So Spacious! So Purple!

To make room for potential new horses in 2019, it was time to upgrade. We replaced this platinum barn:

with this diamond barn:

All barns on HI2 may look the same size from the outside, but like something out of Harry Potter, each progressively more expensive model gets magically bigger on the inside. Yay, the herd instantly gained room to grow!

Our final horses of 2018 have names and tack at long last now too. Here they are!

Ianthe

Oriana

Altai

We recently fluted this silver bay Rocky Mountain Horse and were so hoping for great stats and/or a great personality.

Nope, not this one.

A few days later we fluted another one on the same island!

Not this one either. :(

Such a shame - she's so pretty!

*Sighs* Oh well, none of us are exactly suffering from a lack of mares with luxurious manes.

Bethany and I did some livery stalking this morning. We visited two +5/6 mares for longer than we probably should have. 

The first one was this smoky black Morab:

Her striped hooves and golden eyes are so cool! She's +75 too, which is quite respectable. Just because I was curious, here is the smoky black Morab avatar:

and here is the black Morab avatar:

Smoky blacks are black horses carrying one cream gene. Just like in real life, the smoky black avatar looks a bit faded in comparison to black. Well done, HI2!

The second horse we lingered over was this red dun Spanish Barb:

She's not as elegant as the Morab, but I think HI2's Spanish Barbs are still pretty cute in their own coarse, sinewy, happy way. 

(Love ya, Fort.)

Her avatar, while not at all obviously red dun (I'd have guessed a bright chestnut) is definitely more exciting than the smoky black's:

And she's +74, just one stat point shy of the Morab.

Since we already have Morabs and a very special Spanish Barb in the herd, we figured we'd better be good and resist their charms. When we checked back half an hour later, both were gone. I hope that means they are both now happily adopted! =) 

We'll just have to keep patiently waiting for our first horse of 2019! I sure wonder what he or she will be like!

AG's 2019 Girl of the Year

Well, we've nearly made it through two weeks of 2019 now, so it's past time somebody commented on American Girl's new 2019 Girl of the Year doll. Felicity's been dragging her feet, so I will do it instead.

Here she is, Blaire Wilson:

This doll combines a lighter-than-usual light skin tone with the Josephina face mold, AG's new green eyes (darker and more gray from a distance than Felicity's), and curly red hair. She lives on a family farm and restaurant, and her signature outfit is this impractical bee-patterned white sundress with non-matching strappy purple sandals. (I'd probably ruin them both my first day on a farm or cooking for a restaurant, but maybe she has mud and stain-repelling superpowers?)

At least one of her other available outfits includes overalls and wellies.

The ribbon choker, though? Really?

Gotta say, I love her hair! It's way more our style than Luciana's side-bangs and purple streak.

I wish she had freckles and a different eye color to make her stand out more from AG's very limited selection of red heads, though. Right now the only other red-headed options are:

Felicity. 

Her hair is technically auburn, and her eyes are a striking light green. (Forgive me for this screenshot, Felicity, but this is how your clones come now. That skirt is as still as horrible as ever.)

Truly Me # 65: straight red hair and blue eyes

 Truly Me #61: wavy red hair and green eyes

(I'm not counting AG's one Truly Me doll with "light red" hair and blue eyes. To me that's strawberry blond like my hair.)

No freckles to be found on any of them! Bethany and I will try not to be offended. Maybe AG thought it was too soon to have another another reddish-haired doll with freckles after Saige.

I have not read Blaire's story, but my first impression is of a sugary-sweet, girly farm girl who skips around singing and collecting eggs in a cute wicker basket. I'm guessing Felicity is thinking along the same lines, hence her instant dislike. XD

And finally, to address the elephant in the room, my sisters and I all had an instant aversion to this doll's name. Blaire, however it's spelled, will forever be associated with the horror film Blair Witch Project in our minds, hence it will never jive as an appropriate name for a sweet, pretty farm girl. I think it even surpasses McKenna as our least favorite AG name of all time, and that's saying something. ;^)

So, yeah, we have no worries about Blaire joining our family. Her bee-bedecked dress (Mom, like me, does not find bees cute), her similarities (appearance-wise only) to Felicity, and her horror-film-esque name are all strikes against her. She's a very nice-looking doll, though, so I bet she'll be one of AG's more popular ones!

Golden Christmas and White Boxing Day

Check it out! One of my clones was on the cover of an American Girl catalog this holiday season!

Apparently Mom's not the only one who knows I can pull off powder pink!

(me)

And now, as promised, here's the latest from our HI2 adventures.

Just like on last Christmas, we fluted a +4/6 Highland. Julie and Jolly had the honor this year. Maybe HI2 knows one of the classic Christmasy albums in our house is Scottish Christmas?

She's the same color as Julie's Highland, Wintergreen.

Since she wasn't a keeper and since it was Christmas, we decided to check out HI2's available horses in the auctions, livery, and ranch stores. No auction or livery horses tempted us, nor did I find my dream horse (a perlino or light gray Florida Cracker mare). When we got to the H's in the ranch stores, however, we finally got excited.

This awesome Halflinger was for sale! We have been hoping to find one for years, and there she was, just waiting for us! <3 We didn't have to look at any more horses. We knew she was the one!

Here is Pepsi taking her for her first ride, a circuit around Glacier Isle. =)

Ooh, such a classy avatar!

The story doesn't end there. The day after Christmas, we were still hanging out on the Glacier island complex. Felicity and Gromit used the flute out on the far end of Snowflake Isle. Guess who showed up?

a white gray stallion!

Does this sound familiar? It sure did to us!

December 31, 2014: we caught Jolly the +5/6 Russian Heavy Draft stallion

December 15, 2016: we fluted Tchaikovsky the +5/6 Orlov Trotter stallion

December 2018's model is also - you guessed it - a +5/6er!

Thanks, HI2, for keeping the December snowy stallion tradition alive!

I know we already have two wonderful Mongolian mares:

Poinsettia

Burgundy

...but I think this guy is too cute to pass up, especially since we've never had a horse from Snowflake Isle or a horse with the "strong, silent" personality in the herd before. <3 

Doesn't it just figure that as soon as we broke down and bought a horse, we'd flute a nice one the next day? XD Oh well, I'm just happy we're ending 2018 on a happy note!

Another Christmas Recap

Christmas has already come and gone. Before long we will have to say goodbye to our weirdly balmy December too. We did have snow early on in the Christmas season, though, and here is proof:

Mom drives by this giant teddy twice a day. He also lights up at night. =)

Ugh, 2019's stretch of 3+ months of winter is practically staring us in the face. I wish we could hibernate like bears. Or fly south like geese. But no, we're stuck here, waiting for the lake effect snow machine to switch back on for the long haul. Because we all know it will. It's only a matter of time.

My sisters were actually disappointed when they woke up to a green Christmas. Disappointed, I tell you! I'll remind them of that come April when we're still getting dumped on. They don't actually have anything to complain about, because it snowed prettily for several hours on Christmas: fat, Christmasy, snow globe type snowflakes. The ground was just too thawed out for them to stick.

We all had a great Christmas, even though the ground was not white, and even though Mom didn't receive a single doll-related gift this year. That's not to say anyone suffered from a lack of gifts. They were absolutely crammed around the tree!

There were quite a few contenders for prettiest present, but this little silver beauty definitely ranks high:

Nala had fun popping everybody's packing pillows for them. She also received a couple of new toys, including this jumbo tennis ball:

So far she's not very interested in it, so it has a chance of staying nice for awhile, unlike normal-sized tennis balls. 

For the record, here is Mom's huge haul:

Yes, I know it looks more like gifts for an animal-obsessed 7-year-old than non-child Mom, but she is perfectly fine with that. XD I won't discuss everything in the photo, as that would take forever, but I will highlight a few. 

Mom got fun new cases for Milton (her laptop) and Twinkle (her Kindle): rainbow birds and Starry Night, respectively. She was really pleased because her old cases were literally falling apart. 

The mugs, which came in fancy matching boxes, feature woodland animals (left) and owls (right) wearing hats made from various nuts and flowers. They were instant hits.

Mom saw the original paintings of the 26 animals featured in the A-Z animal book during this year's ArtPrize - they were displayed in the window of a building downtown. Her favorite is the narwhal.  

Ricky the FurReal pup was a total surprise. Mom did not even know he existed. He hasn't been turned on yet because batteries were not included and are an uncommon size (typical, right?), but even stationary, he is really cute.

All the Spirit-themed horses were also total surprises. Mom had never even seen the Netflix show, but since Christmas she has made a point of changing that. (Halfway through season 1! Yay!)
The horses and riders are roughly the same scale as the horses she collects, Grand Champions and Breyer classics. The riders actually fit classic-sized horses better than most, which is great! (So often they are too big!)

Whew, that's all I have time for today. We do have big HI2 news too, but I will let one of my sisters tackle that. Stay tuned!

Black Forest Draft Horse

The newest horse breed to join HI2 is the Black Forest Draft Horse! It's another one of those rare breeds we didn't know much about, so I think it's fantastic that HI2 added them and piqued our interest.

The Black Forest is a forested mountainous region in southwestern Germany. It makes me think of fairy tales and black forest cake.

Yum

But it is also home to the Black Forest Draft Horse, a breed that dates back to the Middle Ages (wow!) and was originally used to haul felled logs from the forest.

These horses are always chestnuts with lighter manes and tails, and HI2's have wonderfully abundant manes. HI2's come in 10 different colors, including 3 shades of silver. I have no idea if Black Forests can be silver in real life or not, just that silver is different genetically from flaxen chestnut. But at any rate, the silver versions of these guys on HI2 have darker tails than manes, while the flaxens have matching manes and tails.

Here are a few examples from the BBB:

red silver

black silver

flaxen chestnut

sandy chestnut

black chestnut (my personal favorite! <3)

Also note that HI2's Black Forests always have major facial markings: either blaze without snip, blaze with big snip, and blaze with white muzzle. These horses all remind me of black forest cake, especially the dark ones. If we ever are lucky enough to own one of them, it will probably end up with a dessert-themed name. 

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be adding a Black Forest to the herd anytime soon. The way things have been going, I doubt we'll even catch any more herd-worthy horses of any breed this year. We've fluted many attractive horses lately, but sadly they've all had unimpressive stats. Let's take a look at a few of them anyway.

Felicity and Aspen fluted this beautiful Kinsky mare with a bonus Spanish moon moth:

Anya and Lily fluted this snow-speckled Sugarbush stallion:

Bethany and Della fluted this dramatically dappled Appendix:

And Tinsel and I fluted this interesting splashed white Spotted Draft whose avatar is decidedly unspotted.

Our favorite of all is this cool Spanish Mustang fluted by Felicity and Herbie:

He is definitely going to our Millennium Fields once we think up a fitting name and give him some spiffy rump art. =^)