Winter Wanderings

Winter is chugging along full steam here in the Mitten. We've been getting a lot of cold and snow, and it shows no sign of letting up any time soon. We've missed out on major storm systems so far, though, which is fine with us!

It's quite wintery on Star Stable as well. Clara and Opalowl enjoyed the final days of Winter Village access to the full.

Other players did too. We never tried it ourselves, but we saw two who managed to travel back to Jorvik on the Winter Village animals. =)

It would've been amazing to be in a race against a bear! 

No sign of it once the championship started, though.

For the record, the final 3 ribbons we earned for all of our competition efforts were a snowman, a gnome, and an antlered foal. They're all great, but the snowman stole the show for me. He's probably going to come out a lot all winter long.

getting a really good look at the Christmas decorations

pied pipering the reindeer one last time

one last ride over the magical sky bridges

It's been fun, Winter Village! Until next year!

The snow is lingering longer. We toggle it on and off depending on our mood and what we're doing. Fishing sometimes works in snow...

...and sometimes doesn't.

Opalowl progressed swiftly through her experience levels, largely thanks to the Winter Village.

She's also won several championship ribbons! Competition has been much less fierce now that the championship ribbon event is over.

Another boost to Opalowl's horsey experience: the fireflies in Valedale. Without a whole lot going on now, we've been spending more time there working on the various labor-intensive "paths." We've progressed on the Path of Whimsy enough that each firefly caught gave her 5 horsey XP, and that adds up quickly!

She hit level 15 while out there this weekend!

We've also been completing Farah's task board sometimes: we can craft and deliver 3 different items to 3 different NPC's each day for star coins. Thank goodness for Google - we know where many of the NPC's are but have certainly not memorized all of them!

Clara gets really into the crafting.

We can use the horse trailer to bring us close to our NPC recipients, and sometimes we do. Other times, though, we make our way there the long (but free) way. This frequently involves using ferries.

We just noticed this weekend that different ferries have different colored life preservers and storage trunks!

You're welcome!

These deliveries remind us of delivering letters on HI3. <3 

I will leave you with a couple of cute screenshots from our recent snowy wanderings. 

Toggling the snow on and off in various locations amuses us to no end.

Even the little pigs leave trails in the snow! Well, done, Star Stable!

Opalowl can tölt now! She's so fancy. <3

You know us, though: we still spend most of our time galloping full speed.

Until next time!

Flying Into 2025!

Happy New Year!

You know those "mystery bundles" Felicity mentioned last time? Those were dresses! Not just any dresses, either, but glamorous, sparkly, red-carpet-worthy gowns!

with the fabulous boas

and sans boas

These were gifts from our aunt, though Mom had significant input on the selections. <3 Our aunt's own American Girl dolls have similar floor-length dresses in different colors/variations. This was inspiration for all of the 18" dolls in our house (there are a lot of us!) to dress up and throw ourselves a New Year's Eve party in the basement. It worked out perfectly this year because the humans were off at a party of their own. Disco ball, great music, sparkling grape juice and snacks, and then changing into pj's to watch Frozen 2 when we were too tired to party anymore... it was quite the night!

Felicity deliberately did not mention this in her last post (she had more than enough to talk about already), but on Christmas Day, a wintery horse bazaar set up shop in that usual grassy expanse a short gallop away from Moorland Stables.

From left to right, we have the Icelandic Horse, the Dartmoor Pony, the Ardennes, and the Norwegian Fjord!

We did not see this coming, but what great choices for a winter bazaar! 

Taking home a Dartmoor would be the most practical, since they can compete in the ponies-only race and championship. They're also the newest pony and the cheapest of the breeds at the bazaar. But we just don't love them, due to the underwhelming coat colors and that lip-curling animation.

Being the newest breed, the Ardennes is the most realistic graphics-wise and can wear most of the new tack. (No leg gear, obviously.) There's nothing exclusive to drafties race-wise, at least not yet, though, and their discount is the least impressive. 

We love Norwegian Fjords, with their stockiness, distinctive manes, and dun coats, and it's great that they can compete in the pony championship despite not technically being ponies. It's just hard for us to look past their older, more clunky animations. 

The Icelandic Horse, though... irresistible. We have been waiting quite some time for them to go on sale, both because they are very cute but also because there is an Icelandics-only race out near New Hillcrest that we've never been able to do. 

They come in quite a few coat colors. Below are the ones we liked enough to screenshot.

flaxen chestnut

silver dapple

black tobiano

grullo

Ýruskjóttur bay dun

flaxen red dun

buckskin calico tobiano

Or, for 200 star coins more, Kátur the magical snowy Icelandic could've been ours. Like Brinicle and the other magical wintery horses, he's only available while the Winter Village is around.

magical coat

non-magical coat: dapple bay pangaré

He is adorable, but is he worth spending 200 star coins more? Umm, probably not, as amusing as it would be to ride him around in magical snowy form in July.

It took us nearly a week of deliberations, but on New Year's Eve, we finally made our selection. 

Ýruskjóttur, which translates to "speckle," is a new coat pattern that recently cropped up on a real-life bay dun Icelandic stallion named Ellert. Efforts are underway to breed for the pattern, which is pretty cool! 

Our speckled beauty is a mare. "Opalowl" looks kind of funny smashed together, like some funky fantasy name, I guess, but we just went for it anyway.  None of the other double "O" names we tried fared any better, and Opalowl goes nicely with Garnetgazer.

Yay, snow in the girl-meets-horse screenshot!

Here they are on their first ride: bareback

and then with tack

We sure think we made the right choice. She's so pretty, and it's really fun that she does the flying pace in between canter and gallop! 

Once she's trained more, she'll be able to do yet another special gait, the tölt! So fancy! We haven't been out to New Hillcrest yet to see what the Icelandics-only race is like, so look for that next time. Until then, enjoy the brand new year! =)

Another Post-Christmas Post

Remember that nice snowy pic we started our post-Thanksgiving post with? 

I wish we could say it looked like that on Christmas morning, but this is what we got instead:

Oh well, at least it hadn't all melted away! 

We saw quite a bit of snow here in December, but you wouldn't know it now. It's supposed to be above freezing through the end of the month!

Before we get to our Christmas Day recap, here are a few noteworthy pics from earlier in the month. 

Darby, the dog on the right, has been in the family for 24 years now. Mom's been thinking about getting his female counterpart, Darla, on eBay for years, and this December, she finally did. =) It was one of the most fun packages to arrive ever: it jingled! 

Grandma surprised Mom out of the blue with Sonic! Mom used to have a similar Sonic when she was little (she enjoyed the cartoon) and very much regretted donating him when pressured into downsizing her stuffed animal collection years ago. This one will not be going anywhere anytime soon.

Santa and Mrs. Claus took a carriage ride through the neighborhood again this year!

One of the benefits of Mom primarily working from home: she can decorate her office for Christmas however she wants. The little tree and cardinals are new this year - Mom bought them on clearance from a rustic home goods type store that was sadly closing.

Okay, now on to Christmas Day. Here was the view out Mom's bedroom window... once the sun came up. (It was still dark out when she got up around 7:00 am.)

And here's the tree, surrounded by a sea of presents ready to be opened.

The winner of this year's prettiest present award:

And the most interestingly packaged:

The bag may not be a toy, but what's inside is.

He was supposed to look like this...

So... not quite what Mom was expecting, but still cute in a lumpy, asymmetric, bulldog-ish kind of way. Mom had asked for him because he has a microwaveable heat pack that you can add to his tummy. (She's never dared heat either of her supposedly microwaveable stuffies - what if something goes wrong? But she probably will dare heat a removable heat pack...)

Mom's entire assortment of gifts this year - wow!

Those four bundles above the dog are actually for us! We'll show you what they are in our next post.

Clara has a pretty great Christmas and lead up to Christmas on Star Stable too.

Some fun in-the-snow screenshots:

the Zony for sale by Ydris's tent temporarily lost its mane! 

(Tigertin's mane was unaffected...)

This is Snowy's favorite time of year!

Panda is loving it too.

Willow seems to have an affinity for reindeer.

Clara's been taking full advantage of the Final Flurry Discount Shop. 

So many holiday sweaters, so little time.

a Christmas ride on the giant yule goat

Two fun non-snowy competition screenshots:

Willow sandwiched between another Tennessee Walker and a Shire

Carrotcake communing with two other Haflingers

On Christmas Day itself, Clara teamed up with Scott Buttergood again to track yetis and rescue arctic foxes. 

We thought the reward might be the same as last year as well: another snowy white arctic fox pet. We were so pleased to get a different fox pet instead: one that is white with darker points. Thanks so much, Star Stable! We love it! <3

Yikes, Clara. Of all the times to roll your shoulders. XD

Finally, here's the big gift we received under the tree on Christmas!

Basil?

Basil turned out to be a chocolate brown penguin chick. =D 

Again, we were thrilled! Not one, but two adorable pets from Star Stable this year!

Have a wonderful holiday season, everybody! Talk to you in 2025!