So Mother Nature continues to be a real bee-itch and make riding darn near impossible in Virginia.  Sub zero wind chills and now the looming possibility of up to a foot of snow.  Seriously, Mother Nature, you suck.

What is a rider to do when they cannot ride and grooming your horse means white, stiff fingers within 20 minutes?  You go hibernate indoors.  My house is the cleanest it has been in months.  I have scrubbed grime from crevices that no one else would notice.  Closets and drawers have been decluttered.  Cabinets are organized.  Sketchy containers of condiments have left the refrigerator.

And then I decided to tackle my home office.  Yikes!  It is amazing how quickly papers and other assorted things accumulate in my office.  It is the dumping ground for things that don’t have a better home.  It is also the place where all my horse show ribbons live.  I have only been competing for 3 years with Ike and prior to that, 5 years with Cigar, but boy are there a lot of ribbons loitering about the room.  As you can see, they had become “curtains,” but I feared that the miniblinds would cry “Uncle!” and collapse into two heaps on the floor.  I am embarrassed to admit, but the ribbons were a bit dusty.  There were also cobwebs and one, all right two, sheesh, three dead stinkbugs found amongst the colorful satin.  The horror!!  I boxed Ike’s smaller ribbons from his first two years of showing and only left the yearend awards and his 2014 season ribbons on display…after removing the offending dust, cobwebs, and dead bugs.  (Seriously, where did those stinkbugs come from?!!)

There does come a point though that you need to do something with all the ribbons.  Leaving them in boxes seems silly; there were a lot of blood, sweat, and tears poured into earning those pieces of satin.  You can donate them to a class for projects, dump them in the trash, or find someone with mad-crafting skills to turn them into something decorative.

My crafting skills are limited;  I managed to make the Valentine’s wreath above with some of the ribbons, but sewing is beyond my reach.  I opted for option three and turned to a more talented crafter to make something fabulous.  I collected all of Cigar’s show ribbons and handed them over to my friend’s soon to be daughter-in-law who wanted to try her hand at upcycling ribbons.  Let me just say right now that I wish I had done this sooner!  What an awesome way to honor Cigar’s short-lived dressage career.  She made me a hanging quilt and a decorative pillow using the streamers and some of the rosettes.

The coolest feature of the quilt is the back where the show details from each streamer are chronicled.  Lauren put a lot of thought into the design and I could not be more thrilled with the results.

The pillow is adorable and lives in a room that always has the door closed.  My dogs thought the pillow looked like a pretty dog toy…the rosette was particularly tempting.  Once I had these two commemorative pieces, I felt better about tossing the unused pieces and reclaiming some space in my closet to now store Ike’s ribbons.  It is a vicious cycle.

So now that the house is clean and organized, spring can hurry up and get here.  This girl is ready for more saddle time!