Before the new year...

Guess how I got to start my morning today??




Yep! Having coffee at the Grand Canyon!!

No, we're not on vacation again. See, every year since 2008, I have hosted a New Year's Eve Eve party on December 30th. We've had masquerades and ice palaces and barn dances and all kinds of fun themes. I usually start planning the theme and working on it in November. But this year... well, time just got away from me. We had a lot of things going on in both RL and SL and then suddenly I realized it was December 29th and no party. I was really kind of bummed out about it because throwing the NYEE party is one of my favorite things to do of the year.

Luckily, I have a pretty cool sister. Last night she said that there was actually no one at the Grand Canyon this week, so if I wanted, I was free to throw a party there. Well how could I say no??? I adore the Grand Canyon and having a dance there sounds perfect!

So that's what we're doing tonight. :) 8pm SLT is party time. If you want to come, just IM me or one of the family around that time and we'll TP you over. We're dressing party cute, and it's not cold there so you don't need to wear a coat. It IS a homestead sim, so only 20 people can be there at once, so it'll be a more low key event this year, but that is just fine with me. I'm going to be happy to just play music and laugh and dance with my family and friends.

This is probably going to be my last post in this blog of 2014 now that I think about it. Tomorrow is the 7 year anniversary of my starting this thing. God, how time does fly. I could never have imagined that sitting down one night and just writing random junk would have led to a SLifetime of amazing. And it has been amazing, every moment of it, both good and bad. I have no doubts that 2015 won't be just as interesting and full of laughter and joy as 2014 was.

So, my dear readers, thank you for coming along on this ride with me as I enter the 7th year of my blog. Whether you've been reading my blog from the start or you just started today, thank you. I always say that I write for me, and a large part of that is true, but I also write to share with you guys. And I love when you all share your thoughts with me through IMs or notecards or comments. SL blogging has changed a great deal in the 7 years that I've been doing it. When I started, there were many more personal blogs with people sharing their lives. The fashion bloggers did kind of take over and there are a lot less bloggers who even bother to write a hello, but one thing I've learned is that there is room for all of us in the blogosphere.

Stay safe if you head out for New Year's Eve. I want to see you all back here with me in 2015!

My Christmas Wish

'Cause I just want you here tonight
Holding on to me so tight.
What more can I do?
Baby, all I want for Christmas is you.

This is our 5th Christmas together. I know, right?? I just had to go back through my blog to see if I had miscounted, even though I was counting on my fingers. But yep, our 5th Christmas. Even though I told him that all the Arcade stuff he got me is present enough, he still wanted to get me something else. I am easy to buy gifts for because I truly appreciate anything people give me. But I'm also quite hard to buy gifts for because I blog for a lot of my favorite stores already, plus I shop quite a bit on my own! So when he wants to give me something, it has to be something I wouldn't normally buy for myself. Today Maitreya released their new mesh body. As soon as we signed on tonight, he dragged me down there to buy it. :) I was planning on demoing it at some point but I already have the Slink Physique and only seem to wear that when I'm wearing things that show my legs. And not to mention that Pink Fuel doesn't have appliers for it yet. But he didn't care. He said it could sit in my inventory if I wanted, but he was buying it for me.

Who am I to argue?

We went home and I played around with it. I don't wear Glam Affair skins [which are already preloaded into the HUD], but I happened to have some old ones from an event last year, plus the Slink appliers for one of the tones. It's really a very nice body, and I like the alpha options. But until Pink Fuel does appliers for it, it's not something I'll wear often. Plus, let's face it. I wear a lot of big sweaters and jeans. There's basically so reason to wear a mesh body when you're wearing that stuff.

But there are good reasons to have mesh bodies, too. Like when you want to wear pretty, skimpy clothes while smooching on the man who has been good to you for 5 Christmases. And while you kiss him, you make your Christmas wish that there will be more Christmases together in the future.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year!

So a year ago today, Abby became our daughter. :)

It's been a heck of a year! But a really good one. We had nooo idea that we'd be so happy as SL parents. Really! But it just completely makes sense. Nothing I've done in my entire SLife has made me as happy as being part of a family in SL has made me. Maybe my family life started the day I got married, or the day I was sibling adopted, but I think it wasn't really official until one red headed 8 year old became a Zanzibar. :)

We had our party on Wednesday and it was really fun! Lots of laughter and many good friends and family dropped in. It was great to see everyone!!

Yesterday, we were finally able to take our holiday picture. If you're one of our close friends or family members, you'll probably get a copy of it in world [at least, from one of the girls. I'm actually pretty bad at sending things out!], but I wanted to share here, too. I'm sure I'll post again before Christmas, but if I do not, have a wonderful holiday!

Got that party feelin'!

I've been getting ready for our party tonight. I hope people like sparkles because well... we got a lot of them! LOL!




I really can't wait for the party! It's always fun to get together with friends and family, especially those we don't get to see as often as we'd like. If you guys would like to come to the party, we'd love to see you there! The party is at 8pm SLT!

We just like sparkles, okay?

I've been trying to landscape our parcel ever since the snow fell, but man... I have had no luck! I just haven't been able to get any ideas in my head of what to do. But we're having a party this Wednesday for Abby's adoptaversary, so I needed to do SOMETHING.

The ice skating pond where the party will be held is pretty much done, but the rest of the land looked pretty plain. So I just started throwing stuff down. And it became very apparent that girls live there because the whole place is pretty well coated in sparkles at this point.




The place is coming along, slowly but surely. I set up a little campsite, and I'm going to make some hills for when we go sledding. But that's work for tomorrow.

Oh! In case you're not on my plurk or flickr, let me leave the invitation to her party here. It's an ice skating party, so be sure to dress warm and bring your skates! I'll add the SLurl to the party on Wednesday. Or just pull up Bluebonnet on the map and look for the people. lol

Fra-GEE-leh! It must be Italian!

Since the girls went to bed early tonight, I decided to try to pull out some of my Christmas decorations for the house and also do a little bit of redecorating in the living room. But well, as I was pulling things out of my inventory, I discovered something that I forgot I had!




Behold! The leg lamp!!

Obviously this is the best Christmas decoration that we could possibly have in the house. Obviously.

I just hope the girls think so. *laughs*

The Best Tree

The girls have been itching to get a Christmas tree up, so tonight we headed out to Inglewood's Farm to cut our own tree down! The place is really lovely and there are things to do and see out there.

After we stopped at the little cafe to get coffee, we headed out into the tree farm to look for the best one. The girls ran around until they found the tree that they felt was the fluffiest.




Luckily, Daddy Z is pretty handy with an ax. And he's big and strong, because you know, we're delicate girls. We couldn't lug the tree around ourselves! We might get splinters! But he chopped and chopped and got us our tree.




After we got our tree, met some reindeer [Birdy shared her coffee with them!], and Abby met a woman who probably didn't realize that wearing pants is usually a good thing out on a snowy farm, we headed home to set up our new tree. There is still tons to do in the house to get it ready for Christmas, but we got our tree up, so that's really what counts. But setting up a Christmas tree is hard work! It was bedtime for our little ones, but they didn't want to stop looking at the tree.




We have a busy couple of weeks coming up. Next week [the 17th], we're having an ice skating party to celebrate Abby's 1 year adoptaversary with us. Plus we are going to see the Polar Express and Santa with the Oleanders, and there will be an ugly Christmas sweater party and I think a camp fire stories night, too. Lots to do, but it's all good stuff. :)

Goodnight!

Catching Snowflakes

So I have a pretty cute family, you know? I mean, it's kind of in the guidelines that everyone needs to be somewhat photogenic and all, but we really did luck out. *laughs* Abby had to go to bed early tonight so Birdy and I went outside to play in the snow. How adorable does she look trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue?!




We'd pretty much eaten our fill of snowflakes when Aldwyn came home. He didn't think we needed to eat any more because I think he was worried that we'd start singing "LET IT GOOOOO!"




Joke's on him. I'm gonna sing it anyway. :-D

Well, that was an amazing half hour.

So The Arcade started tonight. About an hour ago, in fact. It's the first time in a while where hardly any of the family was able to be on and that made it just a little less enjoyable for me. Of course, now that they've moved sims, it's not as fun as it was when some of the family were out banging against the sim borders and laughing about it! I never even got to do the border thing because by the time I got my new computer, they'd moved sims!

But I stayed up anyway. One of my friends got an early pass, so he was set up and ready to sell at midnight. My niece Bella is a mod this time around, so she also got in early and was ready to sell at midnight, too. And then the old shopping sickness hit me.

For 30 minutes, I went crazy.

I ran first to Matthew's sale. Click click CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK. I bought lots of things off my wishlist. Then I ran back to Bluebonnet and picked up a few more things from Bella. Then someone on plurk posted their sale and I went there and bought some more things from the list.

It took me about 30 minutes to buy many things off my list. To be perfectly honest, I got home and barely knew what had happened. I used to have a shopping addiction, years and years ago, and that's what this reminded me of. I bought and bought.

Of course, unlike back then, I only spent around $11. *laughs*

Still, it was a fun 30 minutes. There are more things I need off my list, of course. But I can do the rest a little more slowly with the family, and Aldwyn is a really good shopper/trader and he always gets me the good rares that I want.

But I got animals. So I'm happy. :)




I need to do more landscaping on our parcel. Now that it's snowy, I want to do a bigger overhaul of the parcel, but I am not the best at this stuff. I would just hire someone to come do it for me, but oh hey, I spent almost all my $L on animals. LOL! Such is SLife. :)