Poor Poor ice horse.... :>(

This is all thats left of poor mr unicorn ice horse...I came out on Christmas morning to go have breakfast in pennys house and . I was met with a headless horse.. poor guy. He kinda looks like he is sleeping.. 

His head didn't all of or even really melt.... it kind of curved/curled over.. see his horn is stabbing his leg.. or what would have been his leg!

you can see his back leg better now though with the new snow on him! lol well maybe later this winter if it snows again I will try a new one! it is actually snowing now again but they say it will turn to rain later today..I sure hope so! But..Im a little worried about flooding.. you should see all the snow piled on the outside walls of the barn that had fallen off the roof! man its deep! and we are going to have one yucky muddy mess I can see ..  But I think the dogs and I will be glad when its gone so they can get out and really move! 

This is what I made Rick for Christmas.. it was a farrier ornament I pulled the peg out of his head and made him  a hat... like what Rick wears all the time.. and shaved off some belly as Rick is not fat at all! and I repainted him...

Then I took a Hagen Renicker porcelain Anvil and a schletch horse and made him a halter then made a base, added rocks, grass and gravel and glued them all on..Oh I gave the horse some hay too. its how he shoes but usually he has it in a wheel barrow.. 

Penny says he loves it..  now I need to get a nice piece of wood and mount it on. 

For Penny Im making a book of the farm with iphoto and Apples iphoto site to make actual one of a kind books! its pretty neat and doesn't cost too much.. and I'll have a very professional glossy papered hard cover book of the farm with pics of all the seasons and all the horse's in it.. we may just have to do one a year!  heres a link to see what Im talking about : http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/printproducts/

someday I want to make one of all my sculptures... Oh penny got me a pair of Ariat riding boots and a troxel riding helmet.. .. haven't seen the gift from my kids yet.. hopefully my son will make it over on sunday to give me my stocking full of little gifts..  oh... Kory may be putting up a 25% off sale on whatever she has of my sculptures or remakes of mine.. (she sells for me) its an end of the year sale. I'll post a link to the sale when she does... Im also working on a mare and foal pony remake and painting one of my welara resins and will have them for sale soon I hope! I will post pics when they are done.

I hope you all had a great Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!

This is what I woke up too out my back door... big fat snow flakes! so now I can finish Mr. Ice unicorn!!!! I hope! in case I don't get to, Im posting below, the best pics I took of him before everything really started to melt yesterday... he is hard to take pics of! He blends too well with the background so I used a flash in some and that kind of helped. If I get to finish him.. I'll have penny hold up something behind him so I can take better pictures. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a great year to come!

Look at that sharp horn!

He is really pissed with his ears all back because his eyes are crooked!! 

I would be too! I'll have to fix that! lol

Merry Christmas!!!!

yea for the propane guy.....who is now stuck in the driveway!

Yea! Rick got pulled out of the driveway after getting stuck.. near the end of the driveway is a big dip and its very easy to slide off it in the snow if your not careful, well he did...... we tried to pull him out with the tractor but it didnt work, so I came in to do email, eat and get some work done and he went hunting for help .. no one was home! then some good Samaritan came by with a 4 wheel drive and pulled him out.. so he parked at the end after going to town for more diesel for the tractor and was actually plowing the drive more with the tractor when the propane guy shows up.. so he gets to the end here but not up by the barn yet just over next to the trees....and gets stuck.. but the hose actually reached to the tank! yeah! so Im now full and I can hear them out here trying to get him unstuck.. I have no idea how.. thats one big truck.. he is chained up on all 4 tires too.. so lets hope they dont have to call in a towtruck! lol anways.. heres a few more pics!

this was an experement from many years ago. its a 8x8 tile I painted on with glass paints.. I love it.... its on a shelf above my sink!

This is the counter of stuff in progress

Heres miney saying what ya want mom?

This is my side living room window, ( yes I made the stained glass mosaic horse too!) im watching the icicles grow.Im mean unicorn horns!

more snow pics and snow horse pics tomorrow!

Snow horse Sculpture!

I have always wanted to do this and never thought Id get the chance to again or have enough snow to do it! but the snow finally was sticky enough so Penny and I started to build a snow unicorn..... Its almost life size but we got pretty pooped out and today the snow isn't sticking so good.. I think it got to cold last night so after it snows later tonight or tomorrow I will  or hopefully "we" will finish it. ...( its fun ahinvg someone to do this with!) I plan on him having an icicle horn! thats will look so cool. It was really alot of fun and if my back wasn't killing me from bending so much I could have done it for hours! I love to sculpt big like this but it is alot of work, so I will post pictures of the finished unicorn hopefully tomorrow sometime.

OK... the photo above you is the barn loft ( of which part of it is above my apartment) and the expensive orchard grass hay that got wet when the wind/snow storm came thru and the wind blew snow in thru vents in the loft. all of this was originally stacked up near the back, but when penny went up to throw a bale down and saw the hay covered in snow!!! ..well there went 4 hours! I heard them up there banging around and wondered what the heck they were doing? working on my frozen hot water pipe?  so I went out a little later and found out.. then they asked me to come help.. we got all the wettest bales and would bang them against the floor.....this seemed to get most of the snow off that was stuck in the bale. Penny and Rick had already spent 2 hours shoveling and brushing snow off of them.. and it was a big pile of snow too!.. so rick pounded and penny and I swept it up, the we filled buckets with the loose hay so it didn't go to waste and fed that to the horses, we also put the wet bales on end and separated them to dry hopefully and they will get fed 1st. We also gave 2 bales to the girl with the horse were trying to help. She was able to get her horse out of there and move it to a neighbors until we can get it here. That may not be till next week .. ( and she will be turing in the owner of the other 2 horses that are starving). We met her and her boyfriend when they came to pick them up last night and they seem like really nice people. 

Penny made it out for work but rick took his truck to get more diesel and got stuck in the driveway. we tried to pull it out with a tractor but that didn't work so he is calling for help right now..so Im hoping the propane guys don't show up till its out! We did lose power the night before last at 11 at night till 8 in the morn but I had propane so I was warm.. I still have a small amount but im saving it in case we lose power..Im using electric heaters till then. And yes Im being very safe. 
Here is a view of the arena from the barn loft. We opened the doors to sweep the snow out. How pretty! I had to run and get the camera!
Here is the driveway that goes around the arena that we don't use when it snows. The trees and building you see in the far distance is the vets farm across the street.
Heres what the driveway looked like after the wind/snow storm.. yep. all the paths are gone! Rick got he tractor out to pull the vet out of the ditch and he also kind of plowed the driveway somewhat. No way would anyone get in or out f he hadn't!
Heres a picture of the old homestead house I talked about in a previous post. see the roof caved in on the left.. that was from 2 large cedar trees falling into it from a big wind storm years quite a few years back. I think I lived in phoenix when that happened.

I have lots more pics to post but Ill do that later today.For some reason Blogger doesn't like to post photos..It takes me 2 or 3 trys to get one pics up sometimes..I don't know if its just busy or what the problem is, its one reason I wasn't posting as often as I wanted to. But I have a small trick that helps some... anyways.. looks like Christmas is on hold this year.. we will get together later for a special dinner when we can get out and about. 

So look for another post later today. 

More Winter Pictures!

Well Were waiting for a very big storm with winds from 50 to 60 miles an hour with up to 90 mile an hours gusts! 6 or more inches of snow today and tonight. Then they say we could have freezing rain. So there is a very good chance well be losing power. I really hope not but in case we do I thought Id post a few of the pics I took yesterday. I'll take more when the storm comes in after we get more snow . As you can see in the picture above ( click to enlarge and see the house on the far left corner) .. if all of this gets hit by high winds and or freezing rain or even more snow.. were in trouble. Penny said a few years back during a winter storm they had some of the trees come down.. you cant see it but behind them was the original old homestead house. it now has a caved in room from a large cedar falling on it. ( I will take some pics of that next time) At one time they had considered fixing it up as a guest house but not now.. So Penny is afraid of a tree falling on her place and as I live in the back of the red barn in my studio/apartment I only have one tree leaning towards me..the rest are far enough away from the buildings, but that one very tall tree grows in the direction twords the barn and its a very tall tree.. but..... it looks like the winds will be coming from the east so I may be fine there.. ..I hope..so if no one hears from me for a week or so it may be because we have no power! so If Im not able to post before then I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! heres more pretty winter photos!

                          heres pea pod getting ready to run on the path to the woods for   

                         snow not quite as deep and lots of birds and squirrels to chase!

Heres sky the weirdly marked smutty palomino. I think he looks like some                        kind of bizarre pinto!

Heres Hawk the other gaited morgan on the farm and one of the fattest!

                        Here's Penny showing how deep the snow is.. about to her knees                                          and deeper in some spots. she is standing on the path we have                                               from her backdoor to the barn.

Heres miney trying to see over the snow in our back yard.

Heres the farm sign out front by the road. I painted this over 10 years                                   ago.. next spring were going to do a new sigh with new paintings on it!

                                its pretty in the snow though!

This is a view from the road looking down he driveway.. yep pretty                                         deep snow. were going to try to get out to the store later today before                                   the storm hits.. lol wish us luck!

This is a view at the end of the driveway looking east down the road..                                     nope not plowed yet! in fact we didn't even get mail yesterday but they                                 promise us mail today... well see.....

This is a view looking to the west towords Stanwood. way over on the                                     other side of those trees in the far distance.

This is a view down the side of the red barn, thats my propane                                                 tank there covered up. I thought the fence posts were pretty all                                                covered in snow like this.

Heres the back view of old barn. we store some of the local hay and                                       the tractor in here.

WINTER WONDERLAND!

Yes it sure does look like one! Im staying in and getting some sculptures done between short outings with the dogs, ( they have a hard time in the deep snow and miney has no tummy hair so she gets really cold and hates to wear her little sweater..
it doesn't cover her tummy well anyways.. )this is how they would ather spend the day! warm and toasty! ( Oh and on all pics click to see them larger)


We also had wanted to go get this girls horse( she had a d on craigs list and we wanted to help since she lives near us, but her horse is not close by and is in a bad place and  doesn't have free access to water or food.. but we can't get out of the driveway with the horse trailer anytime soon, so I hope he is ok until next week when they say the weather will warm up some, she has been going out and feeding him every day and hauling water by hand from the house..unfortunalty there are 2 other horses there starving and no water.. the poor girl lost her job and can barley feed her own horse..what makes me so mad is the owner of the other 2 has money..she just doesn't care.. and yes we will be turning her in! were trying to do something but this county isnt alot of help. if theres anyone near marysville who wants to help let me know at becky@solticeart.com and I will pass on to to andrea(the girl) your emaill or phone number. Im not too hopeful they will live long in this weather without help.. they are not in good shape as it is! .... until the weather warms up some were preparing for a possible power outage as its going to get really cold and maybe really windy, and if that happens., well as you can see the trees are full of snow and its going to freeze and then the limbs will start breaking. last year we had a few outages with just the wind..there are lots of trees around here


. Ive been watching the snow fall in big dust like storms off the trees.. its really pretty and I wish I had  better camera that would caputer that.... mines too slow. So! ok so heres more pics of the farm in the winter.And the horses,


heres penny and her 23 year old morgan gelding Wildfire who is pretty crippled.. he has laminates and cushings. He has free run of the farm and when the others are out in the front pasture he hates to be alone so will walk down the driveway which is where he was when penny found him.. here she is takign him in for lunch and a rest. he lays down alot, but with the deep snow seems able to move pretty darn quick! 


Here's Chance, wildfires half brother who is also around 24 and is also a lamanitic and possibly a cushing horse also . not as bad as wiley is so he goes out with the rest of the group. if we put wiley out they are mean to him, but chancy is the boss so he doesnt have that problem!



heres Misty, Pennys morab mare who loves chancy.. he is her boy! she looks so soft like a velvet teddy bear,and has the most beautiful eyes! and are really big like a deers. ... but looks are very deceiving! She is also herd boss when Chance is not in with the rest and is very bossy with the others... they don't get near her at feeding time!!! she snakes her neck and lays her ears back and looks lek she is gonna kill ya! .. lol


Heres my grouchy quarter horse/ appy mare lucy... She was a pmu rescue as a 6 mo old.. shes now about 7 and is in training to be my trail horse.. I think she is one of the most level headed horses on the farm and is really smart and quiet to work with, but she is also kind of a bitch. lol.. she is about 14.1 hands.. see how deep the snow is in places! none of them seem to mind the snow much.


Oh the palomino is sky. a 6 yr old gaited morgan gelding .. see his weird smutty markings.. in the summer he gets so dark you can barley see them! the other appy is jazz a 7 yr old gelding.. we got him to be one of our trail horses, he hates ring work!
they are all fat, fuzzy and happy!

oh and tonight the sun came out for a few minutes.. I was able to capture it hitting the trees on the pasture next door. it was even brighter in life than in the photos and so pretty.