In my opinion, fall is the best time of the year! The gorgeous colors, the smells, the crisp air, but best of all, all the foods laced with pumpkin spice! I love the fall season sooo much! And, recently, we've been getting ready for our fall family photos.

First, I did one with just Misty and I. We had a visitor who was around exploring the sim we live on during this photo, and she came over to have a chat with us! Making friends everywhere we go!


And this, our official family photo. while Jeffry doesn't log in much anymore (other to buy me $Ls), he's still part of the family. So, he was forced to sit for a photo with us.

They both turned out so beautifully, I'm so proud of my amazing family, who sits so patient during making poses, taking photos and holds smiles for what seems like forever. Well, except Jeffry, who's head makes him perma-mad.

Oh, yeah, I have a blog! Let's drop down another blog post today, shall we? Tonight, we leave for Greece de la Oleander! When we visited the Rainforest, Jeffry wanted to do a vow renewal. Well, we booked our honeymoon to Greece, and put down a wedding area. One thing lead to another, and well, it didn't happen. Because, reasons that I'll not talk about today. But, the honeymoon was all paid for and the date has been set, so I'm deciding to go anyway.

I was intending on taking the packing photo by myself, but Jeffry decided to be in it at the last minute. I'm not sure he plans on going to be logging in much at all during the vacation, really. To be honest, I feel a little bit like Carrie in Sex and the City, going on her honeymoon with her group of best friends. But that's okay. Like Carrie, I plan on surrounding myself with friends and some awesome Dragovars while I'm there! We'll have a lot of fun, I'm sure!

Off to Greece de la Oleander I go!

I am so sad that last night was our last night on vacation! We had so much fun, I wish we could have stayed longer! But, a vacation isn't nearly as fun if you stay all the time, right? At least... that's what I'm telling myself right now. I will definitely miss it, but at the same time, I love being at my home. Anyway! The day started well, a very gorgeous day (as every day is in the rain forest, I assume), as I took my daily "waking up" photo.

Turned out cute! It was always so hard to get photos, because everywhere is gorgeous, I could never decide on a place to snap the photo! I wanted a photo in like, all the places! I really, really, really can't wait for out next vacation here!


But! Last night, was our "formal night". I set up the dance area with photos from the duration of our vacation, and some snacks. Jeffry DJ'ed country love songs to me. I really wanted to do a formal night, because I never get to dress up, and I really enjoy doing it. It was also a way to really celebrate the end of our vacation, and Jeffry had a surprise for me. He was talking about the "surprise" for the entirety of our stay, so I was really anxious to see what it was. As I touched on in a previous post, he had been sending me on a hunt through the sim, searching for bottles with messages in them. Then with a clue to the next one. He had also put codes in the notecards, that spelled something out... but I wouldn't know what it said until I had gotten to the last bottle.


So, what did the notecard say? When I got to the end of the bottle hunt, I put all the codes together, and found out that he had asked me to renew our vows in SL! We have been SL married for almost 7 years and married in RL for over 2 years now. I think it's about time we did so. We probably even should have done them at 5 years together, but RL got in the way, and all. We weren't really in SL at that point very much. Naturally, I said yes.

He already has plans, for our vow renewal ceremony. When we married in SL, we kind of eloped (much like our RL marriage at the courthouse). And we want it different now, filled with fun, friends and family. And afterward, he said we can go to Greece as our vow renewal honeymoon! So, with that being said, I think that I might talk to Lolita soon, and see when Greece de la Oleander will be open and prepare our ceremony around then.

Yesterday was day 5 of the vacation, and it was movie night! When I was exploring the sim, I was SO happy to see that there was a place to play media, AND there was a DVD player with included movies for us to watch. It was so nice to have that for us! But anyway... first, my daily vacation "waking up" photo for day number five.

Honestly, I am a bit sad that tonight is our last night at The Rainforest de la Oleander, I might cry when we have to pack up and check out on Wednesday morning. The sim is gorgeous, and even if we were here for a month, I don't think I'd have gotten as many photos as I would have wanted. More reason to come back again, right? Though, I think that when we decide to vacation again, I'd check out Greece de la Oleander. Then come back to the rain forest.


Anyways! One of the movies in the DVD player was Grease! Obviously, we had to watch it! It's such an amazing movie to sing along and cuddle to! And, naturally, once we finished Grease, we watched Grease Live! in RL before we went to bed. It was an amazing night for us. I also got to open up "Clue 4", on Jeffry's treasure hunt for me. I'm still a little nervous/scared about what tonight holds for me with the last clue.

Tonight is our "formal night." I've still got to decorate the area we are going to use for dance area, take Jeffry shopping for a fabulous suit, and we got to rent a stream for him to DJ! Ack! So much to do! *flails*

Yesterday was day number 4 on our fabulous rain forest vacation! Sadly though, Jeffry never logged in yesterday, so I didn't get a photo of the two of us like I planned. I did, however snap a photo of me, around our hut, kind of a "waking up" photo as I've found that I loved to do while I've been here!

Tonight, we're doing movie night, and tomorrow is our last night on vacation, so we're planning a formal for the two of us. Should be fun!

Today was day number 3 of our rain forest vacation! It was play in the water day! Jeffry and I spent the day in our swimwear, splashing around everywhere. I've REALLY been trying to hard to take really beautiful photos, and all things considered, I think I've been doing a good job! I've been really playing with my favorite windlight setting for photos, playing with different water settings. I'm very happy with today's photos!

First, a fun dip into the beautiful, glassy, clear waters of the rain forest! Although this photo looks like it's going to be nothing but a huge belly flop, it was still fun! After I took this, Jeffry had me going on hunt around the sim. He has hidden several bottles with notes in them for me to find throughout our vacation. So, I find them, click on it and it gives me a notecard with a tid-bit of his feelings, and a clue to find the next one. It's been fun so far!


Of course, I needed to get our daily photo of the two of us. We floated on the sim for a little while, and I snapped this photo. This intertube is actually one that came with a bikini, and is meant to be worn instead of rezzed. But, for the photo, it was a gorgeous intertube, and I chose to use it. It was like, 56 land impact! I think it was worth it though.

Today is day number 2 of our Rain forest Vacation! Well, We arrived last night at the rain forest, but we didn't really get any photos. I was way too exhausted after stressing about our packing photo to even think about planning out another photo once we got to the rain forest, to be completely honest. But, today, I woke up super-excited and absolutely refreshed for photo taking!

I adore this photo! I made the pose, with the idea that I'm coming out of our hut, stretching and ready to take on the day! It turned out much better than I set out to do. The sim is just so photogenic, it's really hard to take a photo that just... doesn't look good. I know that I'm not the best photo-taker, and I and completely aware that I don't do the Rain forest enough justice, I think!


After we had our coffee and woke up, we went on a horseback ride through the many paths that wind around the area. I had a lot of fun, really running around, exploring a lot of the things it has to offer. It was probably my first time really taking time to really immerse myself in it and explore. Lolita has turned off fly abilities on the sim, and I think it's so much better to walk and experience everything than just flying around from point A to get to point B.


We decided to end our second day of vacation with a good meal of cheeseburgers, fries, corn dogs, onion rings and soda. It was a really great day, filled with photos, exploring and fun. I'm also trying to make a lot of the poses that I'm going to use for our vacation photos (most of which I plan on putting on the marketplace to sell).

Can't wait for day 3 tomorrow! My husband is trying to get me out of the house tomorrow morning, so he can plan "something", I'm kind of nervous to see what he has cooking in his head!

Tonight, the Heartsdale's leave for vacation at the Rainforest de la Oleander! It's been a really, really long time since Sai and Jeffry actually did anything in SL together (probably ever since we moved in RL together, that's been like, 5 years). And even then, I don't think we've been on an actual SL vacation.... ever. It's about time this happened! I've been wanting to go on a vacation, and when I saw Lolita Oleander post about them on her Flickr, I knew the time has come. I made the reservations with her last week, and I've been WAY excited ever since!

I spent several days trying to put together our packing photo. It was a exhausting job of trying to accumulate enough luggage, and bags. Even more exhausting was looking through my inventory, trying to see what else can I put in the photo. I had the hardest time trying to find a pose that fit my vision. In the end, I made and went through about 50 different placements/poses around this stuff, before making this one with Anypose.

It turned out so perfect, I couldn't have planned it out better. I really wish that TMP head allowed a smile, though, as it makes it look like Jeffry really despises the idea of this vacation. LOL! But it's okay, because I look excited enough for the both of us! But anyway, it's fun, silly, and perfect for us! I love it just the way it is!

I'm really going to try to take at least one photo of us a day there, because in the 5 years that we have been together in RL, we have very few SL photos of us. I really want to fill the picture frames in the house of us! All the photos in our house are super old, pre-mesh photos! THE HORROR!

So! Here's hoping for an amazing week at the Rainforest for us! I have nothing planned, because I haven't been on the sim yet - but I'm sure it will be a busy, fun week!

I still live! I had a really terrible December in my RL, but now that is over. My RL is somewhat back to normal a bit. We are still trying to look for jobs in a tiny, tiny, town way up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but we are settled into our new place of residence after our emergency cross-country move.

A lot has happened. Yuna has left our family. It's very sad for us, but perhaps it's the best. That's all I think I'm going to say about it for the time being. Since then, I've been working a little bit on my alt. I've decided that I'm going to put a little work into her, maybe take off her mesh head and try to give her a cute face. Then, put up a panel at Heritage for her to find a family.

I think I have succeeded in making her cute! Don't mind the partially un-rezzed bench texture. I totally did not realize it at first. I should have went back and redid the photo, but EH. Laziness at it's finest. But anyway, I've also enrolled her in school as well as ballet classes! This blog will likely become a mix of Ennaline's life as well as Sai's life, because I really enjoy playing on both!


Also, a little bit ago, when Yuna left us, I decided to put up a panel at Heritage. Jeffry logged in with me so that I could make a pose for us and we could take an updated photo for our panel. It turned out really cute, and really adorable. I was REALLY happy with how it came out. We had the panel up for a little while... but then I suddenly wasn't sure if that's what I wanted at this point. I don't think I'm ready to try again just yet. I haven't clicked it in a few days, so I'm pretty sure that it has expired. And that's perfectly okay. We will take our time on this, when we are ready again, we'll know, right? However, I'm not sure if we will every be ready again. For now, I'm completely happy playing on my child alt!

Happy November! I hope everyone is having a great one so far! Last night, my family and I went trick or treating! We had a ton of fun looking at everyone's decorations, and grabbing the treats that everyone set out! At first I was kind of nervous about how I had decorated. This is our first year being part of the family community, I wasn't sure what kind of "treat" we were supposed to put out, I didn't know if we weren't decorated enough, or decorated too much. I had no idea what to expect!

However, it all turned out well, and when we went to the other houses, I felt our decorations were right on track. For us, who haven't been in SL for the past few years, had no mesh things, and our first year as a family - I think it looked like we've been doing it for years. I was worrying and stressing for weeks for nothing. LOL!

We went, and I was having so many issues last night. I was having issues with my Catwa head not blinking and animating properly, things were not rezzing for me, and I was lagging so bad! I've been having internet issues, which appears to be our router. So, until we can get a new one, I really tried to handle it like a trooper! I was also extremely tired, only getting about three hours of sleep the previous night. I was exhausted!

We went as "Cops & Robber" type of theme. I was really struggling with finding a costume, because Halloween isn't one of my favorite holidays, so I didn't want to spend a fortune on something I was only going to wear for a couple hours. Also, I was having trouble finding a "themed" costume which was family appropriate. So... well, I tried.


We even got to trick or treat at some of the family community sims. I really, really love the family communities! I tried to bring it up to Jeffry, seeing if maybe we can move to one or look into it, but he prefers our sim. He says the only way he'd move to a family community, is if he owned it. Hmmm, my wheels are turning!


Our last house of the night - our home.We had SO much fun, and I'm already looking forward to Christmas! As our first year as a family, I can't wait to see what kind of family-things we can do this year! House to house looking at lights, maybe? One can hope, right?!

Last night, we took Yuna to the pumpkin patch and then we decorated our pumpkins! This was probably one of my first "real RP" experiences with our family, and we all had so much fun. When we were first adopting, one of our things was that we weren't really into RP that much. It still holds true today, we are not that big on mealtimes, tuck ins, but the RP that we do, it's so much fun, and we are always laughing like crazy! Our trip to the pumpkin patch was really our first attempt to plan an actual family event, and I was sure it was going to be a huge, epic fail somehow.

But it really wasn't! I planned this for many weeks, kept on the lookout for a fabulous pumpkin patch, made a holding pose, bought all the gacha pumpkin carving stuff we needed, and set it all out. I didn't know how the RP bits of it worked, and my wonderful friends on Plurk even really helped me better understand a lot of it!

In the end, for us and our family, it kind of came naturally! It was so much fun, and for a minimal-RP family like us, we really enjoyed it so much! The planning, the locations, the decorating, and the pumpkins, it really made for an awesome time.

I had been looking for weeks for a pumpkin patch, and really enjoyed this one that I had found. It was pretty, had pumpkins that you could pick out, and even more. You can do much more than explore the pumpkin patch, but that's all we did there.


Then we went home to carve and decorate our pumpkins. It was so worth all the anxiety I had to make it perfect! I think I made it more complicated than what it probably should have been, but I really didn't know what to expect, or anything. Next year, I'll definitely be more prepared, know what to expect, and know what will work for our family.


I saw Alicia's wonderful family on plurk actually "decorating" their pumpkin patch pumpkins. I loooooved that idea, it looked like so much fun. It also gave an actual purpose to the pumpkins we picked out! So, we copied them, and did the same! I think this really completed the event for us, and what really made it so it wasn't SO much RP. This made it perfect. It became more of a "OMG I need to add hair and shoes!" and "What is happening to daddy's eyes?!" thing. We were laughing so much last night, it was great. It probably would have been a very stiff, I-don't-know-how-to-RP thing without the silliness.

I've been really trying to learn how to learn mesh! I started with clothing and Blender, and I decided that I'm terrible at it. However, I still really want to learn. I've tried clothing, and while I love it - I'm really terrible at weight painting. I get frustrated and can never get a product I am happy with. I've given up on clothing, but I still want to learn other things, as well.

I've been really working in ZBrush as of late, trying to learn it, and get comfortable with the Wacom tablet I got for my RL birthday last month. I'm even looking into taking more 'professional' classes on this program at this point, in addition to the wonderful YouTube tutorials I've been following. I spent several days literally JUST working on some form of a plush toy that I can be happy with. The original thought was that I wanted to make a cat plushie. However, it didn't turn out like that. I got this... creature.

I saved the file as "demonic bear thing" originally, then someone on plurk said it looked like a cow. He kind of does, but I'm not really going to put a label on him. He is what he is, a little creation of my own. I'm calling him Herman. I have uploaded him, and different color versions of him. I had Jeffry script a hold animation that also switches between a child and adult hold animation, and a resize script as well! He will be put into a gacha for my store, .ennaline. in the next week or so!

As I was making the different colors for him, Jeffry says to me: "You're not really going to name him Herman, are you?" Of course I am! I like his name!


After Herman, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making a pumpkin! I am SO happy with this pumpkin, it's gorgeous! I absolutely adore how the texture of this pumpkin came out, it's so pimple-y. And, only 1 land impact for it! I made a couple poses with this pumpkin, which will be a hunt gift for the store! Pumpkin will be included, of course!

I am really enjoying learning Zbrush, and already the things I've made from it are gorgeous, and fun! I hope that I can get better and better with things as I get more comfortable with it, and experiment around with it!

Yesterday, I found some really low land impact photo frames for my house! I was really looking for a "family" orientated type of frame, or shelf, or something that I could use for displaying Yuna's Adoption Certificate, and the photo I took of when she first saw the question of us asking her to join the family. I didn't find one that looked how I wanted, so I made one! But anyway! I'm a huge fan of photos, in both RL and SL. Some memories, you just can't repeat, or get back, and I'm very forgetful! I take a lot of photos! I'm trying to fill my large amounts of frames with some photos of us as a family now, instead of just Jeffry and I.

I know that I referenced to our fall photo several times in the previous post, and it appeared a couple of times on our adoption day. I never really posted it here, as I wanted it to be a complete surprise! Now that the surprise is done and over with, I can post it! It turned out sooooo great, I'm in love with it!

Yuna and I were watching a movie, and I snapped this photo of us! It turned out super cute, and I love this pose/animation that I made for us. Yuna has officially been calling us mommy and daddy, and we've been calling her our daughter! Because it's official now, and I'm super-excited about it still!


I've been experimenting with different mesh heads! I now have several of them, from Genesis, TMP, Logo, and Catwa. I think I'm going to do a blog post REALLY soon about them! However, for now, I am in LOVE with the Logo mesh head, the expressions are soooo much fun! I think I'm going to stick with the Logo head for a while, and made it a little more official by updating my in-world profile with a new photo!


For real, don't I look SO happy? Well, I should be! My life in SL has never been better than it is right now! I have been so blessed in SL, and I have the best family, ever! I feel like I just want to keep this smile on my face all the time!

As my Plurk friends know, Jeffry and I had been planning something for about a week now! I've been posting updates and preview photos on my Plurk, pretty much ever since we decided on it. We decided to ask Yuna to join our family! I went from not having a single clue how we were going to ask her, to a brilliant plan all of a sudden! We had a couple ideas, but nothing seemed good enough. The original idea was to go on a hot air balloon ride, and rez a huge prim on the ground with the question. We'd point it out, and she'd look down to see it. But, then we started brainstorming, and came up with something incredible.

We told her that we were having a laser tag party with some friends, and asked her to come on a little earlier so that we can "test" some things out. We got in the hot air balloon to "test" it. Once we were all in the balloon, it took off in a path. We had several stops along the way, which I had framed photos rezzed (held in the air by balloon clusters), with photos I took from the 2 week trial we did. They were invisible, and when we approached each photo, they appeared. Each stop had said a little blurb about how we felt about her.

The last stop, we got out of the hot air balloon, and walked up to more photo frames, this one held a photo I took of us a few days before. At first, this photo was a crucial part of how we would ask her, and us asking her to be part of the family was kind of the "unveiling" of the photo, as she hadn't seen the finished photo yet. These frames also held "the question."


I was kind of nervous! I mean, what if she didn't like us as much as we liked her? But, she did say yes! I bombarded her with all kinds of things... like the photo texture, and the Heartsdale Family group invite, so she could "officially" move in.


Then afterward, we had a small party! I DJ'ed the music (my first time playing music for someone other than myself!), I wasn't really expecting anyone to come, but the Zanzibar's and the Oleander's came! Both of these families have shown us so much support through this whole adoption process, it really brought tears to my eyes that they came to the adoption party for us, as well!

So, lately, we've been spending a lot of time doing a variety of things. A little over a week ago, we messaged a girl who's panel we liked at Heritage Adoptions. We met up, did a couple of things together, before deciding to go on a trial. We have been on a trial for almost a week now, actually, and it's still going great! I blogged a little bit about her when we took her to the sim-warming party, but I didn't mention too much about her, really. Well, this morning, we all agreed to extend the trial a little longer! This was a big thing to me, because, it actually said to me that she's interested in continuing with us, and likes us enough to want to spend more time together! More milestones!

So, we've been doing lot of things together, as Jeffry says: "as a family," but I still worry we are boring people! We took a few days to do PaleoQuest, we've watched a couple of movies, and even visited The Cornfield. It's been fun, doing these things all together! I really hope it continues, and I hope that we can have a very happy outcome at the end of this "extended trial!"

This is where we are now venturing into territory that we are completely unfamiliar with! Other trials we have had did not get this far. Actually, they really didn't even get past a couple of days. So, I'm not sure where to proceed from here, and when we know that we're "ready" to adopt. I'm just thinking that, When we know, we "know" right? Like finding the perfect wedding dress? LOL! I don't know what I would have done without Alicia and her adorable family answering all the questions I have about families/RP, and all their guidance and tips they have given us through the whole adoption process!

You ever have a whole bunch of stuff to do, but prefer to not do them? That's me, lately. I've been terribly sick for the past month, and it's getting progressively worse. Because of it, I've been really slacking on a lot of things that need to be done. Our sim will host it's first wedding in a couple weeks, and I still have a lot to do. They'll be using our barn for their wedding, and they may want to have a dance party afterwards. So, I've needed to get our dance area done. I've been really not looking forward to it, mainly because I have some uhh..... naughty animations in my Intan Couple Dance Ball, and I didn't want to search through all the animations to find the naughty ones. I don't want to have them out for the wedding, and I also want to keep our sim child friendly, because we are trying to adopt a child.

Anything with that dance ball is a nightmare. I hate updating it, adding dances, configuring it, modifying it to look better, everything. I don't like it. I hate dealing with it. But, well. It needed to be done! I finished the couple's ball, and realized I don't have a solo ball. GAH! I tried many scripts from the this awesome library of scripts, and didn't find one that worked the way I wanted it to. You'd think after majoring in computer programming in college, I'd know a little more about SL scripting. But nope! Never even wanted to learn it. Once, I found myself at the College of Scripting, looked around... and went "NOPE." Too overwhelming for me. Anyway, I ended up buying a full perm ball for L$1 on the marketplace, and modified it quite a bit. It looks presentable, and works just how I want it to. Of course, I needed to test it out.

I spent waaaaayyyy too much time, just dancing. I need to look into setting up another DJ table - this one belongs to Jeffry, and isn't all that attractive looking for the sim. It doesn't quite fit in well. But, he liked the animations in it. So, I gotta do that, put animations in the new DJ table.... Ugh.  feel like I'm going to get all this done, just in time to turn the sim into the fall season. LOL! Speaking of - I think I need to start looking into pumpkins and fall things, because it's getting closer to that time!

I've also been trying to teach myself how to DJ! I want to eventually DJ in a club, so I purchased my own stream to practice on my land. I play a lot of country, which is the music I really enjoy. My husband hates it, so I do it while he's at work! I'll just need to gather my courage up to apply to be a DJ at some country club!

It's been a little while, hasn't it? I haven't been online much at all the past two weeks, as Jeffry and I had some RL to take care of. Well, it's all good, and we are back again! I have been working quite a bit on my alt's little store, now that I've decided to start making poses again. I have made a bunch of them, and am in the process of testing them out now! When I had [ImpEle], I did all my poses in Qavimator. It's a very ugly program (and sadly, it has not changed at all these past several years), but it gets the job done. I have made it my personal mission to really learn more "professional" programs. So I've been playing quite a bit in DAZ Studio, and Poser Pro.

As if I needed something else to do, I've been playing with nail appliers! I feel like I want to try everything at least once. I've tried mesh clothing, clothing appliers, furniture and mesh prefabs by now, and hated all of it. I think everything I make lately is terrible. I really struggle with finding my "niche", I guess. I found myself the other day, halfway through making a nail applier. I don't know what spurred the thought on that I wanted to do it, I just did it. And oddly, I was quite pleased with the result! Nails are my "thing" in RL, as I am very proud of my RL nails, it took me many years to get my nails healthy after biting them for as long as I can remember. I think I'll do these as well as poses. Not to mention - they make great group gifts!


A extremely fun little outing Jeffry and I took last night - Alicia's birthday party! It has been SO LONG since we actually spent time with SL friends. There was once a whole band of us Ch'know friends who would just get together randomly and hang out... just because. I really enjoyed those days, and I wish to make them happen again! A whole bunch of awesome people gathered together for her birthday party in SL, We all danced and played laser tag. It was a really fun couple of hours! However, I now really, really want my own laser tag area... and I can't find one for myself!

Yay, my graphics drivers have been fixed on the upgrade to Windows 10! It was terrible, instant blue screen of the computer crashing as soon as it booted up. I only had about 15 seconds to end all AMD processes before it crashed, then I had to disable the graphics card. Luckily, updated graphics drivers fixed the issue and I was only complaining about it for about half a day before they were fixed. Woo! Apparently it was affecting my particular brand of laptop. Who cares, I'm not broken anymore!

Anyway, ages ago, I found myself in need of a prefab, and was wandering around looking at these huge, mansion homes. It was incredible. I kept thinking: Who really needs more than one bedroom? Who would pay over $4,000L for a house? Who really needs that much SPACE? I was boggled. I hunted down a post where I briefly touched on it. (Dang, I was really depressed back there in 2008, wasn't I?)

The funny thing is: I seem to have become exactly *that* person. With us wanting to adopt a child, I find that our current house is not as big as I wish it to be. Plus, the longer I have the house, I keep noticing a gap here, a bigger gap there. I like room to grow with, a room where my alt can do her thing, and large, spacious rooms. I have been actively looking for a house like this, and ironically - Could not find a house that I really liked that was big enough. With us wanting a family, obviously we wanted a dedicated kitchen, dining room, living space, bathroom and at least two bedrooms. I had other specifications that needed to be met as well. I wanted the mouldings to be mesh, and not just be a texture, tintable walls, an optional snow add-on, and baked shadows.

I hunted and looked until I came across a particular one from Roost. It was love at first sight for me, and met every prerequisite I had for a home. The downfall: the price, at $5,100L. I TP'ed Jeffry over who gave me the linden to buy it, and told me to just "get it if you like it".

Of course, I hunted around a little bit more, looked through over 75 pages of listings on the marketplace... I'm going to try to break my habit of changing homes so often, so I really needed to LOVE this house, and know that it's the one that I am going to stick with. I did not really want to spend so much $L on it just to find a home I like better in the next couple days.

I couldn't find another that I liked as much as this East Ives house. I bought it, and eventually plan on getting the matching guest house. I put it down on the land, and it was so much bigger than my house I had before, I had to terraform. I eventually just leveled the hill behind the house, so now the back porch has a great view as well.

I love it now even more than I did before I bought it. Right now, it's completely perfect for us, and hopefully, our family. I'm not going to complain about the price either, as it's a very beautifully done house. I have yet to come across any issues with it, unaligned textures, gaps, anything. It's got several different options with it (two attic rooms, vs. one giant attic room) - and... well, it's just freaking gorgeous.

So, we've been working quite a bit on the sim recently. Jeffry is really into making our sim child-friendly, and providing many things for our child to do, when we find a girl that meshes well with us. He's purchased us a couple of games, like Simopolis, LifeStyle, and Greedy Greedy. He also got a playground, a outdoor cinema complete with popcorn machine, and lemonade.

For appearances, we also changed the sim from the palm tree, sand and grass mix I had going on. Jeffry saw this beautiful photo from Alicia, and he asked me - "How does she get photos so realistic?" I explained the process of taking photos to him, and the only thing he got out of our conversation, was the mountain sim surround thing in the background. He wanted one. I found where they sold them, and he fell in love with one particular set, only because it had a huge waterfall. So, we bought it, and sadly, it was complete with fir trees and all - I had to get rid of my half beach and palm trees.

I hunted down some fir's to replace my palms, and found some beautiful ones from LAQ. They are animated, and also came with winter versions, that look snowy! We love to change things for the seasons, and we completely plan to switch things to snow in the winter, so it's fabulous that a lot of the things we got on the sim, have snow versions! The house came with roof snow and Christmas lights, the pool I bought from The Loft has a covered snow version as well. It's really great, that designers are doing this - it used to be really difficult to find snow things in SL! Everyone loves beaches and stuff, it was kind of hard to find anything else.

Mesh is incredible. It's amazing that we have most of our sim filled up, all this grass, trees, incredible prefabs, a house filled with furniture, yet, we have still over 1,500 prims left on our Homestead sim. It's amazing what you can do with only 1 land impact now!

Some things in SL just amuse me. I saw a photo on a particular video, and the photo had a butler in it. I instantly wanted one for my house. I showed the same video to Jeffry, and he picked up on the butler too. So, it became our mission to find this particular object. Turned out, it was a gacha item. This was bad news, as I knew how crazy Jeffry gets with gachas. He's worse with them than I am!

But still, we went to the gacha and as expected, he went insane with it. We got a whole bunch of them, until he stopped when he got the one he finally wanted. We kept a couple, and I listed all the others on the marketplace.

I love this guy. He's one of the most comical things I have encountered in a long time. I don't even know why, nor can I figure out what the appeal of him is to me.We totally have all different versions of him around our sim. We have this guy inside the front door, one roasting marshmallows over a fire pit outside, and another one with a boombox over by Jeffry's little DJ table he has set up. Ribald the butler, is fun!