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!

So, with my alt's store, I have been dabbling a bit in mesh. It's been a process of learning several different programs, and I've come to to conclusion: I suck at it. I have decided I spend too may hours a week cursing and fighting with Blender, and the stupid weighting of mesh. Not to mention, everyone is making for different mesh bodies, and I am completely left in the dust, because I am not capable enough in Blender to know how to do these things. So, unfortunately, I think I'm giving up mesh.

I had gotten a Wacom tablet as an early birthday gift from my husband. I decided to use it and try my hand at creating appliers. Well, that went downhill quick as well. I am coming to the conclusion that... well, I suck at anything SL related. Then, suddenly... I found myself about to upload a pose.

I had a HUGE moment of "WTH am I doing right now?" I had told myself - no poses when I came back. However, there were a few things that got me somewhat excited for poses again. The mesh bodies now, make poses beautiful, and not as ugly with the standard SL avatar. I battled a lot with the lumpiness of the SL avatar for years when I made poses for [ImpEle].

There's also a variety of poses that I want to make. As my readers (and friends on plurk) know, Jeffry and I have been looking for a child avatar to adopt - I now want to make poses for our future family. I hate buying couple's/family poses, because of the differences in everyone's shapes, I can never edit them to look like they are supposed to. So, I like to make my own - that way, I have full control over how the pose fits.


I logged in my alt to make poses with me, who, ironically, started out her existence as a child avatar. I had all the Toddledoo stuff from ages ago, it was just a matter of dressing her in it again.So, yes - preview of a pose that will soon make it's way into .ennaline.!


Another reason why I'm so excited to make poses: AnyPose! While AnyPose isn't that great for single poses, I much prefer to do them manually in another program - this is FANTASTIC for couple's poses! And also family poses! I really wish I had known about this waaay back when I had [ImpEle] open. It would have cut down soooo much irritation and stress while working with two avatars. No longer will I have to have Jeffry and I log on the beta grid and me telling him to sit on the poseball, nope, stand back up, tweak an arm, and on and on and on. I can edit up to 9 avatars IN WORLD. The concept is incredible.

I'm also finding it really nice to use for more difficult-to-pose-for things. Like, making perfect poses for gowns, poses for toddledoo's, and mesh clothing. Things that aren't as standard as the normal SL shape is. Because, with AnyPose, really - what you see is what you get. I like making a pose for a toddledoo with this HUD, then taking it into my posing program and just perfecting a few things that you can't do with AnyPose (stuff like making the feet parallel to the ground and minor things like that)

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.