Art Fair Finds

Mom went to an arts and crafts fair last weekend. There was all kinds of fun stuff to look at, from jewelry to wall art to giant cattail wind chimes. There also happened to be a booth selling homemade 18" doll clothes. Mom was drawn there like a moth to a flame. She couldn't decide whether she liked the crocheted dresses or the cotton dresses better, so she ended up getting both. She returned home $34 poorer and surprised each of us with a new dress! Pretty good, when you consider that American Girl typically charges upwards of $30 for just one outfit.

 

We decided to model our dresses that same afternoon. The lighting in the backyard was kind of funky at the time, so we opted to take our little fashion show to Mom's room instead.

 

My dress caught Mom's eye first. She loved the aqua and chocolate brown print, and so do I!

 

This lime green polka dot dress looks like it was made for Felicity - it perfectly matches her eyes. Her birthstone also happens to be the diamond. I've never seen Felicity so pleased to put on a dress. =)

Grandma was the one to find Julie's dress. Normally Mom is not a huge fan of brown clothing, but this particular shade with its subtle gold sparkles spoke to her. I think it looks lovely on Julie. It brings out the rusty undertones in her beautiful brown eyes.

And finally, Mom selected this crocheted dress for Lily. It doesn't get much more "Lily" than sky blue with a flower. XD The dress ended up having more of a drop waist than Mom was expecting, but Lily can still totally rock it.

 

I will leave you with this group shot. Looking good, ladies! <3

 

Bethany Strikes Again

Well, we only made it two days into September before we found a horse we just had to have. Or, rather, a horse Bethany thought we just had to have. She sure has a gift for finding 6/6 livery horses.

This time, her find was a Kinsky. None of us have ever come across a nice Kinsky before. Not one that was inexpensive enough for us to consider buying it, anyway. (I have trained my sisters well in that department. ;)) This stallion was a wild horse who was caught by a subscribed player on Labor Day. That player then surrendered him to the livery the very next day! I wonder if she knew what a great horse he was when she did it?

Since I caught the 6/6 Spotted Draft Horse mare and gave it to Bethany, she returned the favor by giving this guy to me. He may be a loafer and a hermit, but at least he's chill and go-with-the-flow about it. I'm excited to try him out in the jumping arena once he's trained.

His avatar is a surprisingly light shade of brown. I was expecting him to be similar in color to black chestnut sabino Galileo, whose avatar is nearly black. Instead, he is almost the same shade of brown as Bethany's brown mare Umber. Good thing they have different colored hooves!

The Kinsky

Umber

Coincidentally enough, the Kinsky's capturer randomly PMed me yesterday when Zephyr and I were on Harbor Isle. Paranoid me thought she had tracked me down and was going to say something about the Kinsky, but no. She was only asking if there were any wild horses on Harbor. XD (There weren't, other than the Abaco Barb I had just fluted and lassoed.) When I told her I had adopted the Kinsky and that he said hi, she didn't have much to say in response. I'm guessing she didn't know he was worth more than your average wild, but no way was I going to ask...

Thanks again, Harbor Isle

Harbor Isle just keeps on giving. Flora and I found two wild horses on it yesterday. The first was this lovely Furioso.

Even though the Furioso's artwork isn't as special as many of the newer breeds, I've always rather liked the look of them. This mare's cute markings and "My Buddy" persona made her extra appealing. Too bad her stats weren't more impressive.

Then we rode east and found Harbor wild #2. As usual, I thought, Ooh, a pretty pinto! Please be awesome! 

She was! 

6/6 and +98. That makes her the 3rd best horse stat-wise we have ever caught. (Balderdash the New Forest mare still reigns supreme as +110, and Vinca the Newfie mare is 2nd as +104.)

Of course she would be a mare, when the next horse I get needs to be a stallion to keep my gender ratio even. That means either Bethany or Julie get to keep her rather than yours truly. Oh well, I have a wonderful draftie already. Love you, Solitaire! <3

The First 10

We have used our flute 10 times now, so I decided to memorialize our first 10 fluted wilds with this post. Enjoy!

Flute #1

8/15: 15.3 hand brown Lusitano stallion

2/6, -19

Flute #2

8/17: 14.2 hand mahogany bay Canadian Horse mare

2/6, -39

Flute #3

8/18: 16.1 hand mahogany bay Holsteiner mare

1/6, -59

Flute #4 

8/19: 14.2 hand buckskin snowflake Nez Perce mare

2/6, -23

Flute #5

8/21: 16.3 hand dark dapple gray Orlov Trotter mare

2/6, -36

Flute #6

8/22: 15.1 hand dun Sicilian stallion

4/6, +43

Flute #7

8/24: 14.1 hand flaxen chestnut tobiano Mangalarga Marchador mare

2/6, -36

Flute #8

8/25: 16.1 hand white American White stallion

4/6, +39

Flute #9

8/26: 16.1 hand dark bay tobiano National Show Horse stallion

3/6, +8

Flute #10

8/27: 17.0 hand mahogany bay Hanoverian mare
3/6, +5

Our flute seems to work very well in attracting mahogany bay mares. I wonder if it was made from mahogany wood? ;^) 

It's cool that the Nez Perce, Mangalarga Marchador, and Hanoverian were all represented in our first 10. We love all 3 breeds! 

So far, the best horse our flute has attracted stat-wise is the 4/6 dun Sicilian. Hopefully someday it will lure us a 6/6! *crosses fingers*

Horse Flute at Last

On Friday, August 15, all 4 of us teamed up together to answer the 5 questions about Esroh lore, the final part of Poseidon's quest. Even after having just read the lore the night before, we weren't always 100% certain of the answers. Thank goodness for the help site, Esroh Legends, for posting the stories of the Esrohs! We consulted them on every question to be safe. With 100k on the line, it's definitely better to be safe than sorry!

In our nervous excitement, we neglected to take screenshots of the 5 test questions. They went something like this, if you're curious:

1. In which land formation did the Esrohs find themselves trapped in Athena's story?
Answer: canyon

2. According to Apollo, "Suppleness with time comes, not with ____."
Answer: spurs

3. What is the name of the horse Apollo talks to in his story?
Answer: StarFire

4. What parts of Hera's body became worn in her story?
Answer: hooves

5. In Artemis's story, what kind of animal did the Esrohs raise?
Answer: stag

Why would you ever choose option 2?!

Ah, so that's what was in one of those mysterious chests!

Pepsi travelled out of the reef, back through the decay isles, through Dry Isle, through Narrowed Isle, and finally to Chilly Forest Isle to use the flute for the first time. Why Chilly Forest Isle? Well, most of our favorite breeds come from grassy terrain, and we needed blueberries. Chilly Forest's harvestable items were mostly already harvested when Pepsi arrived, but there are so many blueberry bushes that Pepsi had no trouble picking as many as we needed.

Before fluting our first wild, we had Pepsi switch to Galileo, the first wild horse we ever caught. We hoped he would bring us good luck. 

Oh, the suspense! 

He didn't appear where we planned. XD

We caught the attention of a brown Lusitano! Felicity lassoed him, and we held our breath as we went to look at him close up.

Triple strikeout: common color, poor stats, and undesirable personality

Well, he's no Galileo. Kind of cute, but not special enough to justify keeping him. We should have known better than to expect our first fluted wild to be as wonderful as Galileo. ;^)

All the same, because he was our first, we decided to retire him to our Millennium Fields. We named him August. =)

Hello, Herbie

As you may or may not know, we have been intentionally naming each of our stallions and each of our mares with a different letter of the alphabet. Here was the list as of August 1, when we added Judo to the herd:

Arion

Aspen

Brio

Balderdash

Cider

Cascade

December

Dasani

Equinox

Esker

Fortunado

Flora

Galileo

Groovy

Hazel

Infrared

Icing

Judo

Jessamine

Kestrel

Kaleidoscope

Landslide

Lysithea

Mistral

Melancholy

Napoleon

Nightshade

Onyx

Ophelia

Palladium

Petra

Quasar

Quickstep

Ravine

Rosetta

Solitaire

Skyrocket

Teddy

Toasty

Uno

Umber

Vaquero

Vinca

Wintergreen

Whinny

Xenon

Xanadu

Yoshi

Yetta

Zephyr

Zesty

7Up

As you can see from that obvious gap between Groovy and Hazel, we only had one more horse to go to complete the pattern. We needed a stallion to be named something starting with the letter H. That mission fell to me, and I was technically supposed to wait until September to begin it.

So much for that. On Sunday morning when it was nearly time for me to log off, I went to surrender a wild I'd found to the livery. As long as I was there, of course I looked at some of the other horses. I couldn't help myself. And there he was:

A 5/6 cremello leopard Nez Perce stallion. It's hard to tell from these small pictures, but he indeed has faint cremello spots all over. Click on one of the pictures to see it larger if you so desire. I'd never seen one like him before outside of the BBB. I was smitten.

But, Lily was in the room and saw what I was up to. She insisted I go to the BBB in the library and look at his avatar to make sure I really liked him as much as I thought I did. The horse's avatar was white with pale dapples and legs. Lily wasn't impressed. She said that he looked a lot like my cremello Morab, Brio, and her light gray NFP's, Balderdash and Jessamine. 
"But he has dapples," I protested.
"You already have a Nez, you already have a leopard appaloosa, and you already have a cremello," replied Lily.
"Yeah, but not a cremello leopard appaloosa Nez."
Lily just shook her head and walked away. She knew a lost cause when she saw one.

That conversation did make me second-guess myself, though. I went back to the livery to look at him again. His personality wasn't so great, and his stats only added up to +58, after all. What to do?

In the end, I made myself log out. Wait. There will be other Nez Perce stallions, I told myself firmly. Prove Lily wrong. 

I only held out for about 5 minutes before logging back on to adopt him. He was still there, thank goodness. 

So, now I am the proud owner of Herbie. It turns out he actually has the highest sum of total stat points of any of our horses: 2508! Because he's pale, speedy, and the 53rd horse to join our herd, Herbie seemed like the perfect name.

Herbie the famous Volkswagen Beetle

No worries about avatar confusion here. Herbie's dapples and dark hooves set him apart. =)

Herbie

Brio

Jessamine (same avatar as Balderdash)

Interestingly enough, just last night PintoMustang and Lily noticed this ad pop up:

My goodness! I wonder if the player had seen Herbie somehow, or if it was all an odd coincidence? At any rate, I'm not the only one who thinks cremello leopard is cool! =)