, that fabric won't hold up to use, but again, we'll see. This fabric was a definite impulse purchase, but it's lovely! This one is incomplete. I've just done the quilting and attached the two sides together. I'm holding off on finishing this one until after we move but I have everything for it.

I'm also making a stall nameplate for Gwyn! I'm planning on putting a picture of her below her name and adding a few hooks for ribbons. I used acrylic paint and a stencil brush with stencils for the letters. Also unfinished.

Since Gwyn is half Friesian, she belongs to this registry and they were selling fabric patches. I got four! I'm hoping to find some really nice fabric and make a good dressage pad to put them on so Gwyn can show off! They were really cheap and I was so impressed by the turnaround time for ordering!!  But again, this will have to wait until we get unpacked in Michigan before I can work on it. I hope I find a fabric store that's as good as my Pacific Coast Fabrics out here in WA.

If I get really good at the saddle pad creation  I might try and turn that into a business. I need to improve my quality control first!

Happy Holidays to One and All

We look forward to getting things started in 2015 as we make our big move from Washington!

Welcome!

Welcome to Firefly Ranch!

Right now we are slowly prepping for a move across the country from Washington State to Michigan. We're carefully studying property that will be the resting place for Firefly Ranch as it lands near Detroit. Our star resident, Gwyn, has no idea any of this is happening. We are slowly packing up the house and analyzing things as best we can.