Merry Christmas from the Wild Ones!

 Last Saturday, I got really excited when I woke up to snow falling. In all of the years that we've done Christmas pictures with the horses, we've never had fresh snow on the ground.

However, Colorado was being Colorado, and within hours the snow was gone. Sunday, the day we chose to take our pictures, was gorgeous, bluebird sky, 50+ degrees, no wind. Absolutely perfect day for taking pictures, except for the lack of snow.

I crocheted the horses Christmas hats a couple of years ago, but Miss Pearl and Copper kept shaking theirs off, so this year, I added strings to tie them under their throats. Those strings were magic - suddenly the horses thought the hats were part of their halters and weren't bothered in the least. Goofy horses.

I went on a Christmas hat crocheting binge this year, and made hats for all the cats in the family, then thought, why not?, and made one for Mary Kathryn, the hen.

Before the chaos of the horses started, we began picture taking with Mary Kathryn. She did not approve. 

L.E. and Mary Kathryn

She's the only hen I like and will touch. It
helps that she comes running to me when she
sees me. (I'm not special, she loves all humans.)

During our dress rehearsal a couple of weeks ago, she kept shaking it off, so I added a string to tie it under her 'chin' and behind her head thinking that would work. I had a plan - I was going to have L.E. put her down under the arch and get cute pictures while Mary Kathryn ran to me.

Here's the thing: Mary Kathryn has survived bobcat and hawk attacks. I don't know why I thought she wouldn't be able to outsmart the hat.

L.E. put her down, and Mary Kathryn said, "no, thank you".

Hen: 1, Humans: 0

Well, at least it was funny (to us, MK is still mad at me). The horses were next, and things went much better with them.

Copper just adores hims daddy.

Skeeter is a mare,
adoration isn't in her vocabulary.

The 'kids' look like teenagers dragged to
an event they don't want to go :D

L.E. and Miss Pearl (who
does not believe in posing
under the arch).

L.E. and Fred the Farm Dog

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Surprise Horse Cookies

(Cross-posted from It's a Horse Life.)

Two weekends ago was our annual Baking Weekend at the lodge. It's always a big to-do, and we always crank out a lot of cookies, but we've never made cookies for the horses before. The Friday of Baking Weekend, I had to drop Jay off at the airport on my way up to the lodge, and as I was driving, I drove right past the barn where my friend boards her horse. I looked at the facility and immediately thought, "we should make some horse cookies." Now, why I thought about it when driving by my friend's horse's barn and never while looking out the window at our own horses, I'll never know, but the idea took root.

I was running ahead of schedule, and hungry, so when I stopped to grab a bite to eat, I looked up horse cookie recipes that wouldn't require me to go to the store to buy more ingredients. There were a lot of yummy sounding ones, but the one I landed on was this one:

This seemed easy enough, and we had all of the ingredients, so up to the lodge I went with my additional project in mind.

Luckily, I got up there before everyone else, so Mom and I had undisturbed mother/daughter time to whip out these treats for the horses. They came together very easily and quickly. 

I quickly wrote down the recipe on a white board so we didn't have to keep going back and forth to the video. In the video, she said to bake them at 315*F, which Mom and I decided had to be a mistake, so we baked ours at 350*F. Very quickly, we smelled burning molasses, and turned the oven down. If you chose to make them, follow the video's directions.

We dug through our cookie cutters and found a cowboy boot, cowboy hat, and a horse to use. Not that the horses care about the shapes of their cookies, but they made us smile. We chose to leave them unfrosted, as none of our horses need the extra sugar, and we didn't want to bother with the mess.

I did taste one, just because, and it's not horrible to my human pallet, but not great. The horses, however, greatly disagree and think they're about the best cookies on the planet. Washoe and Alloy got the first taste of the cookies after they loaded into their horse uber, but the rest had to wait until they'd finished with their Christmas pictures yesterday.

This is a simple and easy recipe to make, and the horses give them four hooves up.