The main reason I initially joined Pinterest was to save links to photos of horse barns and layout ideas for the feed room and tack room. I’ve gotten some good ideas from my Pinterest stalking, but never any that met my needs for horse blanket storage. So I came up with my very own idea and am posting it on my blog so OTHER people can be inspired by my blanket organization idea. As with any organization project it is of course a work in progress.

A few months ago I went through all of my horse blankets and made a list of them in my horse planner (yes, I keep paper planners still) by size. This is similar to my horse planner. Mine is the next larger size, but isn’t currently available on the website. I listed what I have and what I need to add to my collection.

The horse planner blanket inventory pages

I had already put the different sizes in these large, clear trunks that some friends gave us. I love them because they are see through so I can at least get an idea of what is in each trunk.

The blanket trunks before the re-org.

Most things I read about organizing horse blankets had them sorted by season, which I get, but doesn’t really work for me. I only have three horses and to me it made more sense to sort by size. I have a pretty good idea what I have for each season, I have more trouble figuring out the right size for each horse. I prefer to be able to quickly find the right size and determine if I have what I need. The sizes I have the most blankets in are 75, 76, 78 and 80 so each trunk got a poster that indicates which size is in the trunk and what blankets and sheets I have in that size. And since the trunks are see-through I can easily read the outside and know if I have what I need. If I don’t have what I need, I have an excuse to go horse shopping. Yay!

All of the blankets are thoroughly washed and inspected for tears before storing. If my collection gets much bigger I’ll buy the vacuum bags from Container Store to save space. I added the lovely clip art to the posters to add ambience to my tack room.

Labeled horse blanket trunks.

I’m pretty excited how neat and tidy my tack room is now. I also took the time to move my Gladiator armoire from our old dilapidated barn into the new tack room to use for additional storage. The more stuff I can get off the ground and into it’s place the happier I am.

South side view of the tack room.

You’ll probably notice that I also have a Snap-on tool chest, too. When married to a mechanic you take what you can get and I don’t think it’s that terrible to have a $2,600 tool chest to store leg wraps and horse brushes!

At some point I’ll do a retro post and put up the pics of when we built the barn. I LOVE my barn. LOVE IT. Having the right space to store horses and their paraphernalia has made my time so much more efficient and enjoyable at the barn.

How is it already June?! And mid-June at that! I have travelled for work, family or fun every week for about eight weeks. I know lots of people who travel much more than that, but it has been a lot for me. I’ve always been a bit of a homebody so I have to recoup in between trips and this week hasn’t been any different.

Tonight I wandered around the property enjoying the AMAZING weather and snapped some cute and funny animal pics.

Cute mother and kitten post scratching

Until the chicken ran up and scared everyone!

New buddies; Sterling and Coco

Baby’s first lizard

Pretty sunset

Annie meets kitten

Everybody loves Pablo

This past weekend has been one that covers all phases of life. I’ve been planning the trip to Florida for a few months. I have a group of girlfriends with whom I regularly go on little trips with. Usually we go to the far south of Texas to South Padre Island, but lately a lot of our trips have revolved around weddings and babies. We actually all became close friends after attending the many events prior to one of the girl’s wedding in 2008.

In the past three years there have been three weddings and five babies born in our little group! It has been a lovely time sharing these life milestones with such a great group of friends. This was our first destination wedding and it was in northwest Florida near Destin. The happy couple had gone on a long trip with his father and step-mother last year so when they got engaged a beach wedding seem perfect. The couple days before the wedding were soakers so the bride was understandably very stressed about the weather the day of the wedding. It POURED during the rehearsal dinner, too.

As luck would have it the weather the day of was absolutely perfect. Overcast all day with a breeze then the sun came out for a few hours just in time to shine on the wedding ceremony. My pics aren’t the very best, but you can see how lovely it was.

House party headed to the ceremony site.

The lovely ladies of the House Party.

An absolutely breathtakingly beautiful ceremony.

I enjoyed every minute of my short trip to Florida and I can finally understand why so many folks head there for beach vacations.

My travels after the wedding were quite a lot less joyful as Boot City and I drove 500 miles south of Fort Worth after I returned from Florida to attend the memorial service for his Dad. Boot City’s Dad passed away on Memorial Day last week. He had suffered from cancer for over a year so it wasn’t unexpected and was actually very peaceful. He had chosen to not treat the cancer so knew that his time was short and didn’t have the horrible pain and suffering that chemo and radiation inevitably cause.

The thing about funerals, especially those for people who were ill or elderly and it isn’t so sad and tragic, is that they are always a great time to see friends and family members that you wouldn’t otherwise see. I always appreciate that about funerals. In this case we saw many members of Boot City’s family who I have only met once or twice. Many folks had great stories to share about Raymond so it was fun to hear those tales. If I heard it once I heard it 100 times that Boot City is the spitting image of his Dad.

Boot City with his brother and cousins

We spent about 18 hours in the car driving to and from the memorial so we talked a lot about Raymond and the memories Boot City has of his childhood with his Dad. Lots of crazy trips to Mexico, driving and flying around south Texas and Mexico and Raymond’s propensity to mumble, mostly in Spanish. Our summers will forever be bookmarked by the passing of our Dads. My Dad passed away Labor Day weekend of 2006 and now Boot City’s passed away on Memorial Day. I think it is a great way to begin and end the summer to remember our Dads and the many happy memories we have of them. I, for one, always feel lucky that I have/had such a great relationship with both my parents and that I have/had time time with them that I was blessed to have.