Friday, July 29, 2011

Hotel Tour: Night Hotel NYC

Well we have officially returned alive from NYC. I have lots of stories to share next week but I thought I would leave you with my hotel review. 

I love to stay in different hotels that are a little bit off the beaten trail, but still really cool and modern. This place seemed like the perfect location as it was just off Times Square, and was just a really neat boutique hotel.

The Night hotel is one block off Times Square and is a 9 floor hotel. The is a Starbucks just down the street, 2 Irish bars, and a few really nice looking restaurants on the street.



No matter where you stay in NYC the rooms are small. This place was no exception. After we did some furniture rearranging I was able to get my luggage down on the floor with a tiny walkway. Not to big of a hassle but a touch more room would have been great. I loved the decor in the room, and the lighting was great too. Notice how the bed was underlit!


The modern look of the hotel was carried throughout. I loved this cowhair couch that was in the lobby. Although it was well worn in now, it was really cool and I would love to have it in my house any day.


I would highly recommend this hotel for any trip to NYC. The staff was great, and the location was perfect. The only downfalls were a smaller room, but for how much time you are spending in the hotel, it was easily over looked!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Takes All Kinds Winners!

Thank-you to everyone who entered the give away for Ty Christian Wilson's debut album Takes All Kinds. After a tally last night (sorry for the delay, some plane troubles from NYC postponed things) I am pleased to say that we have our 3 winners!

Each winner will win a copy of Ty's album through Itunes. Please send me your contact info to stacy.young@live.ca so that I can get your prize out to you!

Now for the big winners:
  • Suzie Salmon
  • Tiffany
  • Alyssa Clark
Congrats ladies and can't wait to hear what you think of the album!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Album Review: Takes All Kinds

Because of my give away that is happening right now (it closes tonight so don't forget to enter) I thought I would give you a quick review of the album now that I have had a chance to listen to the whole thing.

I had heard parts of some of the songs both on Facebook and Ty's Youtube channel, but also in person when I had heard him sing live. As great as they are in person, I have to say they sound much better recorded. I am not talking Brittney Spears better where the voice is unrecognizable, but just the addition of more instruments, background vocals, and a little bit of production really help the songs come to life.

Of all of the songs I am having a hard time coming up with a favorite. I really like Work Boots, Wagon Wheel, and Takes All Kinds. Just Another Country Song is a great track as well.

There are songs like Sisters that really just make you laugh and smile, especially when you know Ty's sisters and how beautiful they are.

The whole album has a great mix of classic country, with a bit of rock, and a touch of... Ty! A little bit of hardcore rocker with a soft side, and a touch of humor. Just a awesome mix, and really refreshing!

Be sure to enter the give away to win one of these albums, or head over to Itunes to purchase your copy today. Trust me you will not regret it!

Monday, July 25, 2011

Farming- Part 4

It has been a bit since I have done a crop update post, mainly because the rain never seems to stop for the crops to grow!

This was the last picture of the 2 fields that I had taken. These are from the end of June after a rainstorm.



Now the fields have really started to fill out and grow. The one field is canola, the one with the bright yellow flowers, and the other is a crop of barley. 



I have always loved the bright yellow crop. Canola crops are used for the seed that they produce to make canola oil!

The barley crop is coming in real nice as well. Barley is a feed used mainly for cattle feed, and also for beer!


Friday, July 22, 2011

Stanley's Shower

With Stanley Jr, or SJ as we have started to call him, coming 4 weeks early, we thought that last weekend was the perfect time to through him and Bethan a shower and get him introduced to all of the friends and neighborhood in the area. Bethan tasked me with the job of planning the shower, and she would take care of inviting everyone, as she would know who should be there.

So I went to work planning, and baking and getting some decorations together to make this shower great. Half way through getting things set-up on Saturday I realized, I had never been to a baby shower before! It was to late to worry about that so we just finished what needed to be done, and had a great time during the shower!

Little boys need blue velvet cupcakes!
I even had "the Eng" helping me bake
Chris loves rubber ducks, so we put some on the cupcakes
And we had a massive spread of food!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The End of The Revolution

The last few months have kind of been a bit disappointing around the farm. This winter we were really excited about our calf crop as we got some great embryo calves, and finally got some bull calves out of our Sr. herdsire Revolution. After not getting any bull calves the first year, this was pretty exciting to us, and they really have been looking great so far.

We own Revolution with our good friends at Beechinor Bros Simmentals. This is the 2nd herd sire that we have bought with them and it has always worked out great. Being able to buy high caliber bulls is expensive so to be able to buy them with other breeders sure makes it easier and we have been able to advance our program much faster then normal.

This spring Beechinor's had Revolution at their farm as it was their year to run him at their farm. We were using semen that we had drawn at a stud to breed cows to so that we could still use his genetics. The boys called us one day saying that he was lame and that they were treating him until he got better. A few weeks went by and he was still not better. They pulled him from the pasture and continued to treat him. They even had the vet out to look at him and see what was wrong, but she could not find out what was wrong.

More weeks went by and the boys, and the vet still could not find out what was wrong. After a bunch of tests, some x-rays, and lots of babying they found out what the problem was. The injured foot was one of his back feet, and somehow a tendon got hurt or poked and started to degenerate. The options were either to try and do surgery to fix it, but that was expensive and no idea if it would actually fix that problem. The other option was to draw as much semen as we needed and then ship him to be killed. He would not be able to breed anymore, and so his purpose had been served and was no longer of use.

After doing some thinking we took him down to stud and drew some more semen and he is getting shipped here soon as well. It will be up to his progeny to carry on his legacy and we have ample amounts of semen to use in our herd. He will always be remembered and we had a lot of good times the last few years with him. Winning National Champion Bull and getting many complements on him and his calves has been the real crowning achievement. We will miss the big guy and hope to be able to find someone to replace him.

IPU Revolution 172U- 2008-2011

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Takes All Kinds Give Away

Well it is that time for another give away here on the blog. This one comes courtesy of my friend Ty Christian Wilson, and his first album release titled "Takes All Kinds". 

We have known Ty and his family for years through the cattle business. Some of you may know him as part of the Miller Wilson Angus farm, or a Red, or now as the soon to be country superstar Ty Christian Wilson.

Ty has decided to fly solo and release his first album without a record label. It just dropped yesterday and is available on itunes, or here on my blog we are going to give away 3 copies of the album!


Now how to enter. There will be 3 ways for you to enter to win this awesome album
1. Leave a comment on the blog
2. Become a fan of the Ty Christian Wilson fan page
and leave a comment saying you did so
3. Tweet about the album and make sure to copy in @slycattle

Entries will close on Tuesday July 27th, with the winners announced on the 28th. If you cannot wait to get you hand on this album it is available on Itunes right now. I will have a review of the album later this week once I have a chance to go through a few more songs, but let me say that if you like original county with a little bit of rock then this album is for you!

Good luck and enter as many times as you can!!

Friday, July 15, 2011

Esks Cheer Team

This week has still been crazy, and thank goodness it is over today! Thought that I would leave you with a video from the Edmonton Eskimos home opener that we went to a few weeks back. You can see the team cheering during a TV time out!



Hope you all have a great weekend!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show- Results

Well the Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show has come and gone, and it was a great success for all of those involved.

There were some great cattle exhibited, and I was able to meet some really neat young kids that are the next generation cattlemen and cattlewomen.

Congrats to all of the winners both in the ring and outside. Hope to see a bunch of familiar faces out again next year, and good luck to all those that started to compete at Summer Synergy yesterday.

Here are a few pictures of the winners!



Champion Herd- Megan McLeod
Champion Purebred Female- Lori Morash
Res. Champion Purebred Female- Colby Heaven
Champion Commercial Female- Cole Dodgson
Res. Champion Commercial Female- Dakota Townsend
Champion Purebred Angus
Champion Purebred AOB Female
Champion Charolais Female
Ch. Jr Commercial Yearling
Res. Jr Purebred Yearling
Res. Sr. Commercial Yearling

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

It's Almost Give A Way Time!

Things have been a little hectic this week. I am trying to get some stuff done for Bethan's baby shower, and in the mean time doing some work, going to a concert, and doing some cooking and baking.

I didn't want you waiting for a whole week for some good blogs, so with the help of my good friend Ty Christian Wilson we are working on a little give away for the blog! Stay tuned for more details to come but in the mean time check out his sweat album cover for his first album release! You can also check him out on Facebook.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show

Yesterday I got to head down to Olds to help judge at the Alberta Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show. This was a program my sister and I grew up attending, and have many fond memories of. Crystal had 2 Reserve Champion Females, we had many breed champions, several aggregate wins. We learned how to do show ring judging and about color coordinating outfits while doing this. Jenine and Garth were always the 2 best in this department! And most recently I have memories of having my front teeth knocked out during what was supposed to be a fun night of being hypnotized...

This trip however, I was down helping being an official judge for the judging competition as well as for the marking competition. It was really fun to get back and see some of the kids. It sure does make you feel old when kids who were just born when you were showing are now senior members and almost out of the program.


In the judging competition, there are classes with 4 animals in which the kids must place and give reasons on why they think that they should be placed that way. There is an official judge for the class who will place the animals 1-4 and then there will be people who will listen to the kids reasons. The kids are given a score out of 50 on how closely they placed the class to the official, and then a score out of 50 on their reasons. The perfect score is 100, but I have only seen this achieved a few times in my life.


The kids also got to participate in a team grooming competition. I was not helping with this, but it is still fun to watch the kids in this competition. They are placed on teams of 2, most of the times they do not know their partner before hand. The teams get 15 mins to groom the animal just like it was to be shown in the ring right after. They are judged on their knowledge of what they are doing, how well they do the work, if they work together as a team and how much they are able to change the animal (hide their faults) with their grooming.


It was great to be able to give back to a program that I have been able to take so much from. Everything from life lessons and great friends, to steer cheques to pay for cars and life long friends. There are many memories that I will forever cherish, and it is great to be able to go back and see the next generation continuing where we left off.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

New Arrivals & Friends

I know I have been sharing my weekend adventure with 'the Eng" for the past couple of days, but the truth is that in the last couple weeks there has been a new many come into my life.


Meet Stanley Christopher Walter. He is the new son of 2 of my best friends Chris and Bethan. Lil Stanley was born on June 28th early in the morning, and I got to wake up to a call from Bethan that morning with the announcement of their new arrival.


Although I am not a fan of children I have to admit that this guy is pretty cute. I don't think that he looks like either one of them right now, but I am sure with time that will change.


This weekend I am headed out to see the new family and hang out with the little guy. Don't be expecting pictures of me holding the little guy next week though... I do not hold babies!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Weekend With "the Eng"- Part 2

Day 2 of our weekend started with a little walk to Starbucks. After how much we had ate last night, we needed to get up and moving around.

We jumped in the car and headed towards Breton so that "the Eng" could meet my parents. We had some time to kill, so I thought it might be neat to show him where I grew up. That place was Lewis Farms, and we drove by the main farm as well as the Bull Farm, where we lived as kids. It is always neat to go by Lewis's as it is pretty grand in comparison to most farms.

We then headed onto the farm, only to be met by this 10 mins into the drive....


Yes there was a bike race going on. We thought that there was just a group of ppl out biking, but about 300 bikers later, and driving 20-60km/hr, we went right through the race. The drive went from being 1 hrs to 2hrs, and us almost missing our tee time in Breton!

Along the way though I was able to educate "the Eng" all about farming. We talked about what the different crops were, the difference between silage and hay, and also the timing of crops. It was great to see some canola crops coming into bloom right now!

Pretty yellow fields of Canola
Once we finally made it to Breton, we had a quick 9 holes of golf with my mom and dad. We got a chance to look at the calves at home, and see how they are changing. I had not seen them for a month, so they had grown and changed lots in that time frame.

The next stop was the Ponoka Stampede to watch the finals of the rodeo and Chuckwagon racing. It was a great night out, and there was some awesome action on the infield. The final heat for all the cash in the chuckwagon's was won of the best I have ever seen, with the winner getting to the wire 0:00:01 of a second faster then that guy in 2nd, who also happened to be his son!


It was a great weekend after all, and nice to be able to just relax with some great company along the way. Guess I will really have to do something great this weekend to compete with that!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Weekend With " The Eng" Part 1

This past weekend "the Eng" decided that he was going to surprise me. I am the type of person who really does not like surprises as I need to be in control of the situation at all time. But with blind faith I decided to agree, not that I had much choice, and let him plan a weekend for us.

He showed up on Friday night to pick me up with some beautiful summer flowers! Not a bad way to start the weekend.

I really need to learn the names of all these types
Saturday started with getting breakfast in bed, followed by me being told we were going golfing. I had a feeling leading up to this weekend that I knew the destinations of the activities we would be doing, but not knowing 100% still bugged me a little bit.

We drove out west of the city to a golf course called, The Ranch. It is a really beautiful course, one that I had always heard good things about but had never played.
Our golf carts had GPS which was cool.
The course is real beautiful and it was probably the nicest day we have had all summer. The bugs were not to bad, and it was hot! The course is really neat as it keeps the ranch theme throughout. There was an old thrasher, wagon wheels, skulls and so much more.

After golfing we headed back and got changed for supper. Again I did not know 100% where we were going, but a had a hunch. My instincts were right and we headed to Lux Steakhouse downtown for supper. This is probably one of my favorite places in Edmonton, so he really did a good job picking!


The Lobster Mac & Cheese is to die for!

It was a great start to the weekend, but Sunday would be the real test for "the Eng"....

Friday, July 1, 2011

Happy Canada Day!

Just wanted to say a quick Happy 114th Canada Day to our country and all my fellow Canadian's. Hope everyone enjoyed their day off and was able to celebrate with family and friends.

I see this video this morning and thought that it was perfect for today!