I Simply Remember ...

Lludmila waits for a house to rez at the
Collabor88 Home and Garden Showroom. 

I've been remiss of late - not posting anything on my blogs. I've got lots of good reasons. Well, reasons, anyway. It's hard to photograph, trim, write up, document items. So I have decided to just list a few favorite shops here - and post some photos if I feel like it.

This post is limited to houses and furnishings. I have no end of both - much of which was exceedingly cheap or free, "free" being my favorite color. But there are several shops I will go to and actually pay for things. Okay, I cheat with Trompe Loeil - I get that stuff from Collabor88. Oh, I dread the coming of Collabor88 each month - knowing how little resistance I have as well as how difficult it is to even get in there in the first week to ten days.

Frostbite Cottage, Willoughby Lakehouse, Cortona Villas,
Rustic Cabin, Beach Bungalow, oopsie - Outdoor Rock Shower,
Chatham Loft Skybox. Note how some houses hover in midair. 

So, that's my first shop: Trompe Loeil. I have counted 12 houses/buildings from Cory Edo, whom I follow on Plurk where she entices us with unfinished versions of things for Collabor88 and FaMESHed. I avoid FaMESHed because I think the wares there are over-priced. Some of these TL structures have only been deployed long enough for me to say, "Ooooo, miiiiine." I've lived in others. By "lived in" I mean I kitted them out with furnishings and spent some time with them. They are all gorgeous. They are perfection. And that is my only quibble with them. I don't live in perfection in RL, so a lack of scrapes and dings makes me uneasy. "Perfection" is not necessarily realistic.

Barton Creek Tower section, Caramel (with Trompe Loeil furniture),
the Moose that made me so happy, Westlake Mini in the trees.

I have only four buildings from L2 Studios, but I have used them all. L2S structures are all about dings. My absolute favorite house was the Caramel, which has been deployed several times. The Westlake Mini was out for ages because I liked it so much. By "ages" I mean many months. Second Life time works like dog years, only even faster. The Writer's Shed is now up on Awen - and is sprinkled with quirky things from Art Dummy, Kusshon, Ionic and Sway's.

The Writer's Shed - in some artsy midnight mode.

Waldinsel is littered with my buildings and Waldron suggested I could just pile them all up at 100 meter intervals, but he's nice enough to let me stick stuff all over and I don't want to wear out my welcome. And too many houses are distracting. Yonks ago there was a hunt on some island where you could get a coffee shop, if you found the egg or whatever the prim was, and that building lived in my inventory unused (typical) until recently. I was so intrigued by the overly generous freebie (I think an entire building with really nice textures is pretty darn generous) that I went to the shop's showroom and looked at all the houses. I picked one called, prosaically, "08" and purchased it. The two of them now stand side-by-side on a huge grass prim (oh, so much easier than trying to arrange a house on uneven ground), "08" now filled with almost every piece I've ever gotten from this last favorite shop-where-I-will-actually-pay-for-stuff, Zinnia's.

Cambodia inspired jungle pool (subscriber gift), psychiatrist
furniture, bathhouse (and HY's 08), more Zinnia stuff.
I'd add more, but frankly, there's so much. Go look at my
Flickr pages.

I love the colorful southwestern style from Zinnia's. Sure, I've accumulated some free stuff through the hunts from there, but I've also bought quite a bit. As colorful as it all is, it all seems to coordinate. I haven't been so happy with decorating since I found the moose head to put in the Westlake Mini (see L2S photos above). There is no more room in "08" and I've already had to remove a bed so I could put in a daybed instead. And if she puts out something else, I suppose I'll have to sacrifice some other furnishing to stick back in a file folder for a while.

There are so many other places with great things (Post is one that springs to mind), but these are the main three.

The Dreaming House is probably just up long enough
to admire it. Sigh.

Shops:
Trompe Loeil Mainstore
Collabor88 (Several favorite shops are regulars there - Clawtooth & Barnesworth Anubis, for example. Collabor88 opens on the 8th day of each month and is heck-on-toast to get into.)
L2 Studio
Zinnia's

Other Locations:
Lludmila's Pied a Terre in Awen (Wormhole to Chatham Loft skybox inside)
Willa Waldinsel (a collaborative work in progress)
Cafe Lludmila (just 'cuz)

Virtual Nervous Breakdown

Sale at Silent Woods on Tudor-ish houses. They seem to be low prim (21 to 64) ranging from 49L to 69L.  Lludmila was just picking up some trifles for the last 3 days of the Antiques Grid Show hunt and thought she'd look at the house sale. If you see her up there, it's because she still can't decide if she should buy one or all of them.

Update: She compromised and bought 3.

Oh, Nooooooo!

Maybe I should just have my own sim with all my little houses on it. Sigh. Trompe Loeil at Collabor88.

Om Help Me! I'm a Trompe Loeil Addict!

I've bullied and cajoled; I've threatened them. Nothing stops Trompe Loeil from issuing the sweetest little houses at prices I'm willing to pay. Now I will spend the rest of the next few days staring at a map of the Collabor88 sim looking for the "49" that signals an opening. Lludmila will be there - minus prims and scripts - to swim upstream through the lag to mate with the POS (that's POS in the "good" sense of sales as opposed to the Ford POS).

And, as usual, she will have nowhere to put it.


 

A Little Beach House

Heh! Polynesian Gothic design!

Available at her shop, Anarya Design inworld, or on the Marketplace, Anarya has a free beach house fully furnished (205 prims) with a pool!
We just can't resist another house!

I Warned Y'All!

"Cottage"? "Cottage"?! This thing is eNORmous! But at least you can shrink it a bit.

Lludmila is a sucker for houses. She stalked the Collabor88 sim by map until the avatar count dipped below 50, took off all her prims and tp'd in for a purchase. She went to the demo afterwards to look it over, because that would have just taken time out of dancing with her friends (and the teleport sign was last to rez). Now she has this enormous tree house and nowhere to put it. It's silly to use it as a skybox.
But she warned you folks at Trompe Loeil! It's cruel and unusual punishment to produce these things and then sell them at such a low price. You were warned. We have no recourse but to punch your -

Late addition to March Collabor88.

Awwww, shhhhugar. You guys think of ev'rything.

It's Not Too Late!

A little feature for the garden ...

The Lady of Sorrow Temple at Chrome Armory was on sale for 55L for the Fifty 5 Thursday sales. It still is!   You save 95%! Or something like that. [Math, shmath!] Follow the path (past the icky clown) to the right to see it live and in-person.

Tudor Tustory

Also available at Chrome Armory at ridiculously low price, this two-story Tudor house for the 60L Weekend sale! A 500L value!

Right, I didn't have time to take this home and put it up somewhere to take pictures so you'd have time to pick up that temple before someone figures out it should go back up to 1299L. Yes, blogging is happening while still shopping. You see the dedication? Feel the love!

And, while the blogpost is still open, what a fabulous Twisted Hunt prize from Zinnia's - one of our favorite, favorite stores. It's the southwestern psychiatrist's office! What fun animations! Chair, couch, talking parrot (well, it squawks anyway), rug, wall hangings (including one of Freud)! And there's actually a hint! We love you, Zinnia's!

Kathy's outfit is a lucky board prize from May's Soul. Boots from Duh!

Dear Trompe Loeil

Beach house with nowhere to live.

Dear Trompe Loeil,

Please stop. I have enough of your houses and skyboxes now. I am unable to resist your Collabor88 offerings not just because of the delightful designs, but the price (288L).  I don't have room for these, despite their low prim counts, but I still can't see them without wanting them.  If you persist in this cruel temptation, I will have no recourse, but to punch your lights out.

Sincerely,

lludmila

Lludmila's been working out.

Open Plan

The, ummm, withdrawing room?

Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber.

Some Christmas things and some surprises!

Check out the 'air' dwelling at [dls].  Talk about an open plan!  It comes furnished and is perfect for a location with great vistas because you won't miss any of the landscape. You can pick it up for 100L.
And while you're there, there's an advent calendar, several hunts, lucky chairs, and a sweet little pile of freebies.

There's No Place Like Home ...

We go on and on about how weary Lludmila is off clothing and now she collects homes and home furnishings.  Well, the holidays have brought some brilliant additions to her collection.

The first thing she saw was the new house available from Trompe Loeil for a mere 188L.  She spent two days trying to find a time when the sim was not full.  You all know what Collabor88 can be like at normal times - well, it was crazy.  Today it looked like only 32 avs milling about, so you can probably tp in and marvel at the miniature version - if you have the patience to wait out the lag.  It comes in four colors.

Lludmila's not happy about this house or anything!

It comes with optional snow - and Awen thoughtfully
turned winter shortly after it was installed.

Collabor88

What's better than a cheap gorgeous house? A free one, of course!  Ionic has a winter house as a hunt gift and, like all of Ionic's offerings, detailed and pure delight.  Lludmila was drooling over the furnishings, but the governor in the spending portion of her brain kicked in.   She's using this as a skybox, but the functional door is also a work of art.  Sigh!

Getting all excited again over a new house - and then
she just puts the same old crap in it.

The sunsets will be fab-oo from up here.

Bathrooms should have windows.  No, really, just try
using one in RL(tm) in a power outage.

Ionic

Good old days table set - Pepto-Bismol pink waitress outfit from
FIN-Relive the Fifties, thanks to that group gift of 100L store credit.
Okay, so sometimes Lludmila likes clothes.

The above explains why the governor kicked in - it wasn't free or anything, but Lludmila just couldn't resist that knitting animation.  It's from one of our favorite places: [kusshon].  The table comes with the two chairs, a loveseat, the knitting bag, table props, and a prop-giver.  There are a few places where Lludmila would like to have everything in the shop.  Ionic and [kusshon] are two of them.*  If she doesn't want everything at Trompe Loeil it's only because that store is so big - but she would like a great deal of it.

*Here's another place: Post - holy cow!  Got that rustic chapel thing/hunt prize from there - so many houses, so little space!  Sweet mother of mercy, stop me before my inventory gets over 50,000.

Hunted Houses

Urban spooky house by Ionic. Twisted furniture by Little House of Curios.

Once Upon a Time house by Ionic. Fall bench by Little House of Curios.

Four (more) Walls by Ionic (sings: Night and daaaaay, you are the onnnne!)

ISO more living spaces?  Need some casual furnishings?  Stop by *ionic* and Little House of Curios for their hunt prizes.  There are three at *ionic* and in a small space at that, so they aren't hard to find: Four Walls Hunt (which costs 10L - but it's a house!), Fairest of Them All Hunt, and the One That Would Not Die: The Twisted Hunt. If you have space in your groups, *ionic* also has some good group gifts on the wall next to the door.

Little House of Curios, besides being full of great stuff, has gift items from the Twisted Hunt (good luck on that one) and the Summer Harvest Hunt (find the tee-ninesy-weeny acorn).

Apologies for the strange backgrounds.  Lludmila is between houses and has set up a classical pose playground until she makes up her mind which of her many, many, many houses to rez.

Happy Hunting Overkill

Lludmila's gone right off fashion (sort of) and now only wants houses and furnishings, so when she was visiting Prism for the 60L Weekend Sale and saw the Happy Home Hunt sign, she thought she might try it.  The hunt costs one linden dollar, and this is just to buy the HUD at NightMaire, the first stop.  After that, the prizes are free.  The HUD gives you the hint and the landmark and you need to be wearing it to click on the pie.  

At first, ha ha, Lludmila thought she'd just go to shops she was familiar with ... but the next thing you know, she was hooked.  Below are just a few of the prizes from that hunt (and any other hunt also happening at those shops and the lucky boards and the Midnight Mania ... this should explain our huge inventory problem).

S-curve lounger from Prism.

Aqua side chair with nice anims from Senzafine.

Outdoor lounge set (2nd lounger not pictured) from JJ Lanes.

Hilarious bubble chair I have no use for but just love from  Fantastic Furniture.

Lludmila can't take more of this hunting ... chair by  Prism!

Country bench with, like, a gazillion anims from Pillows & Things.

Bean bag chairs and a lamp from Bag Lady Design. BLD is one
of my current favorite shops thanks to 60L Weekends and the fact that
she puts the hunt items out on the deck so you don't kill yourself looking.

Amusing clock with kitchen theme from PDN's Potpourri ... hunts and lucky chairs EV'rywhere!

Grandfather mantel clock just the right size for Lludmila (does this make it a
grandson clock?) from Closer to Heart.

Coffee mug and a platter of muffins that gives muffins ... for your next meeting
from SFW Industries.

Lucky Chair item from Pillows and Things (see above country bench).
The animations were so much fun that Lludmila was reluctant to give this up.
Note how it swamps her in the upper right picture.
Fortunately, it was mod (although it claimed it wasn't)
and we shrank it down to her size in the bottom picture!
Yay! We can keep it!

Not pictured: the houses. OMGosh!  One of them was simply huge and furnished even including a bathtub, a bar, and a bartender!   Please remember that some of these items were from sources other than the Happy Home Hunt.  I just imagine that if you are like me, you don't just do one hunt at a time.

Decorative Obsessions

Bag Lady Design prize for the Cookie Jar Anniversary Hunt

The trip to Zinnia's from the blog below that netted me that hammock fabuloso just whetted my appetite for more furnishings.  And that's what The Cookie Jar is all about.  Lludmila came back with tasteful shelving, couches, a 3-tier potting bench, a framed swing ... and there would be more photos, but Cal insisted on our taking pictures of his haul.  [Great free clothing for men is thin on the ground.]  Anyway, don't miss the Cookie Jar anniversary hunt.  Above is Lludmila's favorite acquisition from Bag Lady Designs (a shop she's fond of anyhoo), a couch, coffee table, and crabby artwork perfect for Lludmila's current little shack.

Lludmila really really really wants this house but ...

Once at Zinnia's Lludmila couldn't help herself.  She really really really wants a southwestern style house to go with all the great southwestern furnishings, so she was fairly drooling over everything at Zinnia's.  There are also two little houses for sale.  The Mexican one is to die for, and only 500L (which is, like, 425L more than Lludmila likes to pay for things that don't have saddles, gaits, and whinnies) but there's this one teensy problem.  See if you can pick it out.

The first four people who spot the problem, if they IM Lludmila Mirrikh inworld, they will win a cute summer prize!

Time for a Change

Spring comes to Awen.

Lludmila spends so much of her time in the skybox and tp'ing to the Pub for her discussions, that she was unaware that spring had come to Awen and new neighbors.  She looked at her little red vardo, which was just a launching pied-á-terre for the skybox, and the redness of it seemed to clash with her neighbor's house and all the greenery springing up.  We scoured her inventory for something small and suitable.

Cute little one-room cottage. Be sure to ring the bell!

 This little house seemed perfect.  We had trouble deciding on orientation.  Lludmila likes a view of the ocean, but a cottage of this size does not have a lot of room for windows.  We wrestled with it, but in the end decided to put the more interesting side towards the public area.

View of cottage from south and then north. See the problem?

 I would not live in a house like the above in RL(tm).  Air and light are critical to my well-being.  Then I remembered the portable window that was getting dusty in the inventory.  I pulled it out and deployed it.  It was a forest scene with a window frame overlay.  I ran through some photos I'd uploaded and while the view of the Great Wall of China sim made for an interesting view, it wasn't satisfactory.  So, I sent Lludmila outside, pulled out the sailboat and Lludmila pushed it into position.  I took a series of photos of different "times of day" and uploaded them.  Now Lludmila has a legitimate view of her ocean and the little house is not so claustrophobic.

The solution!

Never Satisfied

Lludmila saw the cutest little house: two floors (well, one and a half), kitchen and living room downstairs, bedroom upstairs.  This place makes cute furniture too.  It's not horribly expensive - has a working door that opens slowly and naturally.  The upstairs balcony has a curtain that closes it off from view that also moves gently.  Lludmila's glad she went to the Demo to check out the scale though ...

Exceptionally Cute House

What's wrong with this picture?

I know she's only 4'8" - but when her head doesn't even reach the doorknob, there's a scale problem.  This door would be too tall even for the giants and giantesses that roam You Know Where.

Lludmila's First House

The first home I purchased for Lludmila was, I thought, just a teeny bit large for her size, but I was so in love with it, I bought it anyway.  Note that she probably reaches 2/3 of the way up the door which, at her height, is probably normal.  I know we need a lot of room to maneuver in, to skip around the ottomans of life like Dick van Dyke, to hang enormous paintings, etc. - but please please please keep things to scale!