New farmlet name, and simplifying

First off, you will probably notice that the blog looks a little different. Congrads to DA for suggesting (offline) the name for our little farmlet - Wyvern Oaks. The wyvern is on my hubby's coat of arms, and symbolizes our love for medieval recreation, and of course the Oaks part is just a wonderful way to describe the land as we have so many oak trees. DA, I owe you cookies! Also, many thanks to Zhizhu for making the lovely collage you see as the blog header. I think it really exemplifies everything that makes life here so wonderful - it's a beautiful bit of artwork. Again, thanks!

In other news, I have recently been reading quite alot over at Simple, Green, Frugal and taking notes. One thing I am really trying to do this year is simplify - get rid of stuff we don't need (and HOLY COW is there a lot of STUFF!!!), cut back on what we bring into the house, and just generally take things that complicate our lives out. We have so much going on, we really could do with a little less.

So, in the vein of simplicity, I have decided to close down the Saga Chronicles blog and reinvent this blog as a combined horse and house (house and horse?) blog. The house and the horses are integrated now that we keep them at home, so this make sense. In addition, I started the Saga Chronicles blog to keep track of my progress with Saga in eventing. However, since I've had him for a bit, I've realized that the competitive bug isn't so strong in me as it was 10 years ago with Cash. Instead, I really enjoy trail riding through Sunset Valley after work, and foxhunting in the fall and spring. I miss the lack of goals sometimes, and it's fun to get gussied up and strut our stuff, but that's not where I am right now with my riding or my life. That's OK with me - I rather like the horses being less pressure and more fun time than it is when we're showing. Besides, for those of you who event, you know what a huge time commitment it is - riding 6 days a week for an hour a day, plus all the prep for shows, lessons, etc. - it's exhausting and you can get burned out really quickly. Not having that pressure is, well, kinda nice.

So, welcome to Wyvern Oaks, we have cookies. And horses, chickens, dogs... and oh, the barn. It's looking AWESOME. I'll have more pictures tomorrow, and I am holding out hope that they'll have all the metal up. WOOOT!!!