Just before I left SL for a few days to spend Christmas with my RL family, I sold my land in Apparition Wood to my neighbor. I decided finally that I couldn’t justify having land in two sims, and I was very happy to leave the Apparition Wood plot in good hands. Leaving was bittersweet, but I can’t be sad about making Winterfell my new home base.

The constant twilight in Winterfell is perfect for showing off my lighted trees, and I’m going to leave those out as long as we have snow on the ground. Then I’m going to work on creating a garden/greenhouse area in that space. It’s so much fun having more land to work with, and a larger home offers so many more decorating possibilities too. I’m still only using about half of my prim allotment, so I’m working on bringing more of my dreams to reality.

I’ve discovered that sitting in front of my fireplace is a really great way to spend a few moments while I catch up on group notices and IMs when I first sign in to SL. Walking through Winterfell is also a wonderful way to relax, and you can almost feel the chill in the air. I’m home!

The universe always seems to nudge me whenever I try to fall into a rut, and I appreciate it even if I sometimes complain during the process of changing my routines. This time, however, I’m not complaining at all! Thanks to a contest through the SL interior design magazine Prim Perfect, I have become the owner of a new home in Winterfell Ebonshire. The plot is gorgeous waterfront land that faces a water sim, and the house is the creation of Serra Anansi, a designer I have admired since first seeing her store in Caledon. She’s also the owner of the Winterfell sims.

On Sunday, Saffia Widdershins, Prim Perfect editor, contacted me to let me know I’d won their monthly contest to live rent-free for 30 days on a featured sim. I’d entered in part because I thought a little SL vacation in Winterfell might serve me well to bring some roleplay to my SL. I never in a million years thought I’d actually win, but I had a few daydreams of creating a back story that would take me to Winterfell for a writing sabbatical that I’d tell my family and friends about my experiences through letters. You all were to becoming my unwitting friends and family of course. I assumed I didn’t need to ask because the letters would just be additional posts here.

Yesterday, I met Saffia and Serra in my new home to pick up the keys and say hello. I fell in love with the land just as I fell in love with my little plot in Apparition Wood just three months ago. As we all talked about various things, I was composing shopping lists in my head and cheerfully patting myself on the back for getting such a nice home during prime decorating season. Serra then stunned me with the offer to let me extend my stay there past the first month by just picking up the very reasonable tier costs. She said I didn’t need to make a decision in that moment, but she’d barely gotten the sentence out on the screen before I said that I’d love to do just that. I was squealing and bouncing in my chair in real life, and I’m still smiling.

I’ll be writing an article for Prim Perfect about decorating for Christmas this week, so my new home will once again be shown in the magazine. Of course, this is special because it’s the first time it will be shown as mine. I’m also looking forward to a joint Winter’s Solstice Ball hosted by Seneschal Serra Anansi of Winterfell and Duchess Gabrielle Riel of Caledon Carntaigh this Sunday in Winterfell. I’ll need to find time to shop for an appropriate formal to represent my new homeland properly. New homeland! (/me tries to stifle another gleeful squeal.)

Speaking of Caledon, the next issue of Prim Perfect will include a contest to win a home in the new sim of Caledon Morgaine for 30 days rent-free, and Desmond Shang has already stated that the winner will then be able to just pick up tier payments after that month to make their permanent home in Caledon. I really encourage anyone who might be interested in living in Caledon to enter. Caledon has a very long waiting list as I discovered before buying my land in Apparition Wood, and this is a fantastic opportunity to stake your claim on part of a new sim in that nation.

Going back to the topic of my own homes, this news means I’ll most likely sell my land in Apparition Wood, which is a little sad, but the beautiful home and land in Winterfell Ebonshire is just too perfect to give up if I don’t have to do so. Perhaps I’ll figure out some way to justify having both plots though. I still have some weeks of tier left in Apparition Wood, so I don’t need to make any hasty decisions. One idea I had was to let my Apparition Wood land go completely natural with a fairy-inspired landscape of trees, mushrooms, and fireflies to have a meditative retreat and space to spend time with friends in the great outdoors of SL. I definitely have lots of things to think about!

Yay for Windlight and yay for new computers! Yes, more than a month after my last computer went belly-up, I finally have a new one, and it’s such a huge change. I went with a quad core CPU and an 8800GTS video card along with 2GB RAM. I tend to have a million things going on when I’m at the computer, and this set-up works really well for that kind of use. I still have a few quirks to work out as my DVD drive seems to have disappeared from “My Computer” at some point, and I just noticed that the speakers are no longer working, but we’re getting there.

We’re leaving in the morning for a little weekend trip, but I’m going to have fun checking out SL all over again once we’re back next week. Beween Windlight and the new machine, I’m really amazed by how pretty everything looks. I signed in for a bit this morning to check everything out, and I never even left my backyard because I was just so thrilled with how it looked. Also, I realized after the fact that after installing Firefox and Thunderbird, I installed SL and all my games (WoW, Sims 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, BioShock, Oblivion, Arcanum, etc.) before even thinking about all the programs I need for school and work. When I did think about Photoshop, it was in the context of processing screenshots. Interesting priorities there.

I’m going to start this post with some personal musings, but I promise I’ll connect it up to SL in just a bit. Some of this beginning bit can possibly be summed up by ISFJ, Aquarian with Libra rising and moon in Sagittarius, and Queen of Swords. For the rest of you, I should mention that I’m a perfectionist peacemaker, and I’m always trying to figure out “the right thing” so that I can do it and make everybody else sing along in perfect harmony. I’m not willing to entertain any deception to do that because I want to get to the real heart of the matter even if the truth isn’t pretty.

I take it upon myself to take care of everyone else, and then I forget that I have to take care of me in order to take care of them. There are some stresses going on right now that are making me a little crazy, so I decided that yesterday and today are going to be a mini-vacation for me. I’ve been hanging out online, reading, and cleaning and organizing because those are all things that connect and center me.

That’s all great, but then I start stressing over my online activities, which defeats the purpose. It’s been X days since I blogged or added photos to Flickr or went to this hangout or whatever, and then I worry that I’m not being good enough. What’s good enough? I don’t know. It’s all more than a little insane, but it’s me, and I can usually smack myself around and recognize that I need to take a deep breath or two and calm down. In an amusing twist, this kind of anxiety paralyzes me, so then it’s even more time before I do that mythical thing that’s supposed to be so important. Yeah, my brain is a messy place at times, but it can also be a lot of fun, so I’m keeping it.

In the midst of all this inner crazy-making, I did what any self-respecting consumer does and indulged in some retail therapy. Happily, this is much cheaper in SL than in RL. See, that’s the SL connection that you may have been wondering about. I started with a trip to ETD to try out the latest hairs and then debating on what packs to get. In the past, I’ve been a Smoke girl, but then I have some skins that look better with dark brown hair rather than black hair, so I dabbled in Chocolate as well. This made the Elika’s Favorites pack a huge bargain for me.

The new Smoke texture is nice, but it doesn’t feel quite as right on me for some reason, so I’ve been debating going to another color. Yesterday felt like a good day to do some experimenting, so I ended up getting the Naturals II pack after some color demos, and that gives me Ebony and Espresso as my black and brown shades. I think these might be keepers, but I’m sure I’ll go back and forth on that for a while. I left with every new release in my shopping bag except for the cowboy hat. I’m not one to wear cowboy hats very often, and I already have one to pull out for Country nights at Club 9.13, so I don’t need another one.

Then I finally made my way to Celestial Studios for the big half-off skin sale. A CS Vogue skin was my very first skin purchase, and I’m still a big fan even though I wear several different skins now. My first skin was from the Muted Lips series (I think) in light brown. I went back and forth between the Pure and Champagne tones before plunking down the lindens on Pure. My second skin purchase was the Equinox makeup from the Spring series, and that one was also in Pure. For the Summer series, I made the leap to Champagne because I figured a light tan would be appropriate for the season. By that point, I was a hardcore shopper, and I just went with the entire series rather than picking one makeup. While at Celestial Studios yesterday, I picked up the entire Fall series and decided to stick with Champagne. I then picked up the entire Spring series in Champagne as well, and I have my eye on a couple of other sets that might make it into my shopping bag before the end of the sale tomorrow.

My final stop on that shopping spree was Straylight Botanical where I finally picked up the Orange and Red Japanese Maples. They’re a real bargain with the small, medium, and large sizes along with the optional shadows and groundcovers to match. I changed around the trees at my home, but I’ll continue to work on that as I’m not so good at using the groundcovers on my sloped land. Just having the new trees makes the place feel like autumn though, and I’m sure I’ll get the other bits up to my satisfaction at some point.

After some landscaping, I signed off from the husband’s computer and went off to do other things before booting up the laptop for DJ Rosie B‘s set for Cops and Criminals night. The laptop really hates SL, and I wasn’t even sure I was completely dressed when I got there, but I think I was fine. I tried dressing like the robber from Sims 2, but I think I ended up looking like a French artist. I crashed before the contest started, but I had a great time while I was there. This morning I signed in to SL to check something and realized that my hair from last night needs some adjusting. My perfectionist screeched about that for a bit, but then I just waved her off. She’s in the corner pouting, but she’ll get over it.

After all that talk about the Silent Sparrow and Draconic Kiss release party, I ended up not even going. When the time rolled around, I was feeling a little shy so I decided to hang out at Keiko’s concert instead. I appear to be an introvert in SL just as I am away from SL. In SL though I get to be invited to be in a music video and pose for a photographer’s portfolio, and that’s a little different from my reality in a very fun way.

I also want to share a quick photo of my little cottage on the land I bought recently. It’s a much smaller plot than I thought I wanted but with double prims. Many of my landscaping ideas had to be scaled back or not used at all, but this place is my 3rd house and the first one that’s felt like home in SL.

I was talking with a friend today who wants to find a place to put down a small tree house she found. As we talked, we realized that we share some common thoughts on what feels like home with both of us feeling drawn to forest locales and natural-looking homes. She doesn’t want or need a lot of space, and her finances make it better to rent rather than buy.

We decided that it would be a good fit for both of us for me to buy something a little larger than I need and then have her rent a section for herself. That sounds like a lot of fun to me though I’m not sure right now how that will work so that both of us can build on the land and retain the ownership of our items. I believe it will involve setting up a group to own the land, so that’s something I’ll need to investigate in more detail.

The thought of sharing with a friend makes the idea of owning land seem that much more interesting for some reason. We’ll both be looking for something that suits us so that I don’t end up with yet another beach house that sits empty except for me popping in to change my clothes or to get away from the crowds.

I still don’t have a name for my blog, which is kind of sad, but I’ll work on that later. I still haven’t even told anyone about this place. I’m shy, but I still like having all my blogs. It’s a little bit of an internal struggle at times between those parts of me. I love people, but they kind of intimidate me me at the same time, and I do find that I need a lot more time by myself than most of my friends.

But that’s really not what I meant to write about here, so let’s move on a bit. In my last post, I mentioned my small little beach house. The person who owns the island on which I was renting decided to start up a security agency for some unknown reason. There was no discussion about it, and several of us were surprised by it. The patrolling security guard creeped me out a bit, and he seemed to be on a power trip, so I decided to cancel my future rent payments and find a new place.

I looked for some land again, but I’m still not finding anything I like enough to purchase. Renting something else while I keep looking seemed like a good idea, and somehow I ended up on another beach (though much more lushly landscaped than my previous one) in an even bigger house that I’m still treating as an over-sized closet. I’m really spending too much cash on these not-quite-right homes, and I think I’ll just go back to being homeless if I can’t find the right land before my rental period on the new place runs out.

I’m going to be away from SL for the rest of the week as my husband and I celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary with a little vacation. That makes this new rental even sillier because I’m paying for a week that I won’t even be in world. Can we say impulse purchase? I have more cents than sense at times.