Happy Halloween!

It seems like I've been celebrating Halloween for the past week. LOL But I wanted to wish all my readers and friends a very happy Halloween, or Samhain, if that's your preference! :)

Tomorrow begins my 30 Days of Blogs & Thanks, so this blogpost is going to be cut short. If anyone else wants to join me on my personal little challenge, I'd enjoy the company! But I know many people are also participating in NaNoWriMo, which I myself was a proud participant in for about 5 years, and well - that's just a lot of writing! :) We wouldn't want to have to dub November as International Carpal Tunnel Month.

Anyway, have fun and be safe tonight, and don't worry, I checked under the bed and in the closet - no boogeymen to get you tonight. :)

The Corn Field - What a treat!!!!

It's been a dream of mine since first hearing about it last year to be allowed into The Corn Field. Yes, that abandoned and dry place where naughty avatars used to be sent way back before I'd ever heard of Second Life. But since it was no longer in use, there was pretty much no way to get there, unless you were able to sweet talk a Linden into taking you there. I'd almost given up hope that I would ever get to see the place, but then, it happened. My prayers were answered! The Lindens opened up The Corn Field for Halloween!!!

I ran out the first morning it was open because I was so happy! I've been back twice since then and taken about eleventy babillion pictures. Last night after a party, I put on my zombie ballerina costume [really just an excuse to wear my toe shoes again] and grabbed more photos. I'll only show 3, but my desktop is FULL of pictures.









I really want to thank whoever had the idea to open up The Corn Field for this Halloween. This was a real treat to me and I'm sure to a lot of other people who have always wanted to go check it out. :) Don't forget to get your goodie bag while you're out there, especially if you're a Linden Bear collector like I am!

Girl, get your bloggin' on!

As I'm getting ready for my 30 Days of Thanks & Blogs, I keep coming across all kinds of things I want to talk about NOW. But I keep telling myself to save it, because I've gotten writer's block before, and how sad would it be if I ran out of things to say on day 5?

But, I do want to talk about something today. Now, I'm not a marketing professional, I don't have a degree in business, nothing like that. But I am HIGHLY susceptible to marketing. Hell, sometimes all a person has to do is mention cheeseburgers, and I'm running out the door to McDonalds.

However, I get annoyed by bad marketing really easily. Tell me you are having a sale, and it's very likely that I will run to check it out. Tell me you're having a sale EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES FOR THREE HOURS and I will run to your store to get OUT of your subscribe-o-matic or trip over my own fingers to get out of your group.

There are stores in SL that apparently went to the Lemania Indigo "Girl, get your spam on" Academy of Marketing. This doesn't make people want to shop at your store! In fact, it comes off as so desperate, people start to wonder why you feel the need to remind people very 30 minutes that you exist.

[Also? You don't want to be compared to Lemania Indigo. Ever.]

I had to leave a SoM yesterday because I just couldn't handle it anymore. I think the designers of the store are very talented, and at one point I think I had bought every single dress the place had to offer, but enough was enough. It wasn't even just daily notices anymore, they were flying in sometimes more than 3 times a day. I can't do that. It annoys me. All I was doing was declining their flurry of notecards and textures anyway.

If I'm in your group/SoM - tell me when you have new releases, tell me when you have a sale, and maybe award me for being in your group with a gift now and then. Put your store in your picks and maybe do the $50L classified too so it's easier for me to see, and honey, you will have a customer for life. That's my $2L on it.

In other news, I'm going to be one of the Shoe Expo bloggers!! I'm really excited about it because I've never done expo blogging before. I hope I don't make an ass out of myself. But...hey, even if I do, it's entertainment. LOL

Last night was the Thorne-Darwin Halloween party and it was a BLAST! I had such a good time. Lalo Telling took pictures, which you can see in his Picasa album. But I'll show my picture off because I love it. :)




I'm sure there's other pictures out there because it was a PACKED house and it was mostly bloggers and plurkers, so I know there's more pics out there. :)

I don't usually DJ two nights in a row, but I couldn't resist when my friend Gwendolyn asked if I would like to come DJ at the Jittery Junco Coffee House for their Halloween party tonight. I'll be there at 7pm SLT tonight for about an hour or so. If you want to get more use out of your costume, I'd love to see you there! The actual theme is League of Extraordinary Dorks, so come nerdy if you want, or just come! :) Gwen said she's not being nerdy, but heck, I think I might.

I think it's time to sneak some Halloween candy!

La Shy Girl & some other stuff :)

I haven't been updating quite as much lately because I'm gearing up for my personal blogging challenge next month. 30 days of updates and things I'm grateful for! Woooo! LOL But! Some things must be said.

First up, I was super excited when blogger/builder Josue Habana asked me to do his 5 Questions and Shameless Plug interview. Go read it, I'll wait.







Done? Ok.

Anyway, that was pretty cool, so thanks for asking me to do that, Josue! He makes some pretty cool [and FREE] skyboxes, so check out his stuff on XStreet. Some of you may have seen his work before because I've used a couple of his skyboxes for party rooms. :)

Tomorrow is the Thorne-Darwin Halloween Party!! I'm DJing it and Tymm & Jerremy have set up a pretty awesome area for the party, so don't miss it!

So earlier on plurk today, someone wondered how a shy guy could be in SL and not feel lonely, because even when he DID go out with his small group of friends, they were usually in IMs. It really made me think because although most people don't realize it, I'm actually really terribly shy. I'm not AS bad as I once was, but ... yeah, it's still there.

Shy people are always going to have to work a little harder in SL than other people because we will get overlooked by the louder, more social crowd. It's not that different from the physical world, really. But in a world where so many people come in, drop all their inhibitions at the door, and get wild - those of us who are shy can very easily be pushed into a corner and forgotten.

We also have to work at keeping the friendships once we get them, because we almost never IM anyone first. We never want to be a bother. Even though we're told time & time again that we're NOT, it takes a while before we can move past that.

Like I said, I am very shy. Some people mistake this for being aloof, or snobby, or think that I simply don't like/care about them. Nope. That's not it at all.

I get a little jealous sometimes when I see people who are always hanging out with others, who are loud and funny, who go to all the parties and are friends with pretty much everyone they meet. I've been told [in the physical world] that I'm anti-social. No, I would love to be more social, but I have a hard time just hanging out with people because I always feel like I have to be entertaining them. Ask me how many parties I've been to in the past year that I haven't DJed at or stayed longer than 10 minutes. The answer is VERY slim. When you're shy, you don't always feel welcome at parties.

There are times when I push past it, when I IM someone first or ask someone to go do something. But even then, I spend the first half of our time together uncomfortable and wondering if they're waiting for me to be entertaining. It usually leads to me just not saying anything at all, which...well, that's probably weird. lol

Oh, this isn't some big "Omg, please IM me and help me" post. I'm simply saying that if you know someone who doesn't IM you often or doesn't talk much, don't think that they don't like you. They may just be really shy.

If you're the shy one... All I can say is that if you're lucky enough to have one friend who understands your problem, don't ever ever let them go. :)

Ok, I need food. And sleep. I think I got 2 and a half hours last night altogether. But watch...you'll see me online tonight at 2am anyway.

I have issues.

Rambles

I'm supposed to be putting some photos together for a review post, but after looking at them in Photoshop, I realize I really wore the wrong shoes for one of the dresses. But rather than get re-dressed and re-shoot the photo, I'm eating some Halloween candy [yes, early. Don't judge.] and thinking about a project Sophia and I are putting together. If you follow either of us on Plurk, you already know about it. If not...well, you'll just have to wait and see. I'm soooooo excited about it!! It's going to be something completely different to anything we've done in SL before. And this is where Plurk comes in super handy, because when we asked for help, we got someone totally awesome to work with us on our project. It's going to be a blast. I think it's going to be awesome - I hope you guys do too. :)

Soph brought up that our project could have been fun if an old friend of ours could have done it with us. It was funny to me that she brought it up, because I've been thinking a lot about this person lately. I guess sometimes it doesn't matter how much a person hurts you, you can still miss them.

It looks like I'm about to have a large parcel [8448sqm, 1933 prims] opening up on the island. If you're looking for land [residential, not commercial], just IM me in world and I'll show it to you. Great view, great neighbors. It's a wonderful parcel if you don't like just flat land. I didn't realize it was going to be open, but that's SLife? LOL

I have a feeling there's going to be lots of Halloween sales & events this coming week. I'm excited for that. I'm SUPER excited that I am DJing the Thorne-Darwin Halloween party this Wednesday night. They always have the best parties, and I got a chance to see the party location earlier. It wasn't absolutely finished up yet, but it looked great!

I have a feeling I'm just procrastinating on going to bed at this point, so I think I'll wrap this up and actually wander into the bedroom. :-p

Clarification

I woke up to some "OMG, you only want to blog shitty things!" messages today because for some reason, I'm in New World Notes again.

To clarify - No, I don't want to have just a negative review blog. LOL! That would be too much work and I don't like to work in SL that much.

However, I think almost all of the fashion blogs out there now [mine included, I'm just as guilty as almost everyone else] have turned into these "I got this pretty thing from this pretty person and look how pretty I look in it!" type of blogs. And that's ok, people like to see pretty things. I know I do.

But when I see something on a blog, I [naively] trust that how it looks on a specific blog is actually how it looks. This is not always the case. There are bloggers who are using Photoshop to clean up a LOT of things to make their photos look better. I will fully admit that I use Liquify in Photoshop to take some of the sharp angles off of my body, especially on my legs. For example:




As you can see, I even slightly touched up the ankle. Is it probably not the best thing to do because people may believe that their ankle will be smooth too? If I were reviewing the shoes, of course. If I were reviewing the shoes, I wouldn't touch up the ankle at all. But in a normal photo, I do. But I do not erase bad seams or hems or fix the prims.

A point was made that many of the bloggers & designers strike up friendships so a lot of the time things are noticed before they are sold anyway. And this is true and it's a GOOD thing. If you're a designer, you owe it to yourself to get some beta testers. I have been very lucky to have been a beta tester for several designers in the past and LOVE doing it. I do not hesitate to tell them if there is something about a particular item that I think needs to be fixed for better wearability. It helps me as a shopper because I get something pretty, and it helps them as designers because they can't fix what they don't know about, right? And usually, the designers are happy to fix what needs it, or they will explain to me why it looks the way that it does. And that's pretty awesome too. :)

Now, it was also brought up that blog readers aren't reading, they're just looking at the pictures and so writing reviews wouldn't help anyway. I don't find that this is entirely true. And hey, you know what? If it IS true - write on the picture. Point stuff out! Obviously everyone has some kind of photo editing program, it's easy enough to do.

I'm not looking for drama, I'm not looking to start some huge war because maybe someone wants to do an honest review and feels they'll get crucified for it. I just think that maybe once in a while we owe it to the people who read blogs to give them a real review because hey, you know what? We probably got the item for free and someone else is going to go spend money on it.

Also, these are just my opinions. You have your own, too. :) But just to clarify once again - I did not say that I wanted to do a big ol' fashion review blog full of ugly and negative comments, so stop twisting my words around. :-p

Uh...hello? Demo?

So I don't mean to be a complainer all the time, but doesn't it make sense that if you're going to spend THIS much on a shoe...




...that you are able to get a demo first?

I won't even buy a $100L hair without demoing it. As hot as I think this shoe is [c'mon, look at it. It's pretty!], I'd be so so so scared to buy it without a demo.

Well, and I'm a bit scared the price. There is that. :-p

Just my random complaint of the night. I should probably go to bed now.

Love Thursday

My Love Thursday is dedicated to my Ch'Know group. :)

There would be no me if there were no them.

The group originally started as just a way for me to be able to change my tag, and when I had a store, I figured I'd send out updates through it. But I also wanted it to be a place where people felt like they could chat. Who remembers the days of "OMG FASHCON OOPS!!!" At the time my group started, there was just this huge thing about people chatting in groups. Even now, there are all kinds of rules and stuff about group chats. I wanted people to feel comfortable. I'm pretty shy, so I figured maybe if some people chatted in my group, I would also feel comfortable enough to chat. It took about a month after making the group that anyone actually started talking in it. :) What can I say? Most of the people who joined it at that time did so because they were also shy. But once we started talking...we couldn't shut up.

The group has gone through changes over the past year and a half. People have come in, people have left. We've laughed, fought, cried, annoyed each other, celebrated successes, and loved each other. We tease each other like brothers & sisters, act offended while laughing like crazy, and go back to having fun. We try to be supportive in any adventure, from designing to blogging to real world things like jobs and classes, that people undertake. We cry on each others' shoulders, and offer to cut people who upset us. We can be a little overwhelming at times, but honestly, I think it's like a family. They are probably the funniest, most talented, sweetest group of people that you'd ever be lucky enough to meet. There are some nights when they make me laugh SO hard, I almost can't breathe. Conversations can be deep or light or crazy, but they are always interesting. Only twice in the group's history have people been asked to leave or removed from the group because they did something that the rest of the group could not get over, and twice it broke my heart when it happened. Because I genuinely care about each person that I invite in. They are pieces of my heart. [The only exception to this rule is usually when a bf/gf has been invited in and is removed a few days later. lol ] There is almost no one who has left the group that I would not invite back in a heartbeat if they asked. No explanations would even be necessary. Even when they leave, they stay with me in my heart.

There is almost nothing I wouldn't do for my group. They have talked me down from anxiety attacks so many times without ever knowing it. They have kept me going, kept me strong. There are no words in my vocabulary that could ever express what they mean to me. :)

I don't have a current picture of the group. It would be almost impossible for all of us to be in the same place at the same time, which has always been a sad fact. But their pictures show up from time to time in here, their blogs are in my blogroll, their quotes show up on the side of this blog or in my profile.

Thank you, my friends. Thank you for just being yourselves and allowing me to share in your Second Life. You are completely loved. :)

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
-Aristotle

What if?

I love being a fashion blogger. Although I'm still relatively new to the whole thing, being on feeds, etc, I enjoy it quite a bit. I love having a separate fashion blog because it allows me to do what I do over there, while keeping this one for all my random thoughts. But I'm getting really bored with most fashion blogs lately. We see the same things, mostly, and people say the same things about the items, mostly. And hey, I'm guilty of it too! I have made a point of only blogging the items that I like, and that allows me to say really nice things about them. And for the most part, the majority of fashion bloggers are the same. We pick what we like and we say nice things.

But what if we didn't?

What if I blogged everything I was given, even if I didn't like it? And what if I SAID I didn't like it? What if I pointed out all the bad seams, over-pixelated hems, bad prim work, messed up sculpties? What if I said that the choice of colors is just blindingly ugly? What if I said that something was just a recolor of a template and then linked to the actual template on XStreet? What if I said something was just too overpriced and if I hadn't received it as a review copy, I'd never buy it?

Nah. I don't think the blogosphere is ready for a fashion blog like that.

Guess I'll go back to just blogging the things I like.

Man, can I go on forever about nothing.

I really should be in bed right now. Or working on a blogpost for an SL company & service. Or finishing up an interview notecard. Or I could be finishing up the haunted castle since Halloween is pretty soon. Or I could be blogging some items that I'm backed up on. But...mostly I've been admiring my pretty nail polish and reading up on magnesium deficiency. My RL bestie's hubby was chatting with my RLBF about my health [God, don't get me started.] and mentioned that I may be deficient in magnesium based on some of the things that are going on with me. To his credit, he knows a lot about these things, so even though I pretended like I wasn't listening, I was. I've been taking a supplement the past few days and I gotta say...I'm feeling a little better. Who knew?

I've been thinking that I'm going to give myself my own blog challenge next month. It's November, which for the past 10 years has been a pretty dreadful month for me. If I've never mentioned it before in here, and I probably haven't, I lost my oldest sister in November 1999 very very unexpectedly. I went from this kind of confident, cool chick to this overly anxious, crazy thing. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown a couple of years ago and picking myself up off the floor [both figuratively and literally] was pretty hard. In a way, being Alicia for the past couple of years helped me remember who the typist behind her really is. She has faults, same as her typist. She's shy with most people, she almost never asks for help when she needs it, she takes on everyone's problems as her own. Her typist is pretty much the same way. But the both of us work well together, and between the both of us, we've learned how to take happiness when it comes. And that's why I think for the month of November, I'm going to blog at least once a day, and each post will say something that I'm thankful for, no matter how small. And no, it's not just going to be 30 days of "OMG I love everything!" How boring would that be? :-p It'll just be 30 days of blogging, with the extra bit of thankful. :)

Ok, yes, I'm writing SO much tonight. LOL! So let's break it up with some pictures! Woo! Pictures!

My friend Heidi gave me a dandelion. I loveeee dandelions!




Everyone was chattering about how fantastic the new Tres Blah skins are. I like the clothing from that store, and my beach cottages actually came from there [I bought them ages ago, I'm really not sure if they're still for sale], so I was excited to go look at the skins.

Then I wasn't so excited anymore.




These skins are SO not good on me. Soooooo not good on me. I've seen a couple of people who wear them well, but I am not one of those people. LOL Yikes.

Sophia and I went out to a store to look at a hair called "Titty" earlier tonight, because sometimes we are 13 years old and going to look at "titty hair" made us laugh really hard. There were some crazy hairs in there, and then we found poses.




This caused Sophia to sing "FAME!" And then we laughed like idiots until we cried.

After our hair outing, I was standing around in my house when she told me to tp her. Next time I need to ask her what she's wearing before I do, because she was scary!




I think she told me that outfit was a freebie in the Boon group. It's pretty much awesome for Halloween.

I really should get in bed now. Really.

Oh...zzzzzz.....

Ok, I don't mean to sound like a bitch, but why is it almost everytime I take a picture of someone in overly whoreish clothing, they're wearing Luck Inc.?




Does that say VD on her one covered buttcheek? Fitting.

It's kind of sad because the textures are usually great, but I could not in good faith wear their clothing or blog it on the style blog just for the fact that it's gotten fugged so much. They should learn to use their skills for good, not fug.

Just my $2L on that.

I did see this guy earlier today and thought this shirt was funny.




That hair has to go, though.

Wow, I'm full of opinions tonight! LOL!

I've been quiet this week, in large part to being completely irritable about the weather in my physical world. If you follow me on Plurk or talk to me in world, you've probably noticed I've been ... oh, let's just say I've been negative lately. It happens every fall, this one is no exception, although it is not quite as bad as in years past, and for that I am very grateful. It really makes you feel blessed to have friends who pat you on the back and tell you it's ok if you're not feeling like yourself. I love my friends, they help me get out of bed each day. :)

So when I wasn't filling my irritable hours playing Wii bowling, I did some exploring. I went out to Philip Linden's new island, P Squared. It was...cute. LOL I mean, as far as islands go, it was cute. Nothing overly special, although I guess it's not supposed to be.




As far as I could tell, M owns the island, and Alexa Linden put down everything. So how much Philip actually had to do with it, I don't know. But it's nice to see that even Lindens sometimes have issues placing things.




I've been spending time setting up our new house, too. My honey and I haven't had much time together in world recently because of a bad router, so I didn't want to do TOO much. Of course, he always tells me whatever I want our home to look like is up to me. He's the best. :) I'm really happy with how the bedroom has turned out.




This is seriously the most boring blogpost. Like, even I'M getting bored of it. Sorry, guys. :-p

I'll end with this... Red River Shootout is Saturday! HOOK EM HORNS!!

Rainy

I want to wish all my adorable Canadian friends a very happy Thanksgiving!! I have to admit, before SL, I had NO idea that you guys celebrated Thanksgiving. I know, that's horrible, right? But, now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Pork chop sandwiches!

[10 points if you caught that reference.]

Speaking of Canadians, I feel like I kind of need to bring something up because I was checking my Google Analytics last night and something came to my attention yet again. As most people know, CeNedra left SL in the spring. I was not informed of it any more than any of you were. She has deleted her blog and her SL account. I do not know why or what her reasons were. I know her RL became very busy with her boyfriend and her child and her job, but that's all I know. I have no contact with her whatsoever. I also do not have any contact with Dyami and have not for quite some time. So to whoever keeps pairing their names together and looking for them - stop it. You're not going to find anything because as far as Second Life goes, neither of them exist anymore. Please quit googling them and causing their names to pop up in my analytics. I miss the both of them dearly, but I respect their decisions to leave Second Life, whatever the reasons behind their leaving may be. I also respect their decision to not tell me why they were leaving, or to have contact with me or basically any of their former friends again. That is their story, not mine or anyone elses'. I wish the both of them well in their lives and will always hold a place for them in my heart. And that is probably the last time they will ever be mentioned in my blog again, so you can quit searching for them now.

_______________________

It's been dreary in my physical world lately. I have not seen more than 5 minutes of sunshine in about the last 2 weeks, which makes me quite grumpy and sad. The autumn & winter season usually does that to me anyway, but I'm lucky enough to live in a place where usually there's some sunshine. Not so lately and man, am I feeling it. I'm irritable and weepy and bitchy constantly. I'm SO sorry if you IM me and I rip your head off for nothing lately. Supposedly we're supposed to have sunshine on Thursday, so cross your fingers.

But since it's been so rainy here, I wanted to do a rainy day shot in SL. SL is actually a great help for me, usually, with the sunshine issue. I can turn the sun up and run around in the ocean and that makes me feel better most of the time. But today, rain. I have several umbrellas in my inventory, but no real poses for them. Turning to plurk to get some ideas, Rosie Shark told me about, and then showed me, the Paraplu umbrella & AO from Torridwear. It was exactly what I needed!!




I really like the way the pic came out. It might look different on your screen, but that's your monitor's fault.

I'm almost pro on Wii bowling, so I think I'll go back to that now.

Big Bitch Sunday

I'm not feeling so hot today, so let's start off with me getting some stuff off my chest. You know how we do Love Thursday? Well, look out for Big Bitch Sunday.

I hate the new LeLutka skin because it looks like shit on my face, I am not a fan of the whole zombie look, I can't stand that ::69:: charges for their group and has $1L demos that come in 3 sizes when their hair only comes in 1 size, I hate tier time because I don't feel comfortable or feel like I can shop until I know it's paid, I hate that I never get even near enough time with the people I love, and I hate that it's still rainy, gray, and gross in my physical world.

There's a big hubbub right now that fashion bloggers need to disclose if they paid for what they are reviewing or if they got it for free as a review copy. And that's fine. I don't mind telling people if someone was kind enough to give me something for free that they want me to promote on my blog. I'm more than happy to do it. But I do think there's going to be a huge bitchfit if all the review bloggers start doing it. Most people think that anything we blog, we get for free anyway. For those of us who are not big time bloggers, that's just not true. A lot of us pay for what we review. However, there are some bloggers that haven't paid for a thing in ages because they ask for review copies and kiss a lot of designer ass. I died today when I asked a designer I love for a review copy, even though she told a group to please ask for a copy of her latest work if we wanted to blog it. But if some people knew how much free swag certain bloggers got, it would make them sick.

What else can I bitch about? Oh, plurk. There are 2 people on plurk that I absolutely cannot stand. One was a friend who showed her true colors to me recently and one has always been someone I don't like. The problem? They are friends with almost every one of my plurk buddies, so I have to see them blah blah blahing all over the place. It makes it EXTREMELY hard not to reply back to their ridiculous comments sometimes, so as a result, I end up having to mute a lot of my friends' plurks. It really sucks. And drama breeds on plurk, and the last thing I want to do is add to it. God knows some of these "fashionistas" can't ever stop picking at scabs in order to make someone bleed. At least I stay quiet. Usually.

But it's not all bad today. I get to blog a dress from someone I've long admired, I saw a cute movie on TV, and I have new hair.




Hopefully I'll be able to have some fun tonight in SL. I really kind of think I need it. Badly.

Friday In Pictures

Usually on Friday nights, I get together with my best friend of 14 years for either time at the gym, or dinner, or shopping, or sometimes all of it. But her little one has the H1N1 [prayers that he recovers quickly from that would be helpful, btw.] and so she's under quarantine with her family. So resigned to a night in SL, I was hopeful that Tyson or Sophia would be in world, since I haven't gotten to see either of them much lately. But, that was not to be either. So...I set about entertaining myself. If you're on my plurk list, you already pretty much saw these pictures. :)

I started out by running around in my toe shoes [yes, still] and heading out to Ministry of Motion to play with dances.




While I was there, a girl stopped to ask me what was at that store. Uh... look around? LOL Then she asked me if I got paid for dancing there. Nope, sorry, these dance pads take your money, they don't give it to you. Might be for the best. She might have taken camping money and bought another outfit like this.




After that, I went home and decorated the front of the house for Halloween. The inside of our home still isn't really furnished, but the front looks good. LOL




One thing I really wanted to do on the island for the fall was create a pumpkin patch. So...that's what I did.




Then I got bored, used the Emerald Viewer command "gth 1000000," and ...




Not a good look.

Then I did a little yardwork.






I thought I'd go over and check on Emerald's chickens, since she's about to send most of them to the big chicken coop in the sky. I didn't realize she had her turtles out in the chicken coop. But um...hey Em? I'm kinda thinking this? Isn't right.




I spent the rest of the evening putting down a few things in the house [not in place, mostly just in one room to look at them] and watching two explorers wander the island. As I watched them, I realized that the island has never been prettier. I also realized I spend too much time keeping busy and not enough time just exploring what others have done.

Maybe one day I'll learn to just relax and smell the roses. :)

Love Thursday

I was going to skip Love Thursday this week, but after reading my friend Quaintly's post earlier, I simply had to do one!

I love ballet. From the time I could walk, I was striking ballet poses. My mom said she didn't know where I'd learned them, I just DID them. I have a love of pretty much all dance, but ballet is special to me. Although I was given everything I wanted as a child, I was never taken to ballet classes because it was simply not convenient. I often think my life would have been a lot different it if had been more convenient. :) This is why I always push my friends with children to pay attention to what talents or passions their children have.

Anyway, ballet - love. :) I've done the New York City Ballet Workout, I've watched Center Stage about 50 million times, and I'm probably one of the few people who actually loved the Macaulay Culkin version of The Nutcracker.

I have BEGGED shoemakers in SL for ages and ages to please create REAL pointe shoes. Ballet flats are fine and I have a lot of them, but I wanted actual blocked toe pointe shoes that were slender and cute. But I always got the same excuse - "Well, you'd need a separate AO for them and I can't be bothered for a niche product." Pfft to that.

So I was SUPER excited when Quaintly showed the new Bare Rose ballet toe shoes!




Soooo perfect!! And I didn't need a separate AO at all. I've been dancing around all day. The set comes with pink and white pointe shoes and outfits to match, which you can see on Quaintly's blog. But I chose to wear the "Alicia" ballet outfit that my friend QueenKellee Kuu created last year because I'd expressed a desire for a cute ballet outfit. Kellee's been stuck in the physical world lately and we don't get to see her much these days, but I still adore this outfit and am grateful she created it for me. :)




Ballet is one of those things that requires a LOT of hard work to present seemingly effortless beauty. It's something that I relate to, and admire, and respect a great deal. It takes a lot of determination to work that hard to achieve elegance and grace.

So that's my Love Thursday, almost late, but still in. :)

And even ballerinas sometimes need someone to pick them up and rest. <3

Creative Fantasy!

I was chatting with my friend Grant this morning and he said that someone had shown him a "Squirrel picnic" in SL, and if I turned my sound up, I could hear them get drunk. Well, heck. That's all I needed. He gave me the LM to Creative Fantasy at Shadow Brook and off I went to see some squirrels.

And there they were...just having a GREAT time!





Sooo cute! And you could hear them hiccup and everything! I sat there for ages just watching them. But as I looked around, I realized I was in a really pretty sim, so I set off to look at stuff.





It really is just a super pretty sim, and you can buy almost everything that's out there - trees, flowers, houses, etc. Some of the prices are pretty fair, but some things are just a *little* more expensive than they I personally thought they should be. But the sim itself was gorgeous and so fun to walk around. If I had an extra sim [and if I ever win the lottery, I am totally buying myself another sim to just play with], I would want it done up kind of like this, with lots of foliage and pretty stuff. :)

And animals! Like foxes!





And bears!







Like I said, the place is really really pretty, so definitely go check it out. There are neighboring sims that are more for winter and summer, but still owned by the same person, and just as pretty. I may end up going back out there to shop, but it definitely gave me some ideas on landscaping if nothing else! :)

New House & Life Is Good

So yesterday when I logged in, my adorable Tyson was attempting to create a yard in the sky for the Fallingbridge house I decided we should use. But unfortunately, that house was never designed to be a skybox. Not one bit. LOL So after talking about it, we decided to join the majority of the Bluebonnet residents down on the ground because I so badly wanted to use that house. I picked up the beach house and we set to work putting the house down. But much like my ass in my pants lately, it was too big for that little plot of land. I decided that Tyson should learn to terraform and be the man and fix it for me. :)

I'm a pretty crappy teacher, though. I'm sorry, honey. LOL





Luckily for me, he's really smart and after a bunch of adjustments, and a visit from Sophia, SySy, and Dezi, we finally got the house situated on a lovely little hill.





I so love this house! The fun part is going to be decorating it together and landscaping our new yard. :)

We moved from a beach terrain to one more autumn grassy on the island recently, but before that, I had noticed a bunch of gorgeous autumn trees popping up around the island. I decided to go inspect to see where people were getting their trees so we could have some similar to "match" the rest of the island. I stopped over at my friend Lolita's place first and she had some trees from Heart, which I am familiar with, and some trees from a place I've never heard of called Life Is Good. So I decided to run out there first.

And yes...there are trees...





But there is so much more! I was really amazed at how completely lovely and fun the whole sim was. They don't just do landscaping items, they even do furniture, shapes, and poses. Plus they had a swing and a ferris wheel and one of the best streams I've heard in a while was playing in the background. Check out some pics. :)

I love these little birds, but I don't make too many big purchases close to tier time justtttt in case. :)





Pretty underwater stuff!




A really cool art gallery.




Stopped for lunch.




Cute furniture!




Yay, there's a ferris wheel!!




The ferris wheel has piggy seats. :)




Did I buy anything? No, but I saw lots of things I eventually WANT to buy! I highly suggest going out to this sim to look around and hang out, even if you don't end up buying anything. But all the stuff is super cute, so you should totally shop there. :)

Blah blah blah blah blah

I feel like we can't win with SL shopping lately. Most of my friends are bloggers/extreme shoppers. So when something new comes out, they're either given it immediately as a review copy, or they run out and buy it. Some people think, "Oh, if I buy it new, then I'm the only one with it." Nope. Sorry. By the time you get it, more than 20 other people already have it. You'll never be the only one, no matter how fast you rush to get it on release day.

And then there's sales. There have been soooo many unbelievable sales lately!! I certainly appreciate them, as I know many people do. It helps make SL a little more fun for those without a huge budget, and that's always a fabulous thing. But...does anyone else feel a little disappointed when a store has a crazy good sale and suddenly your $500L pair of shoes is $50L? It's getting to the point of me being scared to buy anything because a week later, it's half price or more! Not that I'm saying to stop the sale. Believe me, I'm NOT. I love love love sales. But um, a little advance warning would be nice. :)

But speaking of unbelievable sales that came out of nowhere, Pixel Mode is having a fabulous one right now. $50L on pretty much everything - INCLUDING her prefab houses. $50L + prefab houses = One happy Alicia.

I am not kidding when I say I have a prefab addiction. :-p





What?

I think I decided that we're going to live in the Fallingbridge one from Pixel Mode, but I need to make sure it's ok with Tyson [which I know it will be, considering he's the most easygoing guy ever and loves when I'm happy and supports my prefab addiction completely], and then we need to decide how best to set it up. We both really like the yard on our A.E. Worx skybox, so we'll have to have a yard. But the house is kinda primmy, so some skyboxes will have to come down and other things picked up because I have this thing about prims. lol Even though we can well afford the prims, I don't feel right using all of them up. I need a cushion for things like party rooms and yard sales and because I don't mind when my friends come over to open boxes or rez houses or cars.

I really did have something I was going to talk about, but it's completely slipped my mind. So um... have fun watching me morph into Adriana Lima!

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Genealogy sites - Geneology

It's what's for dinner!

Last night I did something that I've never done before in SL. I went with my guy to have dinner at someone's house. I know, it sounds a little strange, right? But oh gosh, it was so much fun!

Tyson and I were invited over to Tymmerie's and Jerremy's house to have BBQ and a soak in the hot tub. Tymm, being the prim food queen, was not kidding when she said BBQ!






Tyson said that steak was bigger than me. But being from Texas, I was raised on beef, and I could knock that back in no time. :-p Tymmerie, however, just ate popsicles. She wasn't down with meat last night. There's probably a dirty joke in there somewhere, I'll let you guys figure it out.

The Thorne-Darwins were nice enough to give us a tour of their lovely home. It makes me realize that Tyson and I have a LOT of work to do on our own home before we can invite people over. We have nowhere for people to sit and the only things we could offer at this point are nipple cookies and an offer to read our Playboy and people would have to sit on the floor or stand around to do it. But Tymmerie's and Jerremy's place is really nice and very inviting.





After the tour, we settled into the hot tub for a bit. I didn't grab a photo, but you can see one over on Tymm's blog. Tyson stole a fork as a souvenir. So, uh, I guess if you ever invite us over, I'm sorry if any of your cutlery goes missing. :)

It was really a blast and I'm so glad we were invited!! :)

When we left their place, we went home for a suit fitting, and then Tyson fell asleep, so I headed down to the island to start preparing it for Halloween. Last year I really wanted to do a haunted house, but since I was going through all the drama, I wasn't all that in the mood. But after conferring with my residents [uh...well, I plurked it and most of them agreed], I changed the terrain of Bluebonnet to a more autumn grassy texture for this month and THAT meant it was time for my haunted house. Or haunted castle!





That castle is by Luna McMillan of Luna's Boutique and I got it for a steal at just $176L. She actually makes a haunted house complete with the ghosts and everything, and it's really awesome, but I wanted to try my hand at decorating the castle. Of course, if I find that I can't and I suck at it, you can bet your ass I'll be going to buy her actual haunted house. LOL!

I believe it's time for a workout and then back to work on the island. I really want to log in right now and keep working, but .... I better not. :)