December 2008

We at SL Shameless Gossip luvz the Greenies, and I blogged the Greenies over a year ago. Naturally, I visited for the holidays.

When I stopped by the Greenie Home to wish my little friends a Merry Christmas, I found some gifts under the Charlie Brown style tree! Here you see me standing on a present looking up at it. So let me show you my finds!

Hat and Greenie love particles

This hat was among the gifts, and I wish you could see it, as it’s the best Santa hat I’ve seen in SL. Also included were wearable Greenie love particles! Don’t mind my friend here, he’s still finishing up his Christmas list. (The outfit was an Advent gift from artilleri that is no longer available.)

Bee Queen costume

In one of the unmarked boxes I found this free bee queen costume, complete with hair, eyes, glowy skirt and bees that buzzed all around me. (Here I am standing in front of a different gift box.) There’s a shape in there too, but sorry, I only wear my own shapes. No matter what, I want to look like me.

The prim top came in two attachments,  left and right pecs. Now when your AO moves, that can leave you a bit exposed, as it doesn’t move with you. So I did a bit of editing and attached one to my chest point and one to my spine point. Since my own shape is bigger than the one included, I also increased the size of the prim top. I then moved the bee attachment (it was a spine attachment) which makes all the bees buzz around and moved it to my right hip. If you can edit prims at all, you know all of this only took a few minutes. If you don’t know how to edit, wear the included shape.

Little bird avatar

Next, I found the gift of a little bird avatar! Yep, that little blue bird in there is me!

Greenie slippers

Back home at my Damiani Christmas room (blogged earlier) you see me relaxing in pajamas by Damiani. Though these came with very cute little red house slippers, I have replaced them with the greenie house slippers I found as a gift under the tree at the Greenie Home.

As you might have expected on Christmas Eve, some of the free Advent gifts were quite stunning today. This is going to be a quick show and tell, and I have a lot of running around to do before the RL party tonight. But I want to show you a few of my faves.

Damiani treated us with a complete Christmas living room complete with romantic pose balls by the fire. The gift includes everything you see here, including a Christmas tree with sparkling stars that give off a fireworks effect, and, needless to say, champagne chilling in a bucket.

It’s not news that Damiani has given away some fabulous Advent gifts - and that they remain available to group members, as well as a darling Santa Girl outfit and skin in group notices. It’s not too late if you missed out, but joining fee is now $250L. And well worth it.

Ivalde outdid herself with this tartan gown today.

And the Ivalde gown came complete with this formal back pearl necklace and matching earrings. All included in today’s Advent gift.

We always love artilleri, and today the Advent gift was this charming holly necklace and earring set.

I continued my exploration of winter showcase sims today at Wintermute. Wintermute is described in Search as “a poem inside a mystery wrapped inside a metaphor.”

At Wintermute

Poetry flows through Wintermute. This sign says "All of our tears are frozen."

An unexpected refuge from the bitter winter

Free skating dress from Nylon Outfitters. Bunny ear muffs match the fur-cuffed skates; both from Chapeau tres Mignon.

Contemplating the meaning of life and death

This cute little skating dress is in the women’s freebies package you can find on a sign right inside the wall at Nylon Outfitters. Three different colors gloves are included, as is a red skating dress and, well, just all kinds of other freebies.

These may be my fave color combination of the Chapeau tres Mignon skates - black and silver.

Today I continued my Winterfaire Second Life Grand Tour, This was as good a reason as any to don Chapeau tres Mignon fur-topped ice skates in another color - red and gold! How regal. I’ve blogged these skates in white, and the red is no less luscious and detailed.

Chapeau tres Mignon skates

As you can see I paired them with a fun little ensemble by Dani’s called, appropriately, Candycane. Both skates and the skating costume come in several color choices.

Dani's Candycane skating ensemble in red

Here you see me kneeling down to tie my skates when my knee went out! But fortunately not for long. My cute little Dani’s skating outfit comes with many pieces, including leg warmers and ballet flats, not shown.

Winter at Fruit Island

First stop on my tour today was Winter at Fruit Island. On my arrival, a sleigh was waiting to take me on a tour. Unfortunately, the horse was a bit near-sighted and ran into the cab you see further on, but eventually Nellie was able to continue our tour.

There are fun skating animations here for every taste. This is the trick skating animation. There are also animations for casual skating and couples.

Here you can see the corset layer i am wearing over the little top. You can also see the detail on these Chapeau tres Mignon skates even on the bottom!

One reason I didn’t bring any of the guys along on this trip is I wanted to show you how the skirt on this outfit flips out to show your bottom as you skate away! A bit of a surprise that will get their attention. Don’t worry, a thong is included.

At Jazz Sunrise

I got a little cold, so I dug deeper into the Dani’s Candycane folder and look! Nice warm pants and a lovely, snuggly sweater! I wore this over to Sunrise Jazz to look into some of the holiday shop windows.

Check out the little candycanes on the sleeve!

The hair is Sonia by ETD and the skin from Belleza’s new Bella line.

Have you scattered snow all over your sim, put up your tree, turned on your Christmas lights and still have that nagging feeling something is missing? Maybe it’s that personal touch. Head over to Beck’s and order some personalized Christmas stockings displaying the names of you and your friends to hang by the fire. These are made using original sculpties and needlepoint textures.  While you’re there, you might want to pick up some holiday cards for all the people on your list!

Personalized Christmas stockings hanging by the fire

There are eight different styles of stockings. Creator Miles Beck can often turn them around in a few minutes if you catch him online - but it should not take longer than eight hours in any case.

Don’t have a traditional fireplace to hang your stockings on? Me either. I live at the beach in a tropical climate, and I like it that way. No problem! I hung mine on my rattan wall either side of this painting depicting a Balinese scene.

To put myself in a holiday mood, and to have someplace to wear all these wintery holiday outfits I’ve been collecting (You see me here wearing a free LVS outfit I have previously blogged),  I decided to hit a few spots on the Winterfaire Second Life Grand Tour. These are primarily private parcels that have been turned into winter wonderlands.

This snowman throws big snowballs at gingermen on the ice below and knocks them down!

I invited the never-dull Evo Witte to accompany me to the first destination on my list - Blythe Bracken and Wulfric Chevalier’s Second Life home at Samhain. Blythe says, “Wulfric builds the homes, and then i work around on the rest of it.”  These kind souls keep their acreage open all the time, and they change it with the season. So go now to see the icey paradise described here!

Trail to unexpected discoveries. Notice the dragon in the water to the left.

Sapphire Jetaime: they leave no detail undone. Who ARE these people?

evo Witte: crazy winter supporters

(Evo’s from the north and is already tired of the cold this year!)

evo Witte: these people are way too productive, i’m sure we’d clash

Spring is coming! The end is near!

We ran across some rather depressed snowmen.

I was charmed when we happened upon tiny bears and tiny snow people dancing upon a frozen pond. Evo? Not so much.

Sapphire Jetaime: winter munchkin land!

evo Witte: they look dangerous… like evil ewoks

evo Witte: this is the horror part of the sim

Has anyone else noticed? Every other sim I go to these days is heavy into meditation.

evo Witte: i think buddah is smirking. its a trap!

Sapphire Jetaime: hahahahahaha

Sapphire Jetaime: The ewoks are coming! The ewoks are coming!

evo Witte: we might be sitting on a sacrificial altar

I saw light and color pouring through a door in a stone wall…

Sapphire Jetaime: It is SPRING OVER HERE

evo Witte: they are already planning 6 months out!

(Actually, it was more like autumn on closer inspection.)

Sapphire Jetaime: The mushrooms are multiplying

evo Witte: oh yes, those are not mushrooms… it’s an ewok factory

Sapphire Jetaime: omg.. they are like ewok pods

When I talked to Blythe later, she said that even as she changed the landscaping every season, “I have to have my mushrooms, I always have my mushrooms somewhere!  :)))”

We found an igloo!

For those who are so inclined, there were some very snuggly looking pose balls inside.

Wearing my Chapeau tres Mignon bunny earmuffs by the waterfall. This beautiful skin is free from Dernier Cri for the Peace on Earth hunt.

Evo, who apparently can scope out everything that’s on a sim in 1.5 seconds, found a hidden cave.  Below you see what we found inside.

Blue room inside a hidden cave

Evo, of course, jumped on the bed.

evo Witte: The bed is  sneaky. the pose balls are protected!

Sapphire Jetaime: lol

evo Witte: guess they don’t want strangers making a mess

Sapphire Jetaime: Understandable.

So since the pose balls on the bed were protected, what else was there to do? You got it. Ohhhhmmmm…

I am very impressed with what Blythe and Wulfric have done here, and I encourage you to go. They love visitors! If you feel you want to help support their efforts, there’s a little donation box inside the mansion, but all are welcome. I was expecting a skating rink and a few snowmen. But this place is phenomenal. It has everything from Stonehenge in the distance to sunken viking ships. I’m mentioning these things ’cause you’ll have to go see them for yourself, as I only have so much room for photos here.

If you’re wondering, I’m wearing fur-cuffed silver and white ice skates and matching bunny ear muffs from Chapeau tres Mignon in this post. I LOVE these skates. I’ve had them since last year, and one of the joys of the season is gliding around SL in them again.

Since unlike RL skates, I can go up and down steps with them, I’ve been wearing them for a couple days now! They come in all kinds of colors, and you can also get them in gold.

Evo is wearing their blue men’s hockey skates. Both men’s and women’s skates are very detailed, and I mean everything from the blades and laces to the fur. That’s the kind of detail which makes all the difference in Second Life fashion.

• Skates and bunny earmuffs: Chapeau tres Mignon
• Sapphire’s skin: Free skin gift from Dernier Cri from the Peace on Earth hunt. And you can get it HERE.

Blue skirt outfit just one of many free holiday gifts from LVS. It includes the belt with ringing bells. Bunny earmuffs by Chapeau tres Mignon.

I was about to leave the house today to do a bit of exploring, when who should pop over but Second Life heart throb Evo Witte. I was dressed for wanderings on winter sims in one of the FREE holiday gifts from LVS. If you haven’t already, get yourself toute suite over to the square outside LVS for loads of phenomenal gifts under the tree from both LVS and My Dead Kitty. Ravenlynn Templar is an extremely generous designer, and one of the reasons for the generosity this season is to help raise money for Toys 4 Tots. So please look for the donation box near the freebies and spare what you can.

Back to Evo. Now Evo is good-looking, funny and probably hipper than just about anyone else in SL. Back when Evo was DJing he was the reason for catfights among nightclub dancers, and when he lived down the beach from me, the dramas played out among him, his girlfriends and his GFs’ jealous admirers were much more entertaining than any episode of The Young and the Restless. Heck, I used to make popcorn just to settle down and watch.

From L to R: Evo, Humphrey, Devi, me

But enough history. After I showed Evo around the beach house, we went out back to say hi to  Devi Moonbeam - she stops by to feed the whale in the mornings. I just recently installed the whale, because I didn’t have enough room for him at the last place I lived. I mentioned to Evo that I hadn’t named the whale yet.

Sapphire Jetaime: We should name him/her.  What do you think?

evo Witte: humphrey?

Sapphire Jetaime: haha ok, Humphrey

evo Witte blinks

evo Witte: did he just fly?

Sapphire Jetaime: I keep seeing him hurtling like a space ship into the sunset. And yet he’s still here. No doubt I have his swimming path charted too close to the edge of the sim. But I look at having a flying whale as an extra benefit.

Thar she blows! Every once in awhile a whale hurtles through space and falls off the end of the earth at the horizon - yet Humphrey is still swimming in my bay!

Want your own orca? Go get yourself one from Jerry Martin at Exotic Fish Supply. And if you’re very, very good, he may even take you to the private sims where they swim wild. Just be sure you have the space. Nothing worse than a beached whale!

• Blue skirt and holiday skirt with ringing bells belt: Free at LVS
• Stockings: Tintable stockings from Persona (from ages ago and not free)
• Bunny earmuffs: Chapeau tres Mignon (Not free but cute as heck)
• Sapphire’s boots: Minx  (Soooooo not free)
• Orca: Exotic Fish Supply

The morning after I went ice skating (see last post), Hammer wanted to go to New York. We wandered around and ended up at the Statue of Liberty. You will have to take my word for it that we are on a bench at the base of the statue, cause I was too enamored looking at Hammer’s new skin to take any photos of the statue.

This reminded me what fun it had been skating at Rockefeller Center last year. Well, it’s in a different place this year in Funky Town, and under different sponsorship, but it’s just as fabulous. Now I’ve got that song “Won’t you take me to —– Funky Town?” going through my head. Ack! Anyway, they have couple skating poseballs so you can skate together, cool even if you do have your own skating anims.

I hadn’t expected to go skating, so I sure was glad I had on my ear muffs!

It’s the holiday season, and so of course all of our thoughts turn to - that’s right - ice skating! But are you tired of skates that just don’t really quite go with your outfit? And if your skates match, do you find you can’t quite find the right shoes to walk over to the club house for some cocoa?  Rhaorth Antonelli of Rha! has solved this issue by offering us sequined skating dresses, matching skates and shoes, all sold separately for those who like to mix and match. Above you see me skating at Christmas by Pondlife.

Note the lace detailing and the flower on the side of the collar

Now I like lounging around on the deck in my jeans or a sarong as much as the next person, but when I hit the ice, it’s all about the glam. I chose the blue sequined skating dress as you can see, but these dresses also come in green, yellow, red and black - though the black has a silvery look to me. Rhaorth’s prices are so extremely good, you might want to grab all of them! She’s just reduced her prices throughout the store, so hurry on over. We are talking DEALS, girls!

Sometimes silver and grey can look rather unfinished in SL, sort of like a pencil sketch.  But Rha!’s “black” skating dress does not have that issue - it looks finished and fabulous. Here you see Rhaorth skating around her store in it. Oh, that kid! The hair she’s wearing, by the way, is a new style she will be introducing soon.

Needless to say, the stiletto skates (don’t you love SL?  Stiletto skates!) are complete with a graceful skating animation that will show off how you have been practicing on the ice for years. But here’s the really cool thing. Check out those snowflake pantyhose! They are included with the dress! Rhaorth says she may also begin offering them separately, so be on the look-out.

And please also note the snowflake mesh gloves included in the outfit!

When you stop by Rha!, don’t forget to look for the freebies at the front desk as well as the lucky chairs, fortune teller, mob vend, guess-what’s-in-the-box game and other ways to win freebies and discounts.

In addition to clothing, shoes and hair, Rhaorth makes furniture, kids stuff, jewelry, prefabs, skins, shapes, and, well, you’re never sure just what you might find in her shop. Her motto is “Creation is only the beginning.” For more news, see the Rha! web site.

Those of you I hang with in Second Life know that I met Hammer at Toby’s Juke Joint, so it’s a little special to us. And you all know I blogged Toby’s pretty heavily lately. I get a rash if I go too long without the blues, and Hammer named his RL dog after B.B. King’s guitar. So the blues has been the backdrop to our growing relationship.

Dancing to the blues on the deck at home

Now Toby’s is pretty much my regular hang-out (when I manage to pry myself away from the beach house), and since we met there a few weeks back, Hammer and I tend to pop back fairly often. It’s comfortable and feels like home to us.

This has been a difficult week real life and today was the most difficult of all. So I was not amused when I walked into Toby’s tonight, and who was there but my ex and his GF. I know he reads this blog; he knows I hang there. And I know he completely learned about Toby’s Juke Joint from this blog, because he has never, so help me, had an original idea on anyplace to go in Second Life. Ever.

Space Park in Second Life

So needless to say, I didn’t stay. I went out RL for a few hours (I’m a firm believer in the time-honored Friday happy hour tradition), and met Hammer back at the beach house once I was in a decidedly better humor. He wanted to stop by Savoy Jazz Club, which we did, but the dance balls were kind of out of sync. So we did a bit of shopping, and then we decided to head out to the Inspire Space Park, as he hadn’t seen it yet.

If you have not been to the Space Park, cancel all your other Second Life plans and GO. It is beautiful, spiritual and relaxing. We started out having a glass of wine, and could have been happy just sitting there lazily chatting and watching the shooting stars. You see, the sky changes, and you can never be sure what you will see next.

Floating weightless above the Space Park

We walked across some small asteroids to what appeared to be a dance floor. But when we clicked the dance ball, we floated off into space… all very 2001 Space Odyssey.

After awhile, it was time to float back down. I thought a bit of meditation might be in order. I was quite amazed at the calming effect of SL mediation as the platform I sat on slowly rotated among the heavens. The animations were familiar to me, as they are similar (though certainly not exact) to prayer rituals I have practiced so many times before at Hindu temples over the years RL in Bali.  Hammer was feeling a bit under the weather with a stomach bug RL, poor dear, and he said it made him feel better too.

Obviously, I wasn't expecting to be meditating when I put on this skirt!

Hammer and I communing with the universe

While we were chanting, I got a message from Tom Divisadero about an Ozzy concert over at Wild Hogs on the Full Throttle sim, so we did a complete about-face (the sublime to the ridiculous) and headed on over. This is SL at its best perhaps; a pulsating slate for artistry of all types. That, and the fact that Second Life allows us the opportunity to switch gears and attitudes at the speed of light.

Ohhhhmmmmmm

So I guess it is good to get out of your rut, even if you’re forced out of it.  Outer space, even when virtual, can make human idiocies seem small.