Hold Your Horses, Breyer's on a Roll!

Goo-ood night!!  BreyerMidwest ended Sunday and already Breyer is busy sending out notices of new models. Three this week already and it is only Wednesday as I write!

The second 2025 Vintage Club release, Admiral and Wings, was announced today, and my jaw literally dropped when I saw it. (Er rather, THEM.)

The 5 Gaiter is one of my top five favorite molds and one that  I conga - I have 27 of them. (Soon to be 28, hah!)

What a surprise to be getting two Traditionals this time. And I love their color - that wedgewood pinto is beautiful.

Breyer had this to say about them:

I am wondering what that "unique vintage packaging" will look like. I ordered my pair as soon as I got the email and I can hardly wait for the set to arrive. Thank you, Breyer!

Breyer released Mallorca, another Exotic Destinations Web Special, on Tuesday.

I like that mold and I like the color. A lot of folks will be entering to be drawn for him, so my chances aren't high, especially since I did win Prague, the last Exotic Destinations model offered. Winning two in a row seems unlikely to me, but you never know, right? Fingers crossed!

The 2025 Volunteer model was released last weekend at Breyer Midwest. 

Its name is Salud (with exclamation points on either side of the name.) Two colors were handed out; speculation is that a third color will be revealed at BreyerFest.

Black is my favorite horse color (and has been since Breyer first released charcoal Family Arabs) but I think I actually like the grey better.

Speaking of black horses...

Nistar Blazing Kansas LOM and his dam, GTF Blazing Ethel will be present at BreyerFest. Unlike many of the guest horses, models will be available for purchase. (I already have the set. Like I said, I like black horses.)

Whew! Breyer is really on a roll this week. Not that I mind - I am excited at the prospect of new models to add to my herd.

Another Family Tournament

Second Post of the Day

If you are a Baby Boomer like me, you remember candy cigarettes. Shocking to think about now, right? But when I was a child, the dangers of smoking were not very well known and it was common for adults to smoke. Kids even played a form of freeze tag called "Cigarette Tag" where you called out a brand of cigarettes to protect yourself from being frozen by the tagger. Really.

Anyway, things have changed big time and I haven't seen candy cigarettes in years and years. Basically they were a stick of sugar with an orange colored tip to simulate the flame. 

And yes, we did imitate grown ups with them. The photo in this meme is accurate. I've done it. (Although I've never smoked.)

Anyway, I share that so you understand the opening comment in Music City Son Cole's text below in which he makes a tongue in cheek reference to candy cigarettes and sets up our family NCAA basketball brackets. 

Also, the name of our league, the Bitter Bocce Losers, is named after our 4th of July family tournament. Don't miss the video in that blog post. We may be competitive, but we have fun, too!

Nineteen of us are playing - grandparents, parents, and kiddos, and the first two rounds were this past weekend. 

And he's right, the grands who know nothing about basketball and made their choices based on team mascots last year beat us all!

This year, the grands have again made some interesting choices, and several of them are climbing the leaderboard.

Cowpoke Ian is tied for second!

Surprisingly Mountain Mama Jessica and Hawkeye Todd are at the bottom. As for me, I'm tied with "This is Good" Susie at 15th. (Susie did indeed go for Grand Canyon University who went out in the first round of 64 teams.)

I still have a chance - Purdue has made it to the Sweet Sixteen and I have them tapped as the tournament champion. (Last year they came in second in the tournament. Fingers crossed.) Cambria, too, may make a sweeping comeback as she has Purdue taking it all, too.

I love our family tournaments, whether it's Fantasy Football, the Super Bowl, Bocce, or the NCAA Basketball tournament. While the games are being played, the family text chain is dinging fast and furiously as my family comments and throws zingers at each other. It's a lot of fun.

I may not know a lot about sports, but I love how sporting events bring my family together.

Boiler Up!   

Celebrating Healing

First Post of the Day

Craig and I head to Indianapolis a couple of times a month to volunteer for our church. For the first time since November, I felt well enough to go. (And sans walker, too. Huzzah!)

Our best friends moved to Indy in August and invited us to drop by before our shift for a chat. We never turn down an opportunity to spend time with Lisa and Pat.

I enjoyed being healthy enough to volunteer and I was thrilled to see our friends, but I got a cherry on top when I looked at this picture.

At last I can see progress in my healing from the surgery! Whereas pre-op I used to look pregnant (at my age and with a "pregnancy" that blossomed more to my side than to the front), I could see that most of that was now gone post-op. 

I hadn't recently seen a photo to check that. Early on I'd taken some pictures to document my progress,

Pre-op and "pregnant."

But the first post-op photo I took was so disappointing and very upsetting to me.

I looked worse, not better! 

I know now that that was due to 1) lots and lots of post-op swelling, and 2) loose skin that had been stretched for several years and still needed time to shrink. (You'd think this mama who has had six full term pregnancies would have realized that.)

Anyway, I wasn't even thinking of my pseudo baby bump when we took the pictures with our friends.

But how nice afterward to look at them and realize that I am improving, I am getting better. I'm deflating!!

And I am grateful.

The March, 2025 Give Away Winner

Who will be our winner this month? Spin the wheel to find out!

Congratulations! I'll pop Millicent's book into the mail to you tomorrow or Thursday.

I'm also going to let Millicent know that her book was the March give away prize - she will be happy to hear that.

Thanks for playing, everybody. There will be another give away next month so stay 'tooned!

Collections Within My Collection: My China Carpet Herd

Glass horses - that's what Leslie and I called our china horses. I don't know why; they certainly weren't made of glass. I think it was because we were so young and didn't have a clue what china was. Glass equaled breakable, and these pieces certainly were that. Hence, glass horses.

My collection began with a glass horse, Brownie. Brownie is absolutely my most treasured piece in my entire collection. He is also a mess.

Santa brought him for me when I was six; no wonder he is a mess. All those breaks were lovingly fixed by my father using the yellow drippy glue from his workbench. Each of those gloppy lines is a reminder to me of how patient and loving my dad was as he fixed Brownie again and again.

A picture I drew when I was little of me getting Brownie for Christmas. That's my dad in the chair.

Hobbyist Heather McCurdy knew how much I loved Brownie and actually came across another one a few years ago. She purchased it and gave it to me at a Great Lakes Congress show. It stands next to Brownie in my china cabinet, a reminder of a very thoughtful friend.

Santa had no idea what he was starting and the glass horses began accumulating on shelves that my mother purchased using her S & H Green Stamps from the grocery store. 

Leslie and I used to be in charge of gluing them into their books. It was so exciting to go redeem them and get a new shelf for our ponies!

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a good place to find Hagen Renakers and other makes of china horses was in a gift or flower shop. Here in Lafayette, we had Bowers Gift Shop. Bowers only carried those chinas that were made in Japan; I was unaware of Hagen Renakers until I read an article in Horse and Rider magazine and saw photos of Zara and Zilla.

Leslie and I used to stand and look at Bowers' beautiful glass horses (hands behind our backs so we didn't break anything!) and wish and dream that they could all come home with us. Some of them did, and I still have almost all of my earliest pieces. 

Diamond Dindy, a Lefton, was my favorite foal. He has two leg breaks and a chip on the side of his head, but I only have to pull him out of my china cabinet to feel my heart soften and my eyes get a little misty. I loved Diamond Dindy (and I still do; I teared up just writing that.)

Of course, Diamond Dindy had parents. His father was Black Diamond, a Lefton Saddlebred. Black Diamond was the very regal and dignified leader of my glass horse herd. 

The beautiful Trimontware Falda (a misspelling by me of the name of the horse Falada in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, The Goose Girl) was Black Diamond's wife and the mother of Diamond Dindy. She was the boss mare in my 1960s herd. 

Like the Freeman Leidy circus horses, Falda has beautiful eyelashes.

Despite being the size of a Breyer Traditional, Mollasus was a gentle giant. And, when I got Needles, a woodgrain Running Foal and my very first Breyer, she became his mom. 

I kept Needles and Mollasus together until about five years ago when I decided that she would be safer in the china cabinet rather than out on the open shelves with my Breyers. Doggone it if I didn't feel a pang separating the two!

Using scraps of wood from my dad's workbench, I built Mollasus and her "husband," Desert Wind (long broken and gone) a barn.

Leslie, Jenny, and I would play with that barn and Mollasus and Desert Wind out under our crab apple trees.

Counterpoint was a sweet, Little Bit sized Saddlebred/ Tennessee Walker. His name came from one of my favorite books at the time, Scarlet Royal, by Anne Emery. 

The only pony in the glass horse herd was Bobol. A gift from my friends, Bobbie Sue and Carol, I combined their names to get his. He is one of the only members of my glass horse herd that doesn't have any breaks!

Old Maude wasn't actually mine; she belonged to Leslie and was Leslie's favorite glass horse. Like Brownie, the original Old Maude is not in good shape but she is lovingly packed safely away. I bought this one from Karen Beeson because I, too, had loved Old Maude. 

I'd always wondered where the name "Old Maude" came from - it's not a name a little girl would come up with. It was on Thanksgiving Day, 2020 that I discovered the story behind the name. I cherish the china Old Maude even more now that I know why she was named that.

An old Lefton mare and foal set (that is missing the standing foal that was part of it.) This mare was added in the 1990s; I don't know what happened to the original mare and the other foal. 

And while they aren't copies of the Hagen Renaker mini sets, I would not be surprised if they were inspired by them. 

There is a box of carpet herd chinas tucked away in the closet. I always open it and unwrap each piece when I am reorganizing or cleaning. The trip back through beloved memories is always worth it. 

Those models may be chipped, broken, or even missing pieces, but I remember them as they were and the joy they brought me. And you know what? They still do.

Collections Within My Collection: My Plastic Carpet Herd

Last month, I wrote about how hard it was at times to write. I mentioned that I had a file of topics, including one that would take me 27 blog posts (at least) to complete. The topic of that file? Collections within my Collection, and I am starting that topic today.

Naturally, we will begin where it all started - my carpet herd. That can be broken into two parts - the chinas and the plastics.  Even though my very first model horse was a china, I'm going to begin with the plastics.

Rather than reinvent the wheel as I tackle this major project, I found a blog post from 2019 with  information about my carpet herd that I'd like to include today. After it, there will be more carpet herd members to look at.

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December 8, 2019

Once in a while I mention my original carpet herd, the pieces from my childhood that were played with before I considered them collectibles. Many were Japan chinas, but those are packed away in boxes right now. Here are some old Breyer favorites from my original collection from when I was in elementary school:

 

Hercules

This big boy was one of my first pieces, and I used to make harnesses out of felt and thread, and then a wagon from a shoe box and Lincoln Logs for him to pull my dolls in. I am very fond of this guy.

 

Dappled Dude

He's not dappled, he's an Appaloosa, but I named him after a pony at Girl Scout Camp (Sycamore Valley on the Wildcat River out by Hershey) that I loved. Dappled Dude took my dolls for rides since he came all tacked up and ready to go.

 

Sheena, Black Minx, and Shannon.

Their names are from horsey books that I read; recognize any of them? Black was my favorite color for a horse at the time. Come to think of it, it still is! 

Scojeadon

I got her in the mid-70s. She's named after a real horse I cared for. Scoj's owner, Susie Gillespie, hired me to feed her mares, Scojeadon and Sycamore Lass, and donkey, Jose daily. I cared for them from 7th grade through high school graduation. Sue's nickname was "Scottie", and she combined that with the names of her two best friends, Jean and Donna, to come up with Scojeadon.

I am a little dismayed that I cannot remember this guy's name!

Miss Windy Warpaint (Where did I come up with that name?)

Windy is one of my favorite pieces in my collection.  I used to make her tack and have her go down by the Wabash for trail rides, carrying my dolls. I remember one snowy day when my friend, Bobbie (another avid collector and horse lover), and I took our horses and dolls down to the creek that runs through the neighborhood I live in right now. Back then it was a creek through a cornfield and perfect for a ride in the snow.

 

Sham

Sham is named after a horse in the book King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry. Hamilton has now eclipsed this mold, but I will always love it.

 

Torpedo

Despite the fact that he's in a standing position, Torpedo was a fast horse for my dolls to ride, hence the name. It's also because of Torpedo that I realized I was in an earthquake once. I was about 11, and per usual, was playing with my horses. Torpedo was still on the shelf, and when I went to pick him up, I noticed the chain reins, which were dangling like they are in this picture, were swinging back and forth. Then I realized the house was swaying! I wonder if I would have noticed the motion if not for the reins?

Tribal Dancer

Yet again, another black horse! His name came from a horse show program for the Lafayette Society Horse Show which was a HUGE deal when I was growing up. I always wanted to be a ribbon girl and hand out ribbons while wearing a pretty dress. I never got the chance, but I did get to show my own real horse, Cee Hunt, there a time or two. 

Missing from the photos are my dappled grey Running Mare and Foal, Yellow Mount, Adios, Man O'War, all the FASs, FAMs, and FAFs, and my charcoal Semi-Rearing Mustang.

I have written up a plan for the dispersal of my collection when the time comes and Lisa has offered to be in charge of that. Several hobby friends have agreed to act as consultants should Lisa need help.  

Regardless of where my collection ends up, it has been an important part of my life since I was six years old. I may no longer have the dolls go for rides down by the creek, or make wagons and saddles from scratch, but I do enjoy looking at them every time I am in my office. And just this afternoon, I gave Torpedo a big kiss on the nose when I finished dusting him.

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I took some pictures of those that were missing from the 2019 blog post. I did my best, but I need help right now getting those models off their shelves. Please bear with me - some day my body will behave again, right??

Craig took this photo of me dusting my carpet Man O'War last year.

Needles, a gift from my dad when I got my braces on in 6th grade. He suggested the name after the racehorse and because there are needles used at the dentist's office. Hah!

Frosty, my most favorite Breyer in my collection. I saved up my babysitting money (fifty cents an hour), hopped on a bus downtown, and bought him at Hertz' Pet Shop. (Yep. A pet shop.) He cost me the whopping sum of $6 so I worked 12 hours to earn him. He's been worth every hour that I babysat.

Lady Lafayette (on the left) and her baby whose name escapes me. They are on the top shelf and I can't reach them to check tags.

My early Yellow Mount (with forearm spot) and Adios (named Sunny Day's Delight after a childhood friend's Morgan.)

I loved that charcoal FAS so much; charcoal is my favorite Breyer color. The bay is named Dark Star.

Their "wives." At least, that was how I saw these two mares when I was a kid!

Their "kids" were the bay with stripe on the front left and the charcoal just to the right in the background. My Family Arabs really were families!

Windsong Whipporwill, an early Clydesdale Mare (sporting a blanket I made her for fun.)

and her foal, Tecumseh, who I named after the Shawnee Nations leader who is a large part of the history here in West Lafayette.

I've had a lot of model horses come into my collection over time. Some stay for a while and others pass through and are sold or given away.

But these horses in my carpet herd? They are with me for as long as I am here. I cherish them and the memories I have made with them are priceless to me.

Next entry in this series will be about my carpet herd chinas. Stay 'tooned!

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Last call for the give away! Comment on any/all blog entries starting with this past Friday and through today at 11:59 PM Eastern. 

I'm about a quarter of the way into the book and am enjoying it. Here's your chance to get one of your own.