A Rainbow Unicorn!

On the final afternoon of ArtPrize, Mom managed to convince Grandma to make one last visit with her. The reason Mom wanted to go so badly: they had not yet seen some life-sized metal animal sculptures. Mom was worried they might already have been taken away, since some artists clear out early on the last day. A large flower sculpture was being loaded on a trailer as they arrived at the venue - not a good sign. Luckily, One World Safari was still there in all its metallic glory.

Randy

Giselle

Brutus and Bill

Noni

Ellie

Sal

The cherry on top: a rainbow unicorn! =D 

Rain G. Unicorn

(The artist's name is Monte de Gallo)

Clearly, nothing was going to top these guys, but Mom and Grandma enjoyed the rest of their wanderings as well. Three last highlights:

Trance

aluminum and wood

and then I opened my eyes...

watercolor on silk/mixed media

A Reservation for the Current Occupant(s)

a full-size dining table made entirely of rolled-up junk mail and glue

October's rolled on since then. Lily, Nala, and Cloudburst all turned another year older yesterday. We didn't come across any wilds as cool as Cloudburst on the big day, sadly, but there have been a few other interesting wilds of note over the past few days. 

tiniest hooves ever!

I really wished this one had had a better persona and metrics. So pretty!

this one may be part camel?

A cool appaloosa Grade Baroque Horse. I love her hoof striping!

Despite the let down on the HI3 front on Lily's birthday, we still had a great time. Probably the biggest highlight is that we all got presents: Mom surprised us with new Halloween costumes!

We all get to be Disney princesses! In case you're not up on such things, Felicity's Anna from Frozen, Bethany's Jasmine from Aladdin, Lily's Rapunzel from Tangled, and I'm Belle from Beauty and the Beast. :^) 

There is a 5th dress in this set, a pink Aurora dress, which would've made more sense hair-wise for Lily, but after trying on both, she much preferred the Rapunzel dress. (Who knows, maybe post-haircut Rapunzel spent a ton of time outside after being stuck in that tower so long, and the sun bleached her brown hair blond again.)

Needless to say, we're especially excited for our Halloween party with our cousins (Mom's sisters' dolls) this year! <3

Felicity, Bethany, and I didn't ever post anything about our birthday dogs around our birthdays, but I feel like it would be a shame if they never got mentioned. So, better late than never, here they all are!

Felicity's

mine

Bethany's

Lily's

I'd say none of these guys jives very well with its birthday person, but there are no ugly dogs in the mix, at least. Bethany's would likely win any sort of agility or intelligence contest. Felicity's probably wins if it was a cuteness contest, though Lily's is a close second. I quite like my spaniel and the picturesque dune background, and I highly doubt she actually cares one way or the other about sandy paws.

No rainbow unicorns, but still some cool stuff

We almost made it through September without being seriously tempted to keep any wilds, which is quite a feat for us. Out in black sands back on the 27th, though, we found a few wilds, the least impressive of which visually was the chestnut below.

He is no conformational work of art (and definitely not a rainbow unicorn), but he's still cute in an oversized sausage pony kind of way. =)

What made him stand out from the crowd: his genetic stat total is exactly 1000. Wow, that doesn't happen every day! (We've seen it 3 times now in our 3700+ lassoed wilds.)

I'm glad the skittish didn't quite fall in line with the pattern of the rest of his personality stats. XD

Had we found any lucky finds or wilds with fantastic personas and/or unusually high performance metrics in September, this guy might have gotten overlooked. 

Or maybe not. It would be hard to resist those short little legs with their diagonal matchy-ness, the goofy little head, and the poofy hair. Sort of what I think a red squirrel would look if turned into a horse.

Don't worry - we are not calling him "Squirrel." "Rainbow Unicorn" had to go ASAP, though. Taylor Swift's the lakes was playing in the background as I was adding his info to our massive spreadsheet of wilds, so on a whim I changed his name to "Windermere." We haven't come up with anything we like better since, and it seems to suite him fairly well, so I guess "Windermere" it is.

ArtPrize is wrapping up this weekend. Mom hasn't seen as much of it in person as she'd have liked, but so it goes.

Here are some more highlights. They're here probably more for our benefit than yours, as we love looking back at this sort of thing later, but hopefully you enjoy them too.

Who's Protecting Whom?

clay

Nomadic Domiciles

cast iron, bronze

Earthwork Portraits

CraBird

bronze

It looks like a crab on one side, and a toucan on the other!

our favorite of the scrap metal sculptures in the Pollinators series

Desperate Times, a series of 3 colored pencil drawings

from left to right, they are Lysol Man, Shelter in Place, and Hoarder

Unity

oil on canvas

This looks blurry and abstract from a distance, but get up close and you find all sorts of people inside!

The Glass Garden

recycled plastic bottles and containers, wire

What a pretty use for discarded plastic!

Prance

wire and steel

all 3 of these beauties are modeled after Friesians

They were popular! 

Mom says she was lucky to get any shots without other people blocking the horses.

How cool that they got to be in the lobby of a ritzy hotel!

And on the Fifth & Sixth Day

oil over acrylic pours

I'd love to have any of these hanging in our house, but I especially liked this one!

See below for our favorite critters from Monster Mayhem, a collection of ink and watercolor paintings of the kind of monsters you'd actually want to find under your bed. This artist has been painting one monster a day for 7 years now, without missing a single day!

Julie's favorite, the pear bear

Felicity's favorite. She calls him Charmin the dragon.

Lily's favorite, who she named Treeceratops

My twin favorites. I call them Jupiter and Neptune. =)

Thinking Man

steel

Morning Spacewalk

North American Woodland Animals

king size quilt

this raccoon is my favorite. :)

Shore Patrol

our favorite in a series of 5 photographs collectively titled Great Lake Michigan

Rocky Shores

acrylic painting, shoreline embedded with semiprecious stones

Steadfast Against the Storm

our favorite of 3 big cat oil painting collectively titled Facing the Tempest

Charging Forward

The elephants in this mural were enormous: life size, if not larger!