Hello from southern Wisconsin!
I chose my user name in honor of my first equestrian love...the beautiful but sad unicorn-turned-girl in the movie The Last Unicorn. It was the first movie I ever remember watching as a kid, and was my favorite!

I'm (obviously) new here, and I can't post or view any pictures on here until I make one of these introductory posts, so I guess I'd better get on it. I'm a bit wordy by nature, and I'll try to keep it short, but then I always say that and it never happens, so no promises. I'll start with the suggested questions, and then go from there.

How old are you? 41...so I was a kid in the 80's and was likely the target demographic that the original ponies were marketed to. Yep...fell right into that trap and never climbed out! Probably too old to be collecting ponies, but lately it seems like my world is so small, and as a mom of young children, I needed something to do for myself, and restoring my childhood collection sounded like a fun project that I could get behind.

Where do you live? Wisconsin, USA. More specifically, in the woods, on a river. My husband and I just bought our first house together after moving around for the past 10 years.

Do you work or attend school? I'm currently on an extended maternity leave, which will likely last until my youngest are in full-day school.
Profession or major? Orthodontics.

Who are the most important people in your life? My husband and 3 kids; a preschool-age boy and infant twin girls.

Ponies:Am I supposed to list them all? Gosh, that would take me awhile, and I probably don't have anywhere near as many as most people on here do!

How long have you been collecting? Well, I received my first pony for my 7th birthday, a pony I named "Tiffany" (I have since figured out that her actual name was Sparkler. It was ironic that MLP released a princess pony by that name a few years later!). I was not very interested in her at the time, sadly, and I'm not sure whatever happened to her, but I guess that was the beginning of my collection. But a few months later, my sister received a baby pony for Christmas from my grandparents. This was Christmas eve night, and suddenly out of the blue, I coveted a baby pony too more than anything else that year. I'm not sure how 'Santa' was able to procure one in time for Christmas morning, (I actually asked my mom about this recently and she doesn't remember; perhaps she had the baby pony marked for one of my siblings, or just on hand as a back-up gift in case someone got invited to a birthday party?) as I had previously showed no interest in ponies until that very moment, but somehow he and his elves came through, because my Baby Blossom was under the Christmas tree. I adored her, and she went everywhere with me for a long time. Still have her, in reeeally poor condition, the poor thing; super-frizzy, yellowed, cut hair, and her body is now a strange shade of yellowed gray, but I don't have the heart to get rid of her. I became obsessed with ponies in the months (years?) that followed, eventually amassing 80+ ponies between my sisters and myself, and almost every playset, including the Paradise estate.

Which generation do you collect? G1 ponies are really the only ones I am currently collecting, as I'm concentrating on rebuilding my childhood collection; in fact, I'm really not even interested in anything produced after 1987, because that was when I stopped being interested in ponies in favor of drawing, and then, rather embarrassingly, boys and clothes. It seems like they got really gimmicky after that year anyway; I found some of the gimmick additions distracting while trying to play with them and act out storylines--like...why is this pony fuzzy and the rest of them aren't? Our 2 or 3 so-soft ponies ended up becoming grizzled old 'grandma ponies' that lived in a retirement pony home and rarely got played with, and I thought the twinkle-eyed ones looked too soulless to have a personality! However, I wouldn't mind owning one each of the mane 6 g4 ponies just to add to my collection; I've been watching the show on Netflix with my girls, and although I used to think the 'new ponies' were ugly, they are kind of growing on me. I really know nothing about g2 and 3; don't know how to tell them apart even...maybe I'll get there eventually when I have all the g1s I want, but I'm starting with the familiar.

What made you want to collect ponies? Well, of late, I was prompted by a bit of a pony tragedy. Bit of a backstory (my gosh, sorry I am SO wordy!)...my childhood ponies are now on their 3rd life. Maybe they will have a 4th, if my kids are interested in them. But when I married my husband, he was a single dad to *drumroll*...4 kids from a previous marriage. The kids came to live with us shortly after we married and I had moved into his house. We had absolutely nothing for them, and money was tight. We 'borrowed' my and my siblings' old ponies and playsets from my parents' basement so they would have something to play with. They loved them, but outgrew them, and when we moved cross-country, we returned them to my parents' basement in 4 massive boxes. A few months back, my sister inquired what happened to them all, as she was trying to bring them out for my niece to play with at Grandma's. I told her where my husband and I placed the boxes in my parents' (borderline hoarded) basement, but no one could find 3 of the 4 boxes. My mom then informed me that during a massive rainstorm, a large window well had filled up and exploded into the basement, carrying mud and floodwater in. A family friend had helped clean the mess up, and some things got thrown away. I had placed the boxes directly under that window well. It was lucky that the one box survived, I guess, but it rankled me that no one could give me a direct answer about the rest of the pony stuff, including all the playsets and at least 2/3rds of the ponies. We have searched and searched, but it can only be assumed that my dad and the family friend must have not understood the collector or sentimental value of those things and trashed them. I was upset, and set out on a mission to rehab the remaining herd and replace all that was lost, so I have been scouring the ends of the earth to track this stuff down, although quite inconveniently on a piddly stay-at-home-mom budget. I am embarrassed to admit the amount I've dropped on ponies lately; my husband and parents would be horrified! I still have many things to replace, and I think I will have to rehair some of my remaining originals (something I'm intimidated to learn, but hope I'm in good hands with some of the tutorials on here), but this has been a fun opportunity to snag up a few ponies I always wanted in the 80's but never did get! (Glass half-full, anyone?)

Tell us about your collection! The only 'completed' collection I really have so far is that I have all 6 original baby ponies. I'm working on amassing the 6 mother ponies that go to them (I have most). Then I will probably move onto the first 6 rainbow ponies, collector pose ones, year 2 adult ponies, and go from there. Most of the ones I have are all randoms. I have several sets of twins (and sadly, a few single twins...guess their siblings got lost in the flood!), which I love, maybe because I have twins in real life! I love baby ponies best, and own most of the ones I want to collect, although I'm not a fan of the beddy-bye-eye ones, so it would be awesome to find a few NBBE varieties of ones that were originally released with them (I just found out these exist!) I do have a Paradise Estate and 2 Lullabye Nurseries (I had to buy 2 to get all the accessories it originally came with, I'll probably try to sell one of them if I can manage to wrest control of it from my 4-year-old son, who has become as obsessed about the ponies as I am, to my chagrin) that I was able to find in recent months, just looking for replacement parts to complete the PE, and to the Cuddles baby buggy that remarkably survived in decent shape.

To anyone who actually read through this monstrosity of an introduction, I commend you for your patience with my rambling! I hope to 'meet' all of you soon and look forward to perusing this site often!