Link Your Ink!

The lovely ladies of Sage the Blog and Sew My Soul have come up with a wonderful link up that I'm super excited about!

Link you ink! A friend of mine once told me "Tattoos are a thing of our generation." I grew up in a family where tattoos were a big no-no, and still are. It's just not something you we should ever think about getting. As my mom would say, "You can't love something so much that you need it on your body forever." I'm not so sure I agree with her.

I was always nervous about wanting a tattoo and every time I saw someone with one I assumed that they were rebellious and not someone I would be friends with. But my first summer at Sombrero all that changed.

The first girl I ever met there was this hippie from Chicago who rode English style and was full of rebellion. She had a tattoo across her forearm of 5 birds. She said it represented all the people in her family. I was like "who is this girl, she thinks shes so cool." Then she became one of best friends! And that tattoo was just so her!

As the summer progressed, it seemed like getting tattooed and pierced was the thing to do with our spare time. In my two summers at Sombrero somewhere around 10 of us got a tattoo, piercing, or both!

I was inspired! I knew after I left that second summer that I was going to get one, it was only a matter of time. And I went through this rebellious stage my senior year of college where I didn't care what anyone thought or what the consequences were. So one day on the off chance that my best friend also had the day off we went and got inked up! Ironically both on our ribs!

I was beyond nervous, I knew exactly what I wanted to get and it meant so much to me I didn't even feel like explaining it too anyone. I knew it was going to hurt, but only for about 10 minutes. I was SO EXCITED!

Finally after ten minutes of pain, several pictures of the process, a small chunk of change, and a rush of rebellion, I was finally in the #girlswithink club!

So my tattoo is so small it's actually irrelevant, but it means a ton to me and I want to add to it very soon.

My tattoo looks like ancient hieroglyphs to the normal person, but to anyone in the horse world, they know it's a wild mustang brand. The BLM brands all of their caught mustangs with a coded sequence on the left side of the horses neck. They show up white because they are freeze branded on. {I went for black because I wanted it to show up}

How to read the BLM Brand:
-US
-1st two: Year of birth
-Next 2: State they were found
-Last 4: Personal ID number

How to Read My Brand:
-US
-My birth year
-Colorado's State Code
-Estes Park Zip Code

My brand reads: United States 93 180517


I got this tattoo for a few reasons. 

1. I spent two summers in Rocky Mountain National Park and those were the best 6 months of my life. You don't understand unless you were there living it.

2. I met my best friend, my other half, and my better self there.

3. It's the most beautiful place in the world

4. Mustangs are my favorite. I plan to adopt several one day and I am a huge advocate for the treatment of wild horses.

They say you shouldn't get a tattoo that has something to do with how you're feeling at that moment or what you're into at the time. So I got a memory, something that will never go away, a time in my life that I never want to forget.

So my tattoo is small and looks like scribbles to the average customer, but it means more to me that I can even describe and I'm so glad I got it. I just can't wait to add to it. If I could add on, I would add 3 purple mountains with white tops. I would add Long's Peak {naturally}, A mountain, and I'm not sure about the last one, maybe it's somewhere I haven't been yet.

Do you have any crazy ink that only makes sense to you? Or did you have traditional parents too that didn't believe in the power of ink?