Category: Home & Garden

Furnishings and stuff for home interior decoration and its whereabouts

Winter

Winter in a box

When you’re the owner of an entire sim on a private estate or independently, there is a series of regional settings you can control that are not available to simple parcel owners or anyone living in Linden land. One of them lets you customize the appearance of the ground texture, so it can fit your landscaping needs.

When your kingdom is très petit, even smaller than the tiny world of the Little Prince, winter is probably the most difficult season to cope with the rest of the neighborhood, especially if you’re the only one cheerfully expecting the first snowfall –unless you live in the frozen confines of old Sansara, the ever whitish Snowlands, where the problem is exactly the reverse: how to fit in during the summer. You can, of course, cover your land with some prims and sprinkle them with snow and ice textures, use any of the available pre-made landscaping kits (with dozens of options to choose from), or even get your hands on a chic tool such as JVTEK’s LandMap to cover the ground with a precise layer you can paint as desired. But remember: the rest of the sim may remain as green as ever, and your plot will stand out as the shiniest rarity in the ‘hood.

For the last two winters –this one included– I’ve been living in different parts of mainland. To avoid any seasonal confrontation with my tropical acquaintances, I have rezzed a little skybox above the clouds to build my arctic “miniscape”. It’s not exactly as building at ground level, but there are so many options today that the scenery can even be lively in a limited vault like this.

 

My permafrost dwelling rests in a small 1696 sq.m. parcel, and it consists of:

  • Turnip – 40 x 40 Skydome, with winter textures.
  • Studio Skye – Enchanted woods, Snow Formations, and Silver birch.
  • 3D Trees – some accessories from a winter trees pack.
  • Botanical – Touch 2 Change Split Rail Fence
  • Happy Mood – Snowy road (sans rocks)
  • Dysfunctional Designs – several snowmen
  • Dust Bunny – Hunter’s Retreat (rare gacha item from the Old Fashioned Winter set at Nº21 event)
  • Tia – Love Doves Birdbath (rare gacha item from last year’s Winter is Coming set; machine is still available in store)
  • LISP – Victorian Street Lamp (white icy with snow version)

Except for 3D Trees, all other products are mesh, and I still have more than 200 prims left, woot! Snow in the pics is is a combo of a Happy Mood product and a texture+script from yours truly.

Pergola

Nomad no more

I think I’ve finally found a cozy little corner in Mainland. I had to keep looking, almost everyday, for months, till I found this plot last weekend… by accident. You know that the SL map only updates once per day, so any changes taking place after 7:30 a.m. SLT (more or less) won’t show up until next morrow. That makes the SL map an unreliable tool to find parcels for sale. Yet it kind of became a hobby for me for the last ten months (yep, ten months).

So last Sunday, after buying Botanical’s new umbrella tree –that I’ll show you in a short while– I TPed to my beachy plot (the one with Llorisen’s cabana) to see if the tree could fit in the current mood. To tell you the truth, I didn’t like the way the poor thing looked in that dry and sandy land, so fearing it might die of dehydration if I planted it there, I opened up the map to check if by chance there was a small and greener inland plot for sale that I could use for occasional gardening tests like this. Several minutes in the search, I saw a 512 sq.m. plot somewhere in the northern lands with a tempting price. I TPed there… just to find it wasn’t as attractive as it seemed from a 2D preview, but then, next to it and just waiting for me, lay this glamorous slopy lot that was simply perfect for my new assignment.

Umbrella tree

I didn’t give it a second thought (well, I did, but don’t tell anyone) and clicked on Buy Land. Then I said to myself: “Let’s get down to work.” So after a couple of long laborious days, I can now properly present to you Botanical’s new Umbrella tree. Due to the nature of this RL tree, I never thought someone could upload a sterling digital counterpart to SL, but I’m super glad Kriss Lehmann proved me wrong, woot! This schefflera is a tropical native from Oceania, but it took a trip sometime ago and now is found in so many places that I would have never guessed its origin if I didn’t look it up in Wikipedia.

The house is Scarlet Creative’s Mountain Lodge from last March’s Arcade, and the Maritime pine tree (in the background) is also a relatively recent release from 3D Trees I haven’t had the chance to use before. The same goes for the Beech forest groves in the first picture.

Mountain Lodge from behind

Here is another shot of the Mountain Lodge, as seeing from the nonexistent backyard (there’s a hillside in its stead). The previous plot owner was also using this house, and I thought it looked perfect, so that’s why I went for it too. To the left of the house, there’s another 3D Trees release: an Apple tree.

Apple Tree

And you know what? That apple tree is available for free! It’s a gift from Nadine Reverie. I don’t think any other gardener is so kind to his and her customers as Ms. Reverie: jste nejlepší (I hope that means “you’re the best” in Czech). So head to her inworld store, get this fruitful tree and don’t forget to send her your most sincere thank you.

Promontory

As is obvious, the house sits on a rocky promontory made of Fanatik’s Rocks & Cliffs Wales set, with a twist: the basic textures are good enough, but I thought that Studio Skye texture looked simply superb. That’s why I added that small waterfall (from Studio Skye’s Waterfall building set) too.

Happy bushes

At the base of the cliffs, a small grove of Happy Mood’s yellow-green Shrubs add their shades to the mossy rock. The Dirt Road that leads the way to the house (review the first picture in this post) is another release from this creator.

Ox Eye Daisies

The last veggie release in this installment is the Ox Eye Daisy set from Heart Garden Centre. Large bushes are a little bit “primy” at 5 LI per clump, but hell they look so great! Just use with caution if your land capacity is not that generous.

Gazebo

Lastly, I couldn’t resist using Atelier Visconti’s Adria gazebo in the garden area, next to the waterfall. Considering that I was already running out of prims, the only decoration I could add were lame’s Kenway Sectional set, Culprit’s Seagrass rug, and Floorplan’s Captain’s desk lantern. 

Rest

With a few more prims I could have put out more stuff, but well… At least now I can take a rest from nomad life, at last!

Plane pot

Taro on a plane

A quick post: If you hurry up, you can still get these two nice terrarium pots (below) for 50L at Kalopsia. They were released last Friday as part of the Fifty Linden Friday weekly event. Luckily they’re still available at that price tag, but they may not be so cheap for too long. They are really nice and 3LI each.

Terrariums

Then, you should head to Convair and get th little Pursuit Plane Pedal Car (the heading image at the top) that was released this weekend as part of the new The Dreaming Tree weekly event. It’s not a vehicle and it’s not a prop with poses either; it’s just a decorative item, but may serve different purposes. I’ve decided to use it as a pot for Botanical’s recently released Blooming Taro set, that you can get at the Summerfest 2014 event. The taro set should be available until mid July (and later at Botanical store), but after tonight, the rusty plane may go up in price. So again, head to the store right now before it’s too late.

.lame - Clara's Pallet Bed

On a side note, I also like the way lame‘s Clara’s Pallet Bed ended up looking after some quick modding. The pallet is obviously gone, and the mattress was placed over junk’s blues rug just to add some extra color to the scene.