New Year's Resolutions...

I'm feeling inspired to do things today. I've half taken down the Christmas tree (I decided mid-way that I'm going to buy a new storage box to keep it in, so that's going to have to wait a little while), and generally started cleaning things up. I'll unpack the suitcases next I think...

Pity it's too hot now to clean the horses up. That's on the list for this afternoon. They're all very muddy right about now from the rain while we were away. It was good coming back and seeing them again, but now I have to get back into my campaign to find new homes for two of them... It sucks, but it's got to happen. I've got two perfectly good, rideable horses out there just hanging out doing nothing! If I was super-rich I'd keep them (and probably a heap of other ones too...) and pay someone to come and ride them or something, but unfortunately I have to get moving on my decision to free lease them out... or maybe even sell them if I'm feeling really brave... eep!

I've never sold a horse. I don't know how other people do it really... it has to happen one day though. There are so many good homes out there for horses, with people who will love them and take excellent care of them. I just have to stop being an anxious control freak and make myself let go :P

I bought a copy of Horse Deals to look through and see all the people who have horses. There are a lot of them! And there are definitely people out there who would make excellent homes for my two.

So it's going to be a new year's resolution. New homes for the horses!

Ooh, did I mention I'm addicted to RedBubble??

Hehe, I guess I've become so engrossed in RedBubble that I forgot to post on here about it!

I haven't uploaded much work yet due to scanner and storage issues. Namely, my scanner is being temperamental, and most of my old artwork is stored about an hour away from where I live... So I discovered a nice free program called 'GNU Image Manipulation Program' or GIMP. It's very cool, and I think I've got most of the basics understood now... So basically everything uploaded so far is something I've drawn while trying to figure out how to use GIMP!

Actually that's not 100% accurate, as the first thing I uploaded was a photo of a flower. It was the first time I've ever taken a photo of a flower in fact, which just shows how desperate I was to upload something on there so I could play around with the settings and see how it all worked!

I'm slowly getting better at working with GIMP, and my aim is to have enough work that I'm proud of on there to make a calendar for 2010. :)

Here's a slideshow of my work, and a link to my gallery.



I've ordered a few things from RedBubble and the quality really is fabulous. Well worth checking out if you're looking for a good 'print-on-demand' site that deals in t-shirts, greeting cards and wall art! :)

Well that was a nice little break now wasn't it?

Things got pretty busy there for a while! Hopefully I'll be able to get back to a more regular schedule of blog posting now that Christmas is done for another year!

How was your Christmas? Mine was pretty good! I got a new rasp for trimming my ponies' hooves, and after using it I can't believe I put off getting a new one for so long... Funny how much easier it is to trim when you're not using a blunt rasp!!

The horses are having a bit of a holiday. I had my last competition before Christmas and was very pleased with the results considering our preparation was a bit patchy due to all the rain. I rode in two tests, for two seconds with scores just over 60%. I was especially happy considering the surface was slippery so I had to ride 'safely'. We weren't exactly dribbling about or anything, but we definitely could go more forward next time under more normal conditions.

Always good to finish the year on a good note!

Hope you're all recovering well from whatever festive celebrations you may have been partaking in :-)