DIY: Bling it on.

A few weeks back there was a lady who boarded her gorgeous Lusitano mare for a month at the barn. She had the most gorgeous brow-band for her bridle and I was so inspired to make one, since buying one was pretty ridiculous price-wise ($150 and up for a brow band!!!).

So after some shopping on ebay and amazon, I found a nice v-shaped brow-band and some pretty crystals and brooch. The actual shopping for items took a few weeks, but putting it all together took me one afternoon.

Here it is! Max's first bling-y brow band!

And on the model himself:

I rode in it Thursday night and it held on pretty well. However after I took some pictures today, he did one huge head shake and off fell the brooch. Seeing how it's kind of large and dangly anyway I decided to take it off and just make it a plain ol sparkly brow band. Please excuse the wrinkly table-cloth!

Still pretty!

Today we did some small jumps to get him back into things. He really loved hopping over them and running around. Then we hit the trails where he freaked out a bit, spun around and starting running back to the barn. Well I wasn't having that so we did some (very small) circles and then we marched right back to the trails and completed it. He can be such a cheeky devil sometimes!

Oh, and before I end this post, here are obligatory ribbon pictures, and a few of his pompadour resulting from his careless owner forgetting to undo his forelock braid for two days!

Our first show!

Today was our very first dressage show together! Max has been improving by the mile-full with his willingness and response to the aids. On Saturday we had the BEST lesson ever and I had full confidence he would do very well in the show.

The day started out great. My very wonderful hubby came along and helped me get Max ready. And take pictures and videos of course ^.^

The craziness that is getting ready..

Max was quite ..expressive during Intro C. By Intro B he had calmed down a bit. Here are pics and a video!

We scored 61.3 in Intro C - which is not bad considering! And a whopping 70% in Intro B! Woohoo! This is the first time I've seen a seven in my scores so I'm super excited about that. Max can really be a champ when he's not busy being a goose. The judge was super nice and told me we had some really great moments and some rather interesting ones too. She also told me she used to own a horse that looked just like Max, also name Max! Imagine that!

Moving forward we have a jumping lesson coming up next weekend, and then our very first hunter pace the weekend after that! Woohoo!