Riding in Style

Star Stable is eager to launch into summer. Their Summer Daze Festival is already kicking off tomorrow, June 3. Before we get to all that, let's recap the end of May! Summer's great and all, but we're in no rush to leave spring behind. 

Speaking of things left behind, one evening recently, Mom arrived home, went to pull her car into the garage, and discovered this:

Despite the scariness of the garage door opening and a car rolling by, he/she did not move from this very exposed, uncomfortable spot in the landscaping rocks. Why did the mother think this was an okay spot to leave her fawn for hours? No idea. The fawn was still there when Mom checked later, but he/she was gone by morning. We hope that means the mother came back, and all is well! 

Nothing this cute has come up in Star Stable recently, but we did enjoy the debut of Style Riders Week. These two fashionistas, Daphne and Simone, hosted it out in the grassy expanse between the Pony Championship and Fort Pinta.

We neglected to take a screenshot of our official entry on Day 1: Fae Kingdom. Oops.

We'd already lost our elf ears by the time we took this screenshot, but other than that, this is what Clara and Star looked like. XD

On Day 2: Legendary Hero, we did our best to dress up Clara and Snowy as the Lone Ranger and Silver.

We were dedicated enough to buy the mask and shirt for the occasion. Not sure if we'll ever use the mask again, but the shirt's cute enough for regular-life wear.

Day 3: Magical World of Witches, was probably the easiest sub-theme, since we already had witch gear from Halloween. The hardest part was deciding on a horse. As you can see, we went with Garnet in the end.

Many players dressed like the Marchenghast witches or used the other newer witch sets, so at least Clara looked unique. 

On Day 4: The Villain of the Story, we didn't have any great inspiration so just dressed Clara like a pirate and paired that with our "scariest" horse, Kitekey. 

We weren't the only ones with the pirate idea, but we were - in our opinion - one of the better-dressed ones. XD

We made it into the top 15 in our group with all 4 entries. Good job, everybody!

Here is our entry for the finals, the Druids sub-theme:

Clara and Honey tried their best!

If all that wasn't exciting enough, another horse bazaar set up shop in Moorland this week as well!

From left to right: Solas and Dorcha, the Appaloosa, and the Irish Cob

Solas's bay pinto non-magical form

Dorcha's non-magical black pinto form

These guys are really cool, and apparently they haven't been available to purchase in over 3 years. We prefer our non-magical Irish Cob, Panda, however, so we are not especially tempted.

We are all set on the Appaloosa front too (love you, Evie!), but if we were ever to get another, it would be this one:

Whew, I'm relieved we're unanimously passing on this bazaar. Star still has a ways to go with her training. 

More Star Stable news to come soon, since Summer Daze is going to last 5 whole weeks and will no doubt be quite entertaining. 

The last thing I wanted to talk about: Mom's Breyer collection! Mom received two new riders and an Arabian horse on her birthday this year. She also had some other new, unopened horses and riders from Christmas and even gift-receiving occasions before that! It was well past time to free them from those yellow boxes.

What better way to celebrate than a ride out in the backyard?!

Some of the reins are still wonky from being all folded up in the box, and the English saddles' stirrups are too small and short to be practical for the riders. Other than that, we're loving all of it!

Now to come up with names for everybody. Oof.

After the ride, the horses had some time to roam the backyard on their own before heading to the basement to meet everybody else. <3

Aw, Breyer horses of all sizes are so beautiful! We're the biggest fans of the 1:12 scale ones like these: they take up less space and are less expensive than traditional 1:9 scale ones without being quite as fragile as the even smaller ones. It's also great that they are the same scale as Mom's Grand Champions so that they can share the tack and riders. =)

Until next time!

We Love Drafties!

 As Julie talked about last time, we all agreed for once on which Noriker we wanted to take home. For the record, the black leopard was the runner-up: we love its bold spots and had a great name on deck. That color variation might have won if our one and only Appaloosa-spotted herd member, Eveningecho, wasn't also black and white.

That means, yes, we chose more subtle bay tobiano! We knew we wanted it to be a mare because that gorgeous star meant we could finally haul out a star-themed name for a Star Stable horse. (Believe it or not, this is our first horse with only a star on its face. Brightbeam, our APH, does have one, but she also has a large snip, so it would've seemed wrong to focus only on the star.) Of our shortlist of star-themed names, "Starboard" eventually came out on top. The winning vote actually came from our grandma. =)

Does she have a preference for turning right? Sure, let's go with that. XD 

The name seemed extra appropriate to Julie and me because we're in the middle of reading a fantasy book involving lots of sailing. 

Both of them look so happy in this girl-meets horse screenshot!

We actually bought her out at the Noriker's current home location of Silverglade Manor rather than at the bazaar itself, since the discounted price applied either place. (It gave us the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with the Noriker one last time before committing to a specific color and name.)

the first ride!

Absolutely no regrets! <3

The first sparkle

We were in the middle of using a weekly stable care ticket when we had to commit, so Starboard actually spent a few days chilling in the stable after that original first ride. Our goldeny champagne Willowwind was Clara's lucky mount on Mom's birthday. As her birthday was on busy Monday this year, we didn't have much time to play on her big day. More on that to come!

Starboard is now getting our full attention. She's getting quite familiar with Valedale, since we've been spending most of our limited playing time there, either gardening or making progress on the Paths. Once we hit a less busy stretch in real life, we're eager to get back to Marchenghast, but we don't want to do that at a time where we only have a spare 20 minutes here and there to play.

Starboard leading one of Valedale's magic horses to a runestone

We're in a lull between time-consuming special events on Star Stable. As much as we enjoy such events, we are vey grateful for the lull. The most recent exciting game news is the addition of a new draft breed, the Brabant!

Our first glimpse at a Brabant!

These gentle giants are a Belgian breed somewhat related to the Ardennes. Consequently, they look similar to the Ardennes and come in similar colors. We're by no means horse experts, but we think Star Stable did quite well with making them look true to the breed yet still distinct from the Ardennes. 

They make Star look petite. <3

As much as I love roans, there is something quite refreshing about this solid bay.

I wonder if their hooves really do thunder in faster gaits? How cute would that be!

Probably my favorite aspect of these guys: their feathers actually floof when they move!

Their "special move" is more a human special move than a horse special move, but whatever. 

I'd take this over bucking any day.

It wouldn't be right not to recap Mom's birthday a bit, even if she did spend the majority of it working, going to the dentist, and then working some more. 

Ugh, Monday birthdays.

At least the dog on her page-a-day calendar was a cute one!

Mom's fam did a great job making the fleeting three evening hours of her birthday special. There were even balloons! This was round 2 of balloons originally purchased for her sister, but still, balloons!

Grandma made spaghetti, one of Mom's favorites, for supper, and a delicious funfetti cake for dessert. 

After everybody was stuffed, it was on to the generous pile of gifts!

Here's the "after!" =)

Yay for more cross stitch kits, a horsey coloring book, and super fun classic-sized Breyer stuff! Just for some background on the front and center gift, Mom absolutely loves her Kindle Paperwhite circa 2013 (AKA "Brighty"), and it is still going strong. She had no intention of replacing it until Amazon decided to discontinue support. As of two days after her birthday, she could no longer put checked-out e-books from the local library onto it. Hence, Kindle Paperwhite: newest model was the very generous gift from Grandma! We hope this one - we're calling her "Jade" for now - lasts as long as the first! <3

Noriker Names, Anyone?

Welcome to the beautiful month of May!

lilacs, my favorite spring flower <3

After the Equestrian Festival concluded, Star Stable immediately launched a new Trailblazer Track and released more Marchenghast content. 

Yay, more free stuff! We're especially happy for the free stable care tickets.

We've been hanging out in Valedale doing 12 daily tasks to get our trailblazer points and occasionally planting/harvesting our garden, but other than that, we've been taking it pretty easy.

It's not that we're not excited for the new Marchenghast content, we've just wanted a breather, as much effort as we devoted to the festival.

This week, Star Stable surprised us with another horse bazaar! 

From left to right, we have the Noriker (540 star coins), the Gotland Pony (375 star coins), and two magical horses, Calder and Ephyra (570 star coins).

We love the Gotland Ponies - they're such cuties - but one is enough.

If the chestnut splash hadn't been an option (love, you Vanillavalley!), we'd probably have chosen this one.

Calder and Ephyra are gorgeous, but we're quite content with our more subtle Paso Fino, Riverrock. Here are their non-magic coats, for the record:

I don't think this jives that well with his purple magical form, but he's still very handsome.

Ephyra's grulla coat is more harmonious with her magical blue form and equally lovely, if you ask me.

We're thrilled that the Noriker came back on sale again, since we passed them over the when they first were discounted back in December. We're not passing them over this time!

Of the 9 we had to choose from, these ones were our favorites:

flaxen chestnut

black leopard

bay near leopard

bay tobiano

light dapple gray

We've already all agreed on which one we'll pick, believe it or not! Now to choose a name... that's going to be a while. More to come in our next post!

Since this post is on the short side (for us, anyway), I will leave you with a few photos of Mom's recent visit to the Lantern Festival at our local zoo. Enjoy!

tunnel of lanterns

tiger

Yay for the year of the horse!

entering the magical forest section

it was home to rabbits and snails...

...and a herd of unicorns!

entering the under the sea section

my favorite: the happy manatee

the dolphins were great too

a whale and his starfish buddy

Mom visits the zoo frequently and had seen the lanterns by daylight multiple times, but it took it to another level to see them all after dark! What a magical night! <3