{"id":63,"date":"2010-10-13T11:07:15","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T15:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carouselandrockinghorses.com\/blog\/?p=63"},"modified":"2010-10-13T11:07:15","modified_gmt":"2010-10-13T15:07:15","slug":"just-horsing-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carouselandrockinghorses.com\/blog\/just-horsing-around\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Horsing Around!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/vicky_dom\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"  alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.carouselandrockinghorses.com\/images\/wood-working.jpg\" alt=\"wood working\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the spring of 1985 after being unemployed for 18 months, we moved from<br \/>\nJackson Center, Ohio to the small rural town of Dayton, Tennessee to start a<br \/>\nnew job. We decided to start making country craft&#8217;s to supplement our income<br \/>\nand begin to pay back the mounding debt. I performed woodworking and Ann<br \/>\npicked up the paintbrush to do the artwork. We tried our hand at many<br \/>\ndifferent items and even held a couple of open houses to display them.<br \/>\nWith Christmas approaching, our daughter Shelly gave us a list as long as<br \/>\nour arm containing all the gifts she wanted for Christmas. However, we knew<br \/>\nwe could not spend money that we did not have. We wanted to give her<br \/>\nsomething special that would last a long time, so I decided to build her<br \/>\nsomething. After much thought we came up with the idea of a rocking horse.<\/p>\n<p>Shelly&#8217;s reaction to the rocking horse, was that of tears and disbelief<br \/>\nthat her Daddy could make something that special for her! Little did we know<br \/>\nthat this would be the beginning of our own business.<\/p>\n<p>A few people from where I worked saw the rocking horse and we began<br \/>\nreceiving orders. In fact, we had 50 orders over the next 18 months. Then in<br \/>\nthe fall of 1988, I heard the still small voice of the Lord say &#8220;Forget the<br \/>\nopen house I will take care of things with the Rocking Horses&#8221;. We took that<br \/>\nto mean that He would use the horses to pay off our debt. So, we continued<br \/>\nto trust God for the orders and in the next 3 months we received orders for<br \/>\n58 more!<\/p>\n<p>God opened another door for us in 1989. We had no money for vacation so<br \/>\nwe built 8 horses from the wood we had on hand.\u00a0 We told our girls (Shelly<br \/>\n11 and Jamie our foster daughter 12), that if we sold any horses while we<br \/>\nwere in Gatlinburg, TN that we would spend the night. At the first place we<br \/>\nstopped we sold 3 rocking horses and then later a couple more in the city<br \/>\nparking lot, so we spent the night!<\/p>\n<p>On the way home the next day we felt led to stop at a shop in Pigeon Forge<br \/>\ncalled the &#8220;Christmas Place&#8221;. We had no appointment, no marketing plan, no<br \/>\nfancy business card and no formal business training, but most of all we had<br \/>\nnothing to lose. The buyer(who turned out to be the owner), agreed to look<br \/>\nat them and immediately said she wanted them. This was the beginning of our<br \/>\nwholesale business. The &#8220;Christmas Place&#8221; now sells about 400 per year.<\/p>\n<p>The business continued to grow about 20% a year and I was praying daily for<br \/>\nwisdom to see if I should take an early retirement and build horses full<br \/>\ntime. In October of 1995 God gave me a confirmation with the verse Joshua<br \/>\n1:9; &#8220;Be strong and courageous, Do not be terrified; Do not be discouraged,<br \/>\nfor the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This verse has become our company&#8217;s mission statement and can be seen<br \/>\nposted throughout the shop.<\/p>\n<p>In 1997 the Classic Heirloom horses were featured on QVC&#8217;s 50\/50 tour and<br \/>\nsold out(209 horses) in 8-minutes. In June of the same year the TV program<br \/>\n&#8220;Tennessee Crossroads&#8221; featured us in an 8-minute segment on PBS in<br \/>\nTennessee.<\/p>\n<p>We work hard, but we have a lot of fun. We have been blessed and we give<br \/>\nall the credit to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, because it was &#8220;HIS&#8221;<br \/>\nIdea. Out of every 100 horses sold, we give one to a Church Nursery, charity<br \/>\nauction or fund-raiser. In addition 10% of every sell is placed into a fund<br \/>\ncalled the Joshua Fund in which we use for gifts to missionaries, churches<br \/>\nor other individual needs that the Lord brings to our attention.<\/p>\n<p>Each horse is signed, dated and numbered. You can see what number yours is<br \/>\nwhen you flip the horse upside down. We hand paint them in 5 styles and 13<br \/>\ndifferent colors. You may have purchased this horse for yourself, a child,<br \/>\ngrandchild or just maybe received it as a gift. In any case, if you are<br \/>\nsatisfied with the quality and beauty of it, would you please tell a friend<br \/>\nor extended family member? And if by some chance you have a problem, please<br \/>\nfeel free to call me!!<\/p>\n<p>John T Sprankell owns All His Horses, on the web <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allhishorses.com\" target=\"_blank\">www.allhishorses.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-hashtags=\"rocking+horse\" data-count=\"vertical\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.carouselandrockinghorses.com\/blog\/just-horsing-around\/\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the spring of 1985 after being unemployed for 18 months, we moved from Jackson Center, Ohio to the small rural town of Dayton, Tennessee to start a new job. We decided to start making country craft&#8217;s to supplement our income and begin to pay back the mounding debt. I performed woodworking and Ann picked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Just Horsing Around!! - Positive Parenting Tips<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.carouselandrockinghorses.com\/blog\/just-horsing-around\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Just Horsing Around!! - Positive Parenting Tips\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the spring of 1985 after being unemployed for 18 months, we moved from Jackson Center, Ohio to the small rural town of Dayton, Tennessee to start a new job. 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