Twin Rivers Surprise

To close out our posts for 2013, I will share something fun that happened to me on HI2 the other day. While Ravine and I were searching out minigames on Twin Rivers Isle, we came upon this wild pony:

seeing double

It was a light dapple gray Dales Pony. Its breed and color exactly matched our first HI2 pony, Ophelia, who now belongs solely to my sister Bethany. I briefly switched from Ravine to Ophelia to take this screenshot so that the two look-alikes could meet. =)

This pony turned out to be a mare and has the same personality label as Ophelia, Drill Sergeant. What a fun coincidence!

Here's a visual comparison of them up close. They both have white coronets on their right hind legs.

The wild pony

Ophelia. She is slightly smaller: 750 lbs and 14.0 hands.

And now for a comparison of their stats and personalities:

The wild pony

Ophelia - braver and more easygoing

Bethany wants me to assure you that she will not be replacing Ophelia with this pony, never mind that the new pony's stats are superior. We will probably surrender the new pony to the humane society so that some other lucky player can take her home. =)

Christmas Gifts

Another Christmas has come and gone without any new dolls joining the family. The one gift for our aunt that looked suspiciously like an American Girl doll box turned out to be a DVD rack. Some of the gifts for Mom did look like they could possibly be doll clothes. Sure enough, we lucked out again: 6 new outfits! And here they are:

Flower Sweater and Skirt Outfit

This outfit looks just how we expected it to. The pieces will work great for mixing and matching with other stuff in our collective wardrobe. It also came with a red headband, but it didn't look so great with my little side ponytail, so I didn't wear it for the picture.

Purple Peacock PJ's

Talk about comfy! Take off the slippers and the outfit will work great for yoga too. The top is so pretty that we will probably wear it as a "real shirt" sometimes and not just a pj shirt. It comes with a purple hair tie, which I'm sure will come in handy.

 

Caroline's Travel Dress (dress only)

This dress comes with red boots if bought new from AG, but Grandma found it sans boots on eBay. That's fine with me, as I didn't think the boots were all that spectacular. They also dated the dress a bit, and we have plenty of historical dresses as it is. I think the cut and style of this dress is sweet, timeless, and flattering, and as far as pink goes, this salmon-y shade isn't half bad.

Felicity's Spring Gown (dress only)

No clothes specifically cut for 18" slim dolls like me joined the wardrobe this Christmas, which is totally fine after how many came last Christmas. So, Felicity told me to put this one on, adding that she'd "already tried on enough pink for one day." It's rather wide for me, as is to be expected, and it's still rather wrinkled from sitting folded in a box for so long, but you get the idea. What a pretty gown! With a safety pin or something in the back, I could totally get away with wearing this.

 

Tropical Bloom Outfit

Yay! I love the color palette, the design on the shirt, and the cute matching shoes. Swap out the shoes for tall riding boots and we'll have a great casual riding outfit. These pieces will also work well mixed and matched with our other stuff.

 

 

Merry and Bright Gown Set

Retail cost for this baby was a whopping $72, and it was only sold in stores besides. Grandma found it being sold on eBay way cheaper and purchased it as a total surprise for Mom. My sisters and I all agree that it is absolutely gorgeous, and you wouldn't believe how soft the cape is.

 

the gown without the cape

In addition to the gown and cape, this set came with a detachable silver sparkly belt, fancy silver sparkly shoes with heels, silver satiny gloves, and a shimmery tiara. (I didn't feel like putting my hair up to give the tiara something to attach to, so the tiara didn't make the pictures.) Even without the crown, I felt like royalty the minute I put it on. Since we have one other tiara already, now we can act out princess stories with two princesses rather than just one. Oh, the possibilities! I'm excited.

A White Christmas

It's finally here, and it's white! Hooray!

Here's what it looks like outside:

Brr!

Here's what the upstairs tree looks like:

Hmm... do any of those gifts look like AG clothes boxes?

And here we are nice and cozy by the downstairs tree:

It's a balsam fir that smells really good!

Bethany

Felicity

Julie 

Lily

 Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas Eve

Happy Christmas Eve!

It was a bright, sunny day here - a change of pace from all of the gray skies and precipitation we've had lately. Tons of people around here lost power on Sunday the 22nd because of freezing rain coating power lines with ice. We were lucky - the lights flickered a bit here but never went off. The freezing rain gave way to snow, so there's a beautiful blanket of white out there. It's looking like we'll have a white Christmas! We're excited. =)

In HI2 news, we've been going around taking screenshots for the Esroh Legends December bingo contest. (Esroh Legends is a Horse Isle 2 help site we use regularly for quest and mini game help.) We've had to find lots of objects that are green and red, as well as things like an NPC with a scarf and a snow pile. Our board's coming along, but so far we haven't come across any players riding horses wearing holiday coats. Maybe we'll see some tomorrow. 

We've also brought our horse count up by two more wild mares, making our grand total 24 horses - 6 for each of us.

Here are the two new additions:

Julie and Palladium catching Icing

Bethany and her new Connemara catching a still-unnamed Warlander

I have claimed Icing the Shire, and Julie has claimed the Warlander. More information about them will be coming soon!

Now it's time for a late supper and then a viewing of a Christmas movie - probably The Toy That Saved Christmas. It's a Veggie Tale classic in our house. Gotta love talking veggies!

What a pretty pony!

Well, my livery stalking habit is proving harder to break than I'd hoped. I was at it again yesterday, but at least I had reason to be in there. This time I had just gotten done surrendering two 5/6 wild horses and was checking to see if they were showing up immediately. (Sometimes horses do, sometimes horses don't, it seems.) And then, as long as I was doing that, I checked horses of the breeds my sisters and I especially like. Wouldn't you know it, this 6/6 beauty was there:

Nice socks.

25 trainings already. Cool!

A +84 mare! A beautifully-colored one in Mom's favorite pony breed, to boot! I could hardly believe it when I found her. It took Lily urgently ordering me to, "Adopt! Adopt!" to bring me out of my reverie. I tried, but I'd deposited a whole bunch of money in the bank before going to the livery and didn't have enough on hand. 

I cantered Mistral across Marshy to the bank as fast as he'd go, took out $20k, and rushed back to the livery. Lily was sure the pony would already be gone, but fortunately she was still there, the last of 4 Connemaras listed. With Lily's blessing, I clicked "Adopt."

At long last, I have chosen a third mare for my stable! (Sorry, Cape Boerperd wild. I think you're destined for a different owner.)

This mare has been through 3 owners and 3 vastly different names since her capture in October: "Orobas," "Latte," and "Whispering Winds." Her second two owners only had her for a day each before re-surrendering her, for whatever reason. She must be rather confused. I'm still thinking about what I will call her, but it's not going to be any of those names. 

Here is what her sooty dun avatar looks like:

Dapples and golden hooves. What's not to like?

There you have it, equine #22, our second 6/6 mare and my second 6/6 livery find. =) I'll do my best to limit my livery stalking and to only look at mares from here on out, since we have way more luck finding 6/6 wild stallions.

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is almost at its close, and I can't think of anything particularly unlucky that has happened today. Whew!

Yesterday, 12/12, we officially added equine #21 to our Horse Isle 2 herd, and it's not the Cape Boerperd. It's not even a mare. *face palm*

Well, I was clicking through the humane association horses in the livery. This in itself is a very dangerous pastime. While I tell myself I'm there checking for 6/6 horses - I've heard of other players stumbling upon awesome horses there - what ends up happening is that I'm tempted by really nice 5/6 horses waiting there. 7Up, Whinny, and poor, rejected Cider (long story) all were impulse buys from the HA. I gave each of the 5/6 horses mentioned above to each of my sisters, so I guess it was only a matter of time before I found a HA horse I had to keep for myself.

I know, I know. To quote my sister Lily, "There's no rush to collect horses. Let the right ones find you at their own pace. Our spots are limited." I do listen, really I do. But it's not every day you find a +75 6/6 horse waiting in the HA like a diamond in the rough. Or, in this case, an obsidian in the rough.

As you can see, I've christened him "December." His original name was "Shadow Caster," but as his previous owner changed it to "To Good Home" before letting him go, I'm guessing she wouldn't mind the name change. "Shadow" is awfully close to "Shady," and that would have been way too confusing. ;^) 

Here's what his avatar looks like compared to Shady, Julie's black American Mustang mare.

December: lighter body, black hooves 

Shady: darker body, brown hooves

Oddly enough, December is technically our oldest equine, as his previous owner caught him in November of 2012. I wonder why she'd surrender him after over a year of bonding time? I know the longer I have mine, the more attached I get. Oh well, it's not really my business. I'm just happy to have him, and he seems happy to be here.

Now that I have achieved my goal of finding a 6/6 horse in the HA, I should be better able to resist nice HA horses in the future. One can only hope...

Snowflakes and Inga

Here it is December 11th already. Two weeks from today, it'll be Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here. We have a lovely white blanket of it on the ground, and plenty more is on the way from look of the weather report. Now if only this pattern will hold for the next two weeks...

In the spirit of wishing for a white Christmas, my sisters and I visited Make-A-Flake, a paper snowflake simulator. Here are our creations:

My (Bethany's) kaleidoscope snowflake

Felicity's spiky snowflake

Julie's pinecone snowflake

Lily's starry snowflake

As long as I'm posting, here is our latest Horse Isle 2 news. Inga, the mahogany bay Orlov Trotter I've been keeping for Artemis's 4th and final challenge, finally reached 500 experience points today. I rode her to Artemis's sink hole on Lost Jungle Isle for our last visit, and sure enough, Artemis was satisfied. We now have Artemis's agility bonus. Yay!

Inga and me at the entrance to Artemis's hideout

Success!

Which brings me to my other piece of news. Now that Inga's fulfilled the task we bought her for, I decided to retire her to our ranch via Millennium Fields. She is quite pleased with this turn of events, as she is so lazy that she never enjoyed being ridden anyway. 

I'll still be able to see her whenever I want. Hooray for Millennium Fields! :)

So, we are back to a nice, round total of 20 horses... for now. I am still on the fence about the Cape Boerperd wild that Felicity's offering me...

? ? ?
If only she wasn't so lazy and skittish!
That would make my decision easy.

Cape Boerperd

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Oh, wait, it hasn't even been Thanksgiving yet. o_o 

Really, snow? Couldn't you hold off until December, at the least? I guess we should just be grateful we didn't have a white Halloween, since that has been known to happen...

Ugh, enough talk about snow. I have been distracting myself from the frigid weather outside with Horse Isle 2. Yesterday, I happened to find a wild Cape Boerperd, which is the game's newest breed. The only ones I've seen have been in the auctions, most of them really nice ones selling for big bucks.

I was getting grapes and raspberries on Curvy (for crafting) when I discovered her. At first I was just pleased it was a pinto, because pintos are awesome, but I was even more happy to learn that it was a Cape Boerperd. (Sidenote: we still have never seen a Nez Perce in the wild, which is another fairly new breed on HI2 that I really like. *Sighs and pauses to pet Toasty the Noriker, our only appaloosa-patterned horse.*)

Hello, pinto. Meet 7Up.

I'd never even heard of the Cape Boerperd before it was introduced on the game. F.y.i., it is a gaited breed from South Africa that somewhat resembles the Morgan. Apparently doing saddle seat with them is huge, but they are by no means limited to that. I'm glad their tails don't look artificially high-set like the HI2 American Saddlebreds. 

Spots, multi-colored mane, and blue eyes. =)

So... she spooks at everything, yet she's a sloth too? Am I the only one who is having trouble picturing this? 

It's unfortunate that her personality isn't as great as her appearance and stats, but I guess 2 out of 3 isn't bad. I have a feeling one of my sisters will want her, since we're all fans of pintos. Maybe I can convince Bethany to take her instead of keeping that goofy Orlov permanently. It's worth a try.

21st Horse

How can we have 21 horse slots filled already on our HI2 game? Wow! Why didn't we try to stay at nice, round 20 for a while? Well, we blame Artemis...

You see, now that we have our bareback award, we were able to visit Artemis, one of the Esrohs on the game. We quickly completed her first 3 tasks: craft a pastel green halter, own a flaxen liver chestnut foal, and own a Thoroughbred with over 1000 experience points. Our generous buddy CandyNutmeg entrusted us with Must Be Magic, her experienced Thoroughbred mare, for a few minutes so that we could complete #3. Candy is awesome.

Task #4 is the hardest yet: visit Artemis while riding a mahogany bay Orlov Trotter with at least 500 experience points. We were slightly disappointed with our randomly selected breed at first because the Orlov isn't an especially attractive breed on HI2.  However, we now realize that it was not all bad to be assigned an Orlov. First of all, since Orlovs only come in a handful of coat colors on HI2, mahogany bay wasn't extremely rare. Second of all, because the breed isn't very popular, we had a good chance of finding them for sale cheaply. And finally, because we weren't assigned a tiny pony breed, we can justify keeping the horse permanently and therefore can get as attached to it as we want.

We were able to find a mare in a ranch store that fit the bill on our first day of looking, and she was only $15,000. She came with 0 experience, so we won't be returning to Artemis for a while. Oh well, there's no big rush.

So, here is horse #21, Inga. It fell on me to keep her because I was the only one of the 4 of us who hadn't already chosen a 5th horse. I don't mind. She's pretty nice, as far as Orlovs go.

Yeah, Bethany, once you get passed the lopsided star, wonky hooves, drastically uneven hind leg markings, and blocky shading, she's not so bad, lol.

Aw, don't listen to her, Inga. I like you just how you are. *Gets up on a stool to stroke the mare's silky mane, since she's 17.2 hands.* You're tall, brave, and social, and you have great conformation. 

And she's lazy to the extreme. =) 

Yeah, but I'm used to it, since Mistral's a big lazybones too. They will probably be soul mates. 

No snowy isles for her anytime soon. This seems a bit odd to me, since her breed is from chilly Russia... Maybe she's already seen more than enough snow to last her a lifetime. ;-)

Yep, that must be it. XD She will grow on all of us, you guys. You just wait. 

11/12/13

I overheard Grandma mention today that this date was an especially popular date for weddings. It would definitely make it easy to remember - who could forget getting married on 11/12/13? =)

In honor of such a fun date, here are some more amusing screenshots from Horse Isle 2. You're welcome.

levitating dutchie

they're making me hungry

double Kigers

Good try, mouse dun Azteca

Who wants to be lassoed first?

hide-n-seek with a wild

an elusive Peruvian Horse

Whoa, Arion!

a lucky ledge

Wait... flowers don't have heads!

2 of 6 wilds that were on Harbor during one lucky visit

That looks painful

a wild, Flora, and I pause for a quiet moment of reflection

double Xs

big floral hats

Don't ask me how I climbed down this mine...

3 mares on Harbor! Pal is quite the charmer. 

You remind me of someone...

I think he was guarding the treasure.

Well played, Haflinger

I hope these made you smile! =)