Good Bye 2010

Well the time has come to say good-bye to 2010 and hello to 2011!

I have to say that 201 has been one of my best years to date. It has been filled with lots of great friends and memories.

This year the blog was viewed in 103 countries. The highest views came from:
1. Canada
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. Philippines 

We also hit a record 1100 views a month on the blog! Thank-you to all of my followers and readers.

Here are my top 10 favorite blogs of the year.

10. Ice on Whyte
Can't wait to go back to this again this year.

9. Harvie Ranching
I was thrilled to be asked to write this piece about our good friends at Harvie Ranching

8. Olympics in Pictures
These images capture so many great memories. Enjoy the photos here and here and here and here

7. A Little Inspiration
We all need one of these!

6. Ruffles
She will always be my #1 girl!

5. Welcome to Snobwood
A great way to spend all of our birthdays!

4. New York
This was an amazing trip. You can read all about it here and here and here and here

3. Animal Cruelty or Animal Instinct
The truth behind chuckwagon racing

2. 2010 Farmfair Supreme Show
Such a great experience, and it was awesome to come in 2nd and win the trailer!

1. Agribition.
Yet another steller show! You can read about it here and here and here and here and here

Hope you all have a great new year!

Hotel Tour: Red Deer Lodge

I figured that with working in the hotel industry, and for as many hotels as I stay in throughout the year, I should start a Hotel Tour!

I have seen it done on both the Pioneer Woman and most recently on The Farmer's Trophy Wife

My first stop will be the Red Deer Lodge. We stayed there on the weekend for the Checkers Sale.

Door to my room. Love the lit up door number!

The rooms were bright and clean

I had a room with 2 Queens as mom and dad were also staying

 

My problem came with the bathrooms...

Not a ton of light, and need some some major renos

Overall the room was decent. I would not pay the $150.00 that the rooms usually are, however, a hotel with lots of potential!

Movie Review: Black Swan

Last night Brett and I decided to go and check out a movie. We had both been wanting to see the Black Swan movie, and as it was cheap movie night we thought it would be the perfect way to spend a night before we both took off for Christmas.

The movie looked a little out there, but I love dancing, and the movie had gotten some really good reviews so I was really looking forward to seeing it.



I have to say that this is the worst movie I have ever seen. It is weird, creepy, and just messed up. The only good thing about it was about 5 minutes of the dancing, and the rest.... well lets just say it was not good.

Please save your money and go see another movie this holiday season. You will be thankful you did!

Christmas Card Time!

I was flipping through some of my favorite websites last week when I came across this photo.

The Kardashian family always does an extravagant Christmas card photo. This photo was the winning image for Christmas 2010. Personally, my favorite is Khloe in the pink dress in the middle.

If my family did Christmas cards like this, I might just get into the holiday spirit really fast!

Item of the Week #14

Now I know that Item of the Week is usually clothing, but for a bit we are going to be featuring house items as well...

Another discovery that I had at Welsh's was this mirror. I was afraid to look to see how much this mirror was, and if it wasn't so large, and my sister didn't live in the US, it would have probably been under the tree for her this year.

However, I do love this piece. I think it would look great in a bathroom (2 of them actually over double sinks) or in a hallway or foyer.

Natalie

Our other Checkers consignment this year is RJY Natalie. 

We purchased Natalie's dam from the Checker's sale in 2008. Natalie was the calf inside her at the time. She has turned out to be a really great bred heifer.

Natalie is out of the popular sire On Target, that has done some tremendous things for the Simmental breed. Although this is our only On Target daughter, you can see the influence this bull has had within the breed.

Natalie will sell as lot 50 in the Checkers sale on Saturday. The sale starts at 2:00PM. For more information check out our website or the Checkers cataloge.

Sexy Money

This weekend is the highly anticipated Checkers sale. Our family was part of this sale for the first 10 years, and are now making our return to the sale.

Each year there is some of the highest quality red and black Simmental cattle to sell all year available here. Checkers has come to be one of the premier events of the Simmental breed.

This year I am selling one of my own animals in the sale. SLY Sexy Money 119W sells as lot 49 this year.

Sexy Money is a red bred heifer. She is sired by our out cross herdsire Redman, and backed by the Ruffles cow family on the dams side.

For more details on this female please check out the farm's website

Oh The Italians

So I am a sucker for a good pizza. A few weeks ago we wanted to venture out to the newest pizza place in our area, Famoso.

 

Famoso is authentic Italian pizza. Each franchise owner goes to Naples to learn how to make pizza. These pizza's are to die for. They only come in 1 size, and there are so many different flavors to chose from. The best part, is they are actually pretty healthy for you!

The other night we decided to try the margarita pizza. Not only did it taste amazing, but it was only $11! I can say that this may become one of my new guilty pleasures.

Festival of Trees

A few weeks ago my good friend Shaun and I headed out to the Festival of Trees. The Festival of Trees is put on by the University Hospital Foundation. Each year they raise over a million dollars to put into medical care and research.

I have not been to the Festival since we were little kids. Since I am trying to get more into the Christmas Spirit this year, I thought it would be a really fun idea to go. There are lots of really neat Christmas displays.

 

This table was one of my favorites. It was a table made out of slabs of wood, but then beautifully decorated for the wintertime.

There was also a Gingerbread House competition, and cake competition. These are a few of my favorites that were there.

And finally there were amazing Christmas trees! You could buy some of them to take home after the festival. Most of them were $300-$500 to buy. I loved the ones that were a little bit out of the ordinary.

This one had a present on the top

This was a super cool tree shaped as a dress!

Item of the Week #13

While Christmas shopping this year, I have found a lot of really great things. I thought of all my followers when I seen this dinnerware set at Welsh's Western Store in Edmonton.  

Welsh's is a great little western store with 3 locations in Edmonton. Over the next few weeks I have a few really cool items to feature from them!

This Is It 32X

Yesterday we made an addition to the High Country bull line up. We were in need of a new bull to do some clean up work on the cows after AI and Embryo implanting was done. 

You might notice a recent trend that we are loving the baldy cattle right now. It is a nice added touch to add a little white to the face, as long as it is staying off the belly and legs.

This Is It was a class winner at Agribition a few weeks ago, and comes out of a really strong donor cow from the McIntosh Livestock program.

24 Days of Christmas

In my attempt to be more in the Christmas spirit this year, I thought I would share some of our Christmas traditions with you.

Last year I shared the store of our advent calendars. You can read all about it here.

 

This year I did not get my calendar right on December 1st as a certain elf forgot to drop it in my car after Agribition. It showed up in the main on the 7th, and I got to open up a few gifts!

This is what the first 7 days of the countdown got me. Along with some really yummy chocholates!

There is a really neat magnate, actually 2 that say Cattle Chick, a tide pen, a $20 chapters gift card, and Robyn Beazley's new book, Live an Amazing Life!

Agribition Part 5- Making New Friends

Each year at Agribition you always meet new people. This year I have the pleasure of meeting 2 really great people, as well as getting to see lots of old friends.

Emma Burpee met my family when they were in Australia for the World Simmental Congress. She was there working for another breeder, and got visiting with my family. Emma won a trip anywhere she wanted to go as part of a cattle scholarship. She decided to come to Canada to see Red Angus cattle.

Emma stayed with us for 2 weeks when she got to Canada. Her first week here happened to be the same week as Agribition. It was perfect timing for her to come as she would get to experience all that is Agribition as well as getting to meet many cattle breeders.

The other person that I really got to get to know well was Greg Goudy. Greg is a fellow Simmental breeder from Saskatchewan. A few weeks earlier we had taken a trip to see some Simmental cattle together. He had 3 animals of his own at the show.

I event got to show his bull calf for him.

It seems like there is always lots of people to meet at the shows, and new friendships formed no matter where you turn!

Agribition- Part 4.... Way

So it is taking me a little bit to get through all my Agribition blogs. It is a long week, and it seems like so much happens during this time.

For the last few years it has become a mini family reunion for us. Crystal has been able to join us at the show, and mom gets to make it out for a few days as well. Each year I notice that Crystal becomes  more "Americanized" when she comes back to the Great White North.

This year is was not so much an American thing as just a word thing that I really noticed. She has a habit of saying the word "way". Now this does not sound to weird yet, until she uses it all the time and most of the time it makes her sentences become improper English!

After I pointed this out, Jon and I decided that we would use it just as much as her to make fun of her. These were some of out favorite phrases, and most of them were her's originally:

Way Cool

Way Good

Way  Awesome

I can promise you one thing, it is not a phrase that I will be picking up anytime soon!

Bah Humbug

It should come to no shock to many of you that I am not a huge Christmas fan. I am not sure exactly what the reason is, but I though this year I would really make an effort to enjoy the Christmas season.

When I returned from Agribition it was great to see my roommates again. There was also one added addition to our house.... A Christmas Tree!

 

Now this was not all terrible. I do not really like decorating trees, so it was great to have it done and me not have to be part of it! The only problem that I had with it was that it was up before December 1st.... In my parents house we always have had a real tree, and it usually goes up the week of Christmas. So to see one up this early was a bit weird for me.

The best part of the tree had to be 2 decorations that caught my eye. Our newest roommate Kristen is also and Edmonton Oilers fan so I was thrilled that there was someone else on my team!

We told Brett maybe she could get a Saskatchewan Roughrider ordainment, but there was no way a Vancouver Cancuck ordainment was going on our tree!

Agribition 2010- Part 3

Each year one of my favorite cattle events is the RBC Supreme show at Agribition. This event truly showcases the best of the cattle show throughout the year. It is always fun to try and guess what the dollar value is of the animals in the ring. Without a doubt it is in the millions!

This year in the supreme show there were over 40 bulls and 40 females that competed. In each the bulls and females a top 10 is selected. From those 1 bull and 1 female go on to be selected the Supreme Champion! The winner of this prize wins $10,000, but the money is really a bonus. It is the prestige of winning this title.

The winners this year were of excellent quality. I think that it is the strongest top 10 females I have ever seen. While I did not agree with all of the top 10 bulls, the one that one, I can definitely agree on.

Supreme Champion Bull went to Big Gully Herefords, the Leachman family of Maidstone, SK. He was a Horned Hereford bull that they had raised. The Leachman family have been friends of ours for years, dad having known them from back in his Hereford days, and Crystal going to school with their son Lance at Kansas State University.

The Supreme Champion Female was also an excellent choice. It was a cow/calf pair owned by the Serhienko family of Maymont, SK. The heifer calf on this cow is probably the best heifer calf I have seen in a long time. She is flat out good! Dennis has had lots of contenders in the best, so it was great to see him final win the Supreme title.

The show was really fun to watch yet again this year. Congrats to everyone for qualifying.