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.

I upgraded to Windows 10 this afternoon, and now my AMD graphics card doesn't work. Ugh. I am waiting for a working driver, or some kind of fix for it. What a pain. However, I am SO glad that I snapped today's photo yesterday, before I upgraded, because I don't know exactly when my card will work again. I heard the latest AMD drivers doesn't help the issue I'm experiencing, so I will continue to wait.

Anyway, my husband bought me an early birthday gift a couple days ago - a Wacom tablet! I've been wanting one for ages, and am over the moon that he got me one. Lolita's Sun is Shining in SL project was the absolute perfect opportunity for me to try it out! I spent a good portion of yesterday finding the perfect location on our sim and sky setting to snap this photo. The photo itself turned out great! However, I spent a good portion of last night playing with my Wacom tablet, editing it. I love how it came out, it's really fabulous. It really shows off the fashion in today's SL, and the beauty of our sim.

I am still trying to get the hang of the Wacom tablet, it's completely different than anything I have ever played with before, but I hope it will make editing photos better for me! We'll see, I still have lots of practice to do with this thing - of course it doesn't help that I have NO artistic ability whatsoever. Haha!

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!

I love to build buildings and stuff using regular prims. The disappointing part of that, is that prims are becoming obsolete now that mesh is taking over everything. I know a bit about clothing and Blender, but when it comes to making furniture and builds, I have no idea what's going on. I decided to make the purchase, and get myself The Mesh Studio. A long time ago, I purchased the Sculpt Studio, and had no idea what to do with it. I went to a couple of classes, and still never utilized it.

So, I took the chance and purchased the Mesh Studio, and before I even opened the box, I decided to find a class on it. This way, I'm not overwhelmed before I even begin. I found a class at the Builder's Brewery, and I've really forgotten how much I enjoy going to classes in SL! I love learning how to create all kinds of things, so I think I might make it my own personal mission to go to more classes, and build up my skills. I hear they have Blender/Mesh classes, I'm going to try to get in on some of them.

From the class, it seems the Mesh Studio is so much easier to pick up and learn than the Sculpt Studio was! It seems to be just build what you want, drop a script in it, download from the link it spits out at you, then upload to SL. Of course there's other, minor things to do in all of that as well, but it's not at all complicated like the Sculpt Studio is/was.

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!

I'm just going to come out and say it: Jeffry and I had decided to adopt a SL child! I suppose I'll do a little background. We moved in together in RL several years ago, and we decided a couple years ago to start trying to have a child in real life. That was over two and a half years ago now. It's been difficult, the hole that still occupies my heart. We made the decision to get a dog last year, and I've chronicled Amelia's life with us so far through my RL blog.  From videos, to our breeder visits, updates on how big she is.... she's been the love of my RL. I complain a lot about her, but she really is a beautiful, smart, incredible dog. Anyway! Even with her, there's still... something missing.

The more I looked into SL adoptions, the more it appealed to me. If I can't have children in my RL, I need to pour my love into a child in SL. So, after talking with Jeffry about it, he agreed, and wanted to go pick out a panel... right then. I, however still had questions. I bombarded the lovely Alicia with questions about their family, the role play involved, and all that. I am still a little nervous about the role play aspect - I would love to do it, but I am not entirely sure what that entails. So, I'm hoping get matched with a lenient child, who is willing to teach us the role play part. Or give us hints on what we need to do. Parenting is not a exact science, right? All parents learn as they go, even adoptive parents.

We took this photo together, before we listed our panel at Heritage Adoptions. This was part of our little "photo shoot" to get a photo of the both of us for our Parent panel. I liked it, and kept this one. We're hoping to find a good match for us, so we can shower our SL child with all the love we can't give in our RL.

I've mentioned my alt's little store on my blog already. I have also mentioned that Sai will not be creating anything anymore, all my work will be done on my alt. Sai retired from creating, and her job now is to simply enjoy SL. It's been a fun little outlet for me, without any pressure, and I can be as creative as I want, without worrying about deadlines. I like it, it's fun to play with mesh, and everyday I learn new things in Blender! I have picked up a few things here and there while working with mesh, and since my alt first set up her store, I've gotten better with it!

Now that we have our own homestead sim, the huge majority of it is our home, but I set up a little corner off of our sim to set up my alt's store. I've been quickly running out of prims on the land it is housed at now, so it's great that I can put it on my homestead and expand it as I need to. I definitely to not expect it to grow popular enough to worry about lag on my sim - I just really want to be able to have extra prims when needed. Because, I do this for fun, it's not really a "business" like [ImpEle] turned out to be. However, isn't this the exact same thing I said about [ImpEle] when I first started? Haha!

Anyway, I have been working on setting it all up. I purchased a new store build, one that has just a little bit less wall space, so the store doesn't look too empty. And, I've been really re-vamping everything. I've changed all the mesh text I had around the store, added a whole new "informational bar" as I'm calling it - has a join group script, has all the links to the blog, marketplace, flickr.... all that kind of stuff. Another big thing I did was I switched all the vendors over to the CasperVend system, which seems to be ever popular with stores lately. I set all that up, got the redelivery options working... It's been an adventure, frustrating at times, and extremely expensive in upload fees to do all that - but in the end, I feel like it is worth it. The store reflects more of my mesh skills now, and doesn't look so bad anymore. It actually looks like a store I, myself, might shop at. Whew!

I snapped this photo last night before officially calling it a night. Since then, I added the soon-to-be new group gift, updated the remaining vendor display photos, finished listing everything on CasperVend, set up the new release (also got the demo ready), and foldered all the stuffs to be sent to bloggers. All I have left is to update my alt's picks, classified, write the notecards about the newest releases for my dear bloggers, and drop them off to who needs them! I'm excited to be at the home stretch with this, and even more excited that I won't have to deal with any more upload fees for right now! Now, I can get back to Blender and work on the shorts I have started.

We are talking boats today! I have always loved having a boat on my land, even if it's really a waste of prims. I don't care about driving it, I really just love the look of having a boat. Purely for display, and they make fabulous props to take photos on, or around. Boats in SL are really beautiful, and SecondLife is all about what makes you happy, right?

A long, long time ago, I first decided that I wanted a boat. I searched, and came across this beauty. At the time, it was top of the line, and one of the best. It has made several appearances on this blog, one even dating back to July, 2008.  I paid a lot of $L for it at the time, though I can not remember how much exactly anymore. I still think it's gorgeous... even now. I'd be happy to keep it out, and continue to enjoy it... however, this boat is 205 prims. It's made mostly of actual primitives, and it looks like the only sculpty parts in this boat are the seats. You really have to appreciate the beauty of a creation like this, how creative people can get with just the tools they have available to them at the time. This boat, I feel is a fantastic example of that.

Because of the high prim count, I decided to look into getting a new boat, and doing a little "updating." The first place that I wanted to look at, was obviously where I originally purchased this boat, MaxMarine. I looked up the creator in-world, hoping that he was still around and making boats. Unfortunately, I don't think he is. A little disappointed, but that's okay, there are many more boats in SL!


I started just flying around some of the popular boating sims, with the intention of looking at the variety of different boats out there. However, the first sim I visited, I came across a boat, docked on someone's land. Intsa-love. I felt like this was a really close version to the MaxMarine boat I came to adore. So, I inspected it, found who created it, and off I teleported to their store. Bonus was that it's only 50 land impact!

I found myself at A.E. Worx.  I ran around, searching for this boat, got hit by 2 automated forklifts in the process, but I found it. And it looked even more gorgeous than it did on the boating sim. The price was $2,250L. There was a point in SL, when I wouldn't have cared, I had a very reasonable linden income from running ImpEle, but now - the RL Jeffry buys $L's for us, and I have to make my little "allowance" that he gives me last for a couple of weeks. But even still, I decided to purchase it. Imagine my glee, when I go to pay the boat vendor, and it comes up saying $899L! Sold! I couldn't pay it fast enough.

I rezzed it once back on my sim, and realized just how spectacular it is. It's tintable to literally any color, it's got a really fabulous control panel, and drives beautifully. It's even got particle waves that splash out when you start driving it. I don't really intend on driving it, but it's still cool that I can if I want to.


While I was tinting it, and getting it ready to drive... Jeffry started playing the "I'm on a boat!" song. So, I had to find the most ridiculous dance I had, to go with that music. Needless to say, we both ended up changing into our swimwear, and dancing on the boat to that song. I totally took a video on it. Was definitely one of the silliest things I have done in SL for a while. It was totally worth it though, I was practically rolling on the floor laughing.