Celebrating My Blogoversary Week with the Ultimate Blog Party!! #UBP13

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Erin

Celebrating My Blogoversary Week with the Ultimate Blog Party!! #UBP13

By: Erin

Until the other day, I had never heard of the Ultimate Blog Party, or #UBP13 When I started seeing it here and there across twitter and facebook, I didn’t think much of it. I thought, Oh I don’t have time for that as I have so much going on already. I think I saw that hashtag one too many times because here I am writing up my own party post! LOL I thought it would be appropriate, to participate and be part of the party seeing that on April 10th, my blog will be having its 1st birthday or “blogoversary” as I’ve learned it’s called. So why not take part in a week-long party to celebrate this?

I’m not entirely sure what it all entails or what I’m getting my self into with this, but why not?

I’m hoping this will introduce me to other bloggers and new friends, so if this is your first time stopping by, welcome!!! I am so glad you stopped by. If you have been here before, well then I’m glad you came back to visit me again. That makes me happy too. 🙂

My name is Erin and I’m a California girl, born and raised who has always had a love for horses, hence how the word “Horse” made it into my blog name. 😉 I adore horses and I love to travel all around LA, the OC, and Southern California finding fun things to get into and involved with. Tada! Put those two together and you have what has become “Horsing Around In LA”

I tend to blog about my adventures around LA and anywhere else life takes me, horses, photography, anything involving Disney, causes that are near and dear to my heart, as well as product reviews and giveaways from time to time, and anything else that my heart desires. I’ll stop now and just leave you with a few photos that should sum up a little bit about me and things I love.

Lets rock this party and roll on out!

My logo that I worked so very hard on with my friend Rocio who helped me bring my idea to reality with her mad skills. Thanks girl! 🙂

Yeah, I kinda sorta like horses if you haven’t noticed?

Venturing into the New Year: Do-Overs, Re-runs, Repeats and Fresh Starts

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Erin

Venturing into the New Year: Do-Overs, Re-runs, Repeats, and Fresh Starts

So what’s going to be different about this year? I can’t say for certain, but I do have this blog now. That is something I didn’t have a year ago, to help me stay accountable for this. Like anyone else out there, there are many things I wish I could do over and have a fresh start with. What better chance for that than a brand spanking new year? A blank slate where you get to choose your destiny and decide which way the year is going to turn.

I know you can’t choose or control everything that happens around you. You can’t just decide your destiny and what’s going to happen to you. Things change, plans changes, stuff happens beyond your control that may get in the way of your master of plan of how things would be in a perfect world. Oh boy, do I know that one, even though its only 10 days into the new year. It’s been a pretty challenging 10 days so far and everywhere I’ve gone it seems like one thing or another has gotten in my way to try to prevent me from going to where I was attempting to go to, but yet I still managed to make it. I just had to change my path to get there. It may have taken longer than I would have liked, but what else can you do besides just keep moving on?

I’ve noticed a trend lately, that instead of a New Year’s resolution, people are choosing words to guide the New Year. As we venture into the 2nd week of the new year, I’ve been thinking about (as I tend to over think everything) what my word should be for the year. Many come to mind, and thus it’s been a struggle to just.choose.one. In the end, I’ve chosen to go with the word:

Persevere

To persist in or remain constant to a purpose, idea, or task in the face of obstacles or discouragement.

Here are just a few things I would like to persevere in this year:

1)Work– I’ve been stuck subbing for YEARS. I NEED to get into something else. It is time. I cannot afford to try to stick it out and wait until all these teachers supposedly retire or the district’s budget issues resolve and can afford to hire back all the 100’s to teachers that should be working. I’ve been hearing that since I received my credential back in 2005. I’ve been looking for another type of job non-teaching related for a while, but employers seem hesitant to give a poor teacher a chance, which really baffles my mind. I’m very trainable and teachable, I learn and pick up things very easily on my own or from direct instruction from someone. At 70wpm I most likely type faster than anyone in their office. Or maybe that’s the problem? That I can think for myself and have a mind of my own? If the conventional type of job isn’t going to give me a chance, then I need to start getting more creative in this manner and think more outside the box.

2)Blogging– This ties into number one. I need to be more consistent in how often I post, and spend more time on my blog and look for more opportunities for sponsored posts and ways that I can make blogging more like my “job” and less of a hobby. That would be ideal since I truly enjoy blogging and all the fun adventures I have been given from it. Blogging can also be very overwhelming at times, I need to make sure I don’t let that get to me. Same thing goes for anything I may not be invited to that other bloggers are. That can be disappointing, but I know there will be other things that I will get to go to that others will not. That’s just how it is. I need to always remember to not get discouraged from that and not take it personally.

3)Working Out/Exercising More– Last year I didn’t completely fail at this. I did end up running in 3 1/2 marathons and I earned the Beach Cities Challenge Medal. After that was finished though, I totally slacked off. This year I’d like to stick to running a few 5K’s, make it to the gym at least 4 days a week, and I’ve been thinking of maybe taking up swimming again. I never got the chance to in high school, since I chose gymnastics over swimming as a team sport. In college I did take a few conditioning swim classes with some friends my freshman year and I was pretty much offered a spot on the team if I wanted it. I didn’t take it as I was so busy with school, working at the optometrist office, and riding and showing the ponies, I didn’t think I’d have time to add swim team to that list.

4)Horses– I want to get out to the horses more and at least try cross-country once this year and see how I like it.

Here are some people you might know who persevered and never gave up on their dreams and aspirations. This sincerely gives me hope for the new year that I too can accomplish what I’d like to as long as I keep going and work hard at heading in the right direction and not let a “NO” answer get me down and frustrated as it often times does.

Walt Disney- Mickey Mouse? Disneyland? His first animation company went bankrupt. He was fired by a news editor because he lacked imagination. Legend has it he was turned down 302 times before he got the financial backing for creating Disney World.

J.K Rowling- The Harry Potter Series? Twelve publishers rejected her manuscript! A year later she got a deal to publish the book but was told that she should get a day job because there was no money in children’s books.

Dr. Seuss– Cat in the Hat? Green Eggs & Ham? Some of my favorite books to read as a child. 43 different publishers rejected Dr. Seuss’s first book To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

Colonel Sanders— Kentucky Fried Chicken? KFC? He was rejected 1,009 times before he heard his first YES!

There is no success without failure.

Decide what is important to you and take action everyday even if it feels like a lost cause. Success doesn’t happen without failures. It’s reality. Accept it.

Deal with it. Succeed.

Thankful to be back! NaBloPoMo November Round-Up!

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Erin

I really wanted to do this at the beginning of the month. Then I was bombarded with work, being sick, and all that fun stuff… now that I finally had some time to relax and catch up from the Thanksgiving Holiday, I can FINALLY play catch up on the millions of blog posts I need to finish!!

Thursday, November 1, 2012
Tell us your favourite quotation and why.

One of my all-time favorite quotes would have to be from good old Dr. Seuss!

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

I’ve always loved this quote. A good reminder that you can go wherever you want to in life if you are willing to put the effort into it and steer yourself in that direction in which you want to go.

Friday, November 2, 2012
If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

I don’t have any exact location in mind, but somewhere warm, tropical and beachy would be nice. :-

Monday, November 5, 2012
What are your thoughts about tomorrow’s election in the United States?

Ummmmm No comment on this one… DON’T even get me started on this one… >:/

Tuesday, November 6, 2012
If you were President of the United States, what would be your first act in office?

I would change sooo many things if I was the President of the United States… the FIRST thing I would most likely do, is help out the poor schools in our nation that are suffering terribly. I would take a lot of the money that goes to these big wigs that mishandled our money as it is and put it directly into the hands of the EDUCATORS, the ones that ACTUALLY TEACH our students. NOT to the folks in the district offices, who most likely would also use the funds to their own personal advantage and NOT towards the students it was originally intended for… I would make sure that without a doubt the money went into the schools to REDUCE class sizes (30-33 KINDERGARTEN students in ONE classroom with ONE teacher with NO HELLP?? THAT IS INSANE!!!!) Yet, I SEE. IT. EVERYDAY. It’s not cool folks. And its YOUR CHILDREN that are suffering from this (as well as the teacher attempting to teach this many students at once) I also would make sure to put in Principals that are NOT so disconnected with the classroom and give off such unfriendly, COLD vibes (just an FYI to any principals out there… treating your subs this way is the QUICKEST way to LOSE ANY GOOD SUBS like myself from EVER wanting to go to “YOUR” school EVER AGAIN (well as long as “YOU” are in charge anyways) and would be why your school always gets the “bad” subs. I recently had a sour experience with a principal that had NEVER heard of the game “SILENT BALL” REALLY?? How could you have EVER been in a classroom and NOT know what this is?? I grew up in this said school district, and we played it in ALL of my classes growing up (sitting on our BOTTOMS on TOP of the desks!! GASP! SO DANGEROUS according to the above mentioned principal) UMM sorry, but that’s just how you PLAY THE GAME if you even KNEW WHAT IT WAS! We ALWAYS played sitting on our desk and I’ve NEVER been told that it was not ok to do this and ESPECIALLY not in such a DEGRADING way with the principal making a point to tell me that SHE was the principal and this was “HER” school… anyways this principal was just looking at me like she had never seen or heard of this rainy day game and was NOT VERY NICE AT ALL ABOUT IT!! 🙁 You can check that school off my list of schools I want to return to! Even though the kids were awesome… awful administration is SO NOT worth it. There’s a thing called KINDNESS, some people (hint hint) need to use more of that! It’s really not that hard to smile and be polite to your guest teachers that have sacrificed a lot to make the pennies that we are currently making as this is NOT where the majority of us had planned to be by now in our careers due to all of these so-called “budget-cuts” that I am sure could have been avoided if the upper administration had done their jobs correctly and not been so greedy with their own paychecks as their main priorities… We got our credentials to TEACH in the classroom full-time with our OWN classes, not to stay up all hours of the night clicking away on the sub website to maybe get a job working at your school bright and early the next day with little or no sleep depending on how late we had to stay up to get said job!

Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Talk about the last compliment you received.

Sometime last week, from one of the kids about how pretty my hair/shirt I was wearing was… heh You’ll get that a lot when you work with kids… don’t know if they are truly being sincere or if they are just trying to suck up to you though!! lol 😉

Thursday, November 8, 2012
If you could have any job (and instantly have the training and qualifications to do it), which job would you want?

I’d love to have my own property with a full service hunter/jumper barn and train horses/riders from beginners on up through the Grand Prix Level. Yeah, that would be nice. To be my OWN boss would be even nicer. I would also love to just blog full-time, if I could make a living from it. That would be perfect. 🙂

Friday, November 9, 2012
If you could change one thing about your life right now, what would it be?

That it wouldn’t be so hard to find a full-time job. Wether it be with blogging, tutoring, or teaching (or whatever else!) I would just LOVE to have a stable, full-time job so I can finally move on with my life, instead of living in limbo 24/7 and not knowing when I can “move-on” with my life and get my own place and everything else I dreamt I’d be doing with my life by now.

Monday, November 12, 2012
Where is your favourite place to blog?

In my room.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012
What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?

Started substitute teaching, since there haven’t been any full time teaching positions… Trust me. If you’ve been in a classroom, then you know what I mean… If not, get yourself into a classroom. Even if it’s just for 30 minutes or so. You’ll see in an instant that you need to be an extremely brave person to step into some of these classrooms… you never know what you are getting yourself into, until it’s too late to back out of it.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Tell us about the best meal you ever cooked.

Steak, pasta salad, fresh veggies, potatoes, and cheesecake. YUM! 🙂

Thursday, November 15, 2012
Tell us about your favourite pet.

I love all my pets I’ve ever had. Mandy (my first dog) whom I loved to pieces. Sadly my parents gave her away, which broke my heart as I never understood how you could do that to a member of the family. Then Paige, a Bernese Mountain Dog we had for almost 13 years, and our cat Moe (a black and white tuxedo cat that you’ve probably seen tons of pics of if you follow my blog, Facebook page, Twitter, and/or Instagram accounts!) He’s been a part of the family since he was 8 weeks old, and he is now 15 (will be 16 in April!!). Then there are the countless stray animals I took in, to try to find their families or at least find them a nice new home as sadly my parents wouldn’t let me keep them all!! You also cannot forget all the horses I’ve met, ridden and leased throughout the years… I love them all just as much. <3

Allie having a grand old time in the turnout!!

Moe in his Spiderman Costume!!

Friday, November 16, 2012
Would you buy your dream house if the price was right BUT you also were told it was inhabited by ghosts?

Yes, I don’t see why I wouldn’t at least give it a try to see if we could make it work for us or not. I mean it is my DREAM HOUSE, right??

Monday, November 19, 2012
If you had to get locked in some place (book store, amusement park, etc) overnight alone, where would you choose to be locked in?

Disneyland. How can you feel alone at Disneyland?? 🙂

Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Talk about the opening of your favorite book.

I have so many favorite books… my mind is on overload right now and I can’t think straight of an opening to just ONE of the books. 😉 Some of my favorites include; Bridge to Terabithia, Where the Red Fern Grows, Digital Fortress, Devil in the White City, The Help, and The Pillars of the Earth.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Where is your favourite place to read?

Somewhere nice and cozy.

Thursday, November 22, 2012
When was the last time that you cried? Why?

It’s been awhile since I don’t cry very often. This was very memorable though so I remember it very clearly. Last December when my EX-boyfriend made me cry because he did not like the lovely simple BLACK cocktail dress I was wearing to go to his company’s christmas party… he didn’t like black, so he demanded me to change. I refused. I know I wasn’t in the wrong at all and we needed to leave so we wouldn’t be late. What I had on was perfectly acceptable. He refused to leave and continued to criticize what I was wearing… Funny thing since when we FINALLY did get there (and NO I DID NOT CHANGE) EVERY. OTHER. GIRL. there had on some kind of black cocktail dress, skirt or outfit on as well!!! Needless to say, I wasn’t with him much longer after that. NO WOMAN deserves to be treated that way and talked down to in such a manner as I was that night!

Friday, November 23, 2012
What is the hardest word for you to say?

I don’t know, I do remember though one of the teachers I had during my student teaching had said one of the hardest words for people to say in general is “picture” since the way most people actually say it sounds more like “pitcher.”

Monday, November 26, 2012
Do you speak more than one language? How did you learn the additional languages?

Not really.. I speak English, and a little bit of Spanish. 2 years in middle school, 2 years in high school, and 1 semester in college…. yeah. I still can’t speak it worth anything. I wish they would have concentrated more on the speaking part in school… not so much the writing. Since I can write it much better than I can speak the language!! >:/

Tuesday, November 27, 2012
If you could instantly know any language in the world, which one would it be?

Since I am half Sweedish, I’d love to instantly know how to speak Sweedish!

Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tell us about the worst trip you ever took.

I’ve never really had a truly horrible trip. The worst part about the traveling, is the getting there part. Especially if you are traveling by plane… I’ve had BRAND NEW luggage get ruined by airline workers just tossing it as they please, missed flights because of silly human errors that should NOT have happened (like the airlines not realizing they were going to have to take off on the shorter runway, which they SHOULD have already known about considering the longer runway was CLOSED for REPAIRS!! )Because of this, the plane weighed too much for us to take off. So they had to defuel 4,000 pounds of jet fuel OFF of the plane in order for us to take off…. I could go on and on about all the joys I’ve had dealing with airlines. Yep. Lots of fun those airlines…

Thursday, November 29, 2012
Tell us about three new blogs you found this year.

I’ve found so many awesome blogs this year, from all the amazing friends I’ve made. Here are three of them that I like to read a lot!! 🙂

Rockin Mama, Metropolitan Money Pit, and Confessions of a Fat Girl

Friday, November 30, 2012
What has been the hardest part about blogging daily?

LOL Considering this is the first time I’ve made it to the computer to blog about this…. I’d have to say LIFE!!??!