Golden Hearts Giveaway

This morning of tea and blueberry scones has been my best morning since (Surprisingly) last Sunday's blueberry and scones. So it is the perfect day to start my very first giveaway! There will be two winners in this giveaway, both winning one of two equally beautiful chokers from the pair I have dubbed the "Golden Heart Twins."
Prizes:

 First:
 "For the Anachronistic Heart"
 This stunning choker features an upside-down clock face with a small white heart dangling from it. At the top of the heart sits a small "diamond" gem. The center piece sits on a silky white ribbon that shimmers lightly under the right light. 

'The Victorian heart of the twenty-first century, asks not that the clock runs backwards; rather that it runs upside-down. Thus allowing modern times and classical times to run simultaneously in an absolutely beautiful disaster.'  

The ribbons ends are dipped in a small bit of clear urethane glue to insure that they will not fray. It closes with a small gold chain and silver clasp.

Second:
"The Key to Rose's Heart"
This lovely choker features a disconnected center piece of a ornate key and the head of a rose. It sits on the same silky white ribbon that shimmers lightly under the right light as the above choker.

 'My little darling Rose,
Please never swallow keys,
For if your heart unlocks,
A flower will bloom from thee!'

Like the above choker, the ends are dipped in a small bit of clear urethane glue to insure that they will not fray and it closes with a small gold chain and silver clasp.





***Since I create jewelry by re-purposing old materials, the small gold chain used for closing the choker is limited. Thus, for the sake of my material amount, and to make sure the winners don't receive chokers that are to big or to small, I will be asking for the circumference of their neck in centimeters. Please be sure to account for the fact that the choker needs to be tight enough to sit properly yet loose enough to not kill you.

Deadline: Sunday, March 25
Winners will be chosen randomly via Random.org on March 26 so make sure to check back then.

How to Enter:
You can have your name added to the mix up to three times:

1. Follow my blog.
2. Write a blog post about the giveaway that includes a link back to this page.
3. Give 2-3 names I could use for an Etsy shop if I started one this summer.

Note: You must add a comment to this page about what entries you do for them to count. (Tell me you follow my blog and want to be in the giveaway so that I don't add followers who do not, give me the link to your blog post, and post the name ideas in the comment section).

A Book and a Rant

 School has been keeping me very busy lately, we were doing homework for the next semester before we had even finished finals. However I am going to try to get a post in once a week. Probably a 'middle-of-the-night post'' like this one. However, this post has two parts to it, as the title suggests, so onto the first!

Apropos... Horses and Riders by Hans Senn (edited by Nell Kromhout)
This book is short, 50 or so pages if you include the introduction. It's filled with a bunch of small phrases and tips that is not only immensely useful for your skills as a rider, but also applicable to your everyday life. I read this book before my riding lesson and choose a few of the tips to work on as I ride. I am not sure how it'd translate for western riders, since I believe it is targeted towards English. The only downside to my tired midnight rave about this book is that I have heard it is getting increasingly harder to find. I  love this little black book. I highly highly recommend that you track down this book if you are an equestrian. In fact, I am so fond of this book that I am going to start putting quotes from it at the bottom of posts if any corresponds.

The second part of my post is more of a rant. Horses are constantly learning every single time we ride them or work with them. They don't speak our language, they have to figure out what we want them to do. Not only do they learn of what they are suppose to do, but also what their rider will allow them to get away with. So it bothers me to no end when I see a rider get lectured about a bad habit that forms quickly and is difficult to fix but then allow their horse to form this bad habit outside of their lesson. Horses do not know the difference between a lesson and playing around; especially when you are doing the same exercise, in the same arena, only in your lesson you don't let them do the bad habit and outside of the lesson you do. It is most definitely not fair to the horse. I can already picture the rider who is getting frustrated at their horse for having this horrid habit when it the rider who taught it to the horse in the first place.
Which brings me to my first quote of Hans Senn's book:

"If you don't train your horse, he will train you."