The New Forest Ponies

My daughter and son in law live in Southampton, a short drive from the New Forest. The promised artic blast fortunately did not get this far south at the weekend and so our planned walk in the New Forest was cold but not bitterly cold. We decided to walk in a different part of the forest this time and started our walk from Burley. We walked the bridle path and were quite surprised that it was not too muddy; our aim was to find some of the famous New Forest ponies.

As always the boys strode out ahead whist Milly and I caught up with all our news ;0) This picture is quite deceptive as although it was beautifully sunny with pretty floating clouds it was cold. Hats, scarves and gloves were the order of the day as well as lots of layers!
We did not need to walk very far at all until we found the first of these sweet creatures.

This one was not too shy at all and allowed us to pet him ;0)

New Forest Ponies do have owners but have an almost feral existence in the forest. Every year they are rounded up and checked. They also have their tails clipped in a particular way which links them to their owners.

On we walked to see how many more we could find.

Hello little fellow, another real sweetie who was happy to be petted. We also found lots of other wild life on our walk including....

cattle, we did not go too close to this one..we thought that was the wisest thing to do ;0)

Amazing big beetles

and more sweet New Forest Ponies. This little group were very shy, if you look closely there is actually a dapple grey pony hiding on the right here.

We also found some great Sweet Chestnut trees and we gathered lots of chestnuts from the forest floor to take back with us.

We were able to find a whole bag of chestnuts but needed gloves to pick up the very prickly shells.
We then headed back to Burley to look for somewhere for afternoon tea.

Burley is a pretty little village and the Old Farmhouse is a delightful thatched roof tea house with beams. We found a snug table and ordered 2 cream teas to share between the 4 of us.

Mmmm raspberry jam, clotted cream and freshly baked scone with a warm cup of tea. It was a perfect end to our cold but pleasant walk. By the time we left it was getting dark as we made our way back to the car.

This was the view as we left the village and as we walked along the road we were really surprised to see an old stone direction marker. These are quite rare as many have just eroded but the writing on this one was quite clear and written in old English

"Rest and be thankful" what an apt saying having just enjoyed our afternoon tea.

The clocks went back on Saturday night and we are now plunged into our darker evenings. At 4.30pm yesterday it was already dark. November will have arrive on Thursday and there are only 56 days til Christmas. I am really gearing up my Christmas card making and I will soon start my annual hand made crackers as these do take some time and there will be 8 of us here on Christmas day. My card challenge today features a fun stampendous jolly snowman stamp and a lovely silhouette stamp with Santa and his reindeer from Visible Images.

I stamped the Santa in black and added some holographic embossing powders to make it shine, it's hard to show it in the photo. I coloured my snowman with Promarkers and highlighted them with Prismacolor pencils. I used some more LOTV stamps on the blue back paper and the sentiment  and tags are LOTV too. Everything got a dash of glitter glue and the pearl snowballs were make using a Viva pearl pen.



This card is for sale here in my Etsy shop

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;
The Crafty Pad #194 Christmas is coming
Joanna Sheen Silhouettes my silhouette is the silhouette stamp of Santa in the sky with his reindeer
Dream Valley Glitter and bling #44
Party Time Tuesdays Anything Goes #92
Natalie and Amy #3 colour me happy This is my favourite colour combo of the moment, blue and pink

I would also like to mention that the Ribbon Girl is offering a £15 voucher as part of their new products launch. Do go and check out their great on line store.

I have a rare luxury of a day in my studio today so I am catching up on some bag charm orders and making some more cards. Whilst I am snug in my studio I will be thinking of some of my American friends who may not feel so safe with the terrible Hurricane Sandy hitting the East Coast. Stay safe and my thoughts are with you all that it does not do it's worst.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x