The Day I Played Fixer Upper

Most of the non-blogger men that I know in Second Life don’t change their look too often. They don’t really have to. They can put together a couple of casual looks, a formal look, and that can get them through most things. The funny part is that some of them didn’t even really put those looks together themselves – they had a partner to do it!

My own SL husband is not really an exception to this. Oh, he loves to shop. When we first met, he had a lot of outfits and costumes and even did some modeling here and there. But when mesh came out, and mesh bodies in particular, things got a little harder. It was like that for a ton of people, by the way. Go to any live show or older club in SL and you’ll find a lot of people who simply can’t get down with mesh and utterly refuse to even entertain the possibility. To them, mesh is still a passing phase, despite the fact that we’ve had it since 2011. Luckily, Aldwyn doesn’t go THAT far! I’d never stand for it! But since January 2016, he’s looked like this.

Now don’t get me wrong. This is a good look! He wore the Catwa Jackson head with the Hugh skin applier from The Skinnery. And I’m a fan of older men, so you know I was totally into it!

But there are some problems with looking older in Second Life that we didn’t anticipate when putting together this look. The main one being…it’s freaking hard to dress an older guy!! Seriously, go take a look at basically every men’s store in SL. The clothes are generally geared towards guys who are under 35 years old. Unless he wanted to wear a suit all of the time (which I wasn’t against, tbh) there were very few options for someone who looks 50+. And add that to the fact that the more “trendy” pieces like the ugly dropped crotch diaper pants and oversized tank tops that reach the knees were/are at every event and we hate that look… well, dressing was not all that fun.

When LeLutka came out with the Andrea head for men, I was into it. I knew I wanted to take Aldwyn younger again, because I tend to look a bit younger in SL and while I’m still into older men, I thought maybe it was time for both of us to look near the same age again. Plus, his head was not bento, and if I’m going to be bento, he’s going to be bento because that’s just the way it works. Not to mention, I adore the LeLutka HUD so so so much more than the Catwa HUDs for their heads, and I knew he would like it, too.

If you watched my vlog from yesterday (I’ll link it at the bottom of this post), you know that he gave me carte blanche to play Fixer Upper on his avatar yesterday! So I took him to…

LeLutka… To get the Andrea head. (5000L)

Stray Dog… To get the Breno head applier, plus a skin applier for his body. He uses the Slink Physique body and Stray Dog does not make a skin applier specifically for Slink, only for Signature and Belleza. However, the Signature body applier can be used on Slink if you have the Slink omega relay. So that’s what I did. (590L for the head applier, 490L for the body applier.)

Stealthic… To get the Like Lust hair. (300L)

I created his shape myself based off of what he already had, but just made adjustments to his head to keep the bento head from looking like the mouth had collapsed in on itself. I’ve found that this is the case with most bento heads.

So the grand total for everything… 6380L, or about $27 USD.

Totally. Worth. Every. Penny.

I did take him to get a few clothing items, too, and oh my gosh. It’s so much easier to dress him with a younger face.

Well, except for the fact that people are starting to only create for the Signature and Belleza bodies, and not for Slink.

But that’s a struggle for another day.

If you didn’t know, I’m doing Vlogmas! If you want to see me taking Aldwyn’s avatar to get his makeover, along with looking at a couple of Advent gifts and dealing with some Christmas “decorations” that Groves left for us, feel free to watch!

Your Heart I Will Choose

Oh God. I can’t even give an excuse as to why I haven’t posted in here. *laughs* If you follow me on youtube, you know I’ve been doing more videos than anything lately. I need to really find some dang balance with everything.

But anyway… Guess what? We just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary!! Isn’t that CRAZY?? Well, Aldwyn says it’s not really crazy. But still…crazy!

We did laugh, though, thinking about some of the people who said that I was just the “flavor of the month,” even though by the time they said it, we’d been together for almost half a year. I’m still the best flavor, suckers!!

Instead of having a big party or anything, all I really wanted to do was hang out with my little family. It was actually kind of a big night for us!

I’ve mentioned the SL adoption-to-birthing process before in a previous post. Not in really great detail or anything, I’m sure. But as simply as I can explain it: Some parents in SL choose to “birth” their adopted children. It’s a symbolic thing more than anything else. The child is not considered adopted anymore, but a true born child of the parents. Now most parents who do this, the mom goes through the SL pregnancy process – belly bump, labor, and all! Even complete with a prim baby in most cases! But this was not something I was interested in doing. I didn’t want to look pregnant [blogging would be difficult!] and I didn’t want to do the labor thing or have a Zooby baby of the girls. *laughs* I just didn’t. BUT, the whole symbolic thing appealed to me. Because well…they just feel like ours. So I felt like it was time.

I made a video for the girls. [It’s private, but I’ll share one day.] They loved it! Then I presented them with new birth certificates, and the whole family with rings with a Z on them. I actually want to get proper signet rings for everyone one day.

After that, we went on a mushroom hunt! It was the neatest thing. We got to hunt mushrooms and make potions that sometimes made mushrooms grow from our heads. It was soooo cute! We also carved some pumpkins as practice for next month!

It was really a wonderful evening, and the best wedding anniversary. ❤

Six Years

So back in 2010, Aldwyn and I were just hanging out. A lot. Neither of us were looking for anything, we just simply enjoyed each other’s company. But then we decided, hey…why not try this? Why don’t we see what happens?

A year after that, he proposed. And a few months later, we were married. Then came the kids. And throughout everything, we’ve remained strong. ❤

Today is our 6 year anniversary. I can't believe he's put up with me for 6 years! Believe me, he's probably been tempted to go out for cigarettes and not come back more times than he'd ever say. *laughs* But we stay together, and every moment we get together is wonderful.

Six years. Who would have guessed?

To The Moon and Back

So I don’t really take naps in my life. I don’t enjoy them and I always wake up more crabby and disoriented than I was before I fell asleep. The only time I take naps are if I’m sick or if my body and mind are just completely worn out. I ended up napping for a couple of hours earlier and now it’s almost 3am and I’m just up.

I meant to finish decorating this house tonight so I could blog it, but I started to miss Aldwyn and I figured he needed to be with me. He’s actually on a trip right now and I won’t see him until probably Monday. 😦 But it’s a good trip for him and so I can’t be too upset that he’s not here with me right now. I want him to enjoy his trip a lot!

Well, except that I miss him and I want him here. But still, I’m not too upset. LOL

It’s kinda fun being on his avatar sometimes. I usually end up taking him shopping. Tonight was no different. We went to get the Gos sneakers that are at Gacha Garden. The girls helped me get an extra Rare pack earlier so I could pass it to him and he could have black sneakers. For yearssssss, Al wore the same Converse style sneakers. Only they were SUPER old. Like, sculpts and invisiprims old. He wore them with everything!! But finally he gave them up. I think mostly because once he went to a mesh body and mesh feet, they didn’t fit anymore. I’m not sure if he misses them, honestly. But when I saw these sneakers, I figured I’d take him to go get them! There was not a size specifically to fit the male Slink feet [there is for the women, and a Maitreya size], but there was an unrigged pair. I managed to get them to fit his feet and also just look proportionate to his body. I did end up using some socks from a pair of his Fatewear shoes to make it look better, too. He has several colors in his HUD now, too, just because well…I made him play for colors 20 times. Because I needed the exclusive unicorns color for my shoes, and you could only get them if you played 20 times and my purse was empty. 🙂 Isn’t he the best??

We also went to The Mens Dept and there are some cute cute t-shirts there! Most of the time we can’t find anything there for him. But these tees are great! Fit for his body, cool retro prints, really awesome! And it’s like 30 prints for $399L. That is a ridiculous price for something like that. So he needed those, too!

I dunno. Maybe it’s pathetic that I drag him around with me when he’s not online and I miss him. But I don’t care. Yolo. *laughs*

I guess I should attempt sleep. ❤

And I Hold My Favorite Thing

Goodness, it feels like May has been going on forever, and it’s not even mid-month yet! *laughs* May is a SUPER busy month for the OZ family. We’ve had FOUR parties so far, and we have another one tonight! And one on Friday! We are some party people! But they are all good things that we are celebrating, birthdays and adoptaversaries and other things.

Birdy’s adoptaversary party kicked off our month of parties on the 1st. She has been with us for two years! Can you believe it? We had a “Survivor” party for her. Lolita put together an absolutely amazing place for us. I never could have done it! We had to cross planks, search for words, brave a raging river, jump across a tiger pit, climb several flights of stairs to a zip line, and then make it all the way back down to the start. It was SO fun! And I don’t want to say who won, but… well, it was me. I totally won. 🙂

Last night, the kids did a Mother’s Day dance and had dinner for us. It was so sweet. There were many gifts and everything, too. All of the kids in our family are so good to us. ❤

But of course, the best part of my evenings are usually the few minutes I get alone with Aldwyn.

He always listens to me rant on about just the most ridiculous stuff! Well, some of it is ridiculous. Some of it are things I’m legit struggling with and I’m not sure how to make better. But he always listens, and he tries to make it better for me in some way, which I appreciate. Next month makes 6 years that we’ve been together. Isn’t that crazy? And I knew him about a year before that. Like I told him last night, “I’ve known you way too long. How am I not sick of you yet?” *laughs*

But seriously. How is HE not sick of ME? Guess I’m lucky that I’m cute!

[Btw, if you want to buy the pose I used for this picture of us, I put it up on Marketplace.]

Caught Off Guard

Last night was a “free” vacation night, so I decided to take advantage of that and get our official spring family photo done. We usually do an official picture twice a year – spring and fall. Well, and our winter/Christmas photo. I have all our official photos on a wall in our house, starting with Aldwyn’s and my wedding photo. I love that particular wall of photos since I get to see our transition from it just being him and me to …. Well, this!

If you think it’s easy finding decent poses for 2 parents and 4 kids, you’d be wrong. *laughs* Luckily this gem was at the Pose Fair and I’ve been saving it for our spring photo. I think it came out pretty well, and I was happy that we did it on vacation so that along with being our first “real” photo as a family of 6, we also have a great memory attached to it.

So while I was working on the picture, Aldwyn and I were talking and he mentioned what some others have mentioned – It’s weird that he has a mesh head and I don’t. *laughs* Because as a blogger, you know. I’m supposed to be all on top of that stuff. But I’m a strange blogger because I will find a skin I like and just stick with it. For ages. For a longggg time. I just like being me, I guess. I do have a few heads from Genesis that I got from blogging for events or from a gacha, but it was just for blogging really. I mean, yeah, a lot of skin makers are only doing appliers for heads now, or at least doing them more often than a full skin. But I never could justify buying a head when I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to wear it full time. But then before I knew it, I was caught off guard as a head ended up in my inventory, courtesy of my husband who says he never gets to buy me anything.

Only…it wasn’t really the one I wanted. *laughs* I mean, I can use it for blogging! Believe me. It’s the Alex head from LOGO and tons of skin makers are making things just for that head. But I liked the Chloe one better because just with the base skin, it felt more like me. And … then Chloe ended up in my inventory, too. Welp.

So now I have a mesh head! I’m still not used to it. I went down to the store and picked up the other two expression packs for it, and a pack of lipsticks. I have spent a ton of time just staring at it. I think I like it. I don’t know really. I’m sure I’ll get used to it in time.

But Birdy made us all laugh last night after I got the head. “Did we really just take our picture and now she changed her face?!”

Blame your dad!!

Life Is Rosy!

I took a break from our Arcade crazy to finally finish up a pose I’d been working on for Aldwyn and me last week. I think it came out cute! You can buy it here!

I really love doing poses with the AnyPose! This was a great Christmas gift. [Thanks, honey!] I have a folder fulllll of pose ideas that I keep on my desktop. The fun for me is trying to match the pose with the picture. Usually it doesn’t work. *laughs* Like this particular pose, the photo of the couple had them with their arms outstretched, like an airplane, and they were holding hands. But when I stretched Al’s arms out, I knew immediately there was nooo way my arms were as long. And man, was I right! My hands came to about his elbows. So, I improvised. And I actually like this better. We used a pose similar to this for our wedding invitations back in 2011, but it was more of a piggyback ride pose and not an “I just jumped on your back!” pose like this one is. I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted with this pose, though.

There are limitations with the AnyPose. Which are most likely SL limitations since when I drag a pose into Qavimator, sometimes I can’t get it to do what I want there either. The avatar just doesn’t move that way. [Or if it does, it’s being done in Poser, a program that I have but can’t really use because I am like a bull in a china shop when I use it and everything comes out crazy.] If I had a wish for the AnyPose, it would be to be able to move the body parts in smaller increments at times. Especially the hands. It can go from “Almost touching” to “Oops, I accidentally ripped a hole in your chest” REALLY fast.

I really want to start making family poses. I did the one for my sis and me, but that could be used for any two friends, not just sisters. I want to make more involving the kids. We have to take our spring family photo soon. I think I might wait and do that when we’re on vacation, that way we have a pretty background [not that we don’t have a billion places on Bluebonnet to take pics!] and a good memory attached with the photo. I have some pose ideas for what I want, but getting everyone to sit their butts down so I can do it… well, we’ll see. *laughs*

Speaking of sitting on your butt, I have been on mine for far too long today. I think it’s time for lunch and a walk.

Oh! And here is the song I was listening to while making this pose. I LOVE it.

This feels right, feels so bright bright
All the world somehow starts to shine shine
With you by my side
Life is rosy!

Any Time, Night or Day

So for the past month, Aldwyn and I have been making sure to take one night a week to go out on a date with each other. When you have 4 little ones in the house, sometimes you just need that one evening of adult time. NO, NOT LIKE THAT. Pervs. 🙂 Usually I dress in some scandalous dress and we head out to a club or two and listen to music and people watch. Then we head to our special date place [aka my Linden home] for cuddles and chatting. And then we go to sleep. 🙂

Well, okay, he goes to sleep. I lay there looking adorable. But whatever, it works. But I really love our date nights. We usually have so much going on during the week with RL and SL things, sometimes we barely get to speak to each other. Having 2-3 hours that are just ours during the week is really nice.

We have some upcoming things coming up, too, as a family. More of our family will be living closer, which will be awesome! I’ll talk about that later when things are more settled. Which will probably be tomorrow but whatever. *laughs*

And next month we have our family vacation coming up! I am always so so excited for when we go on our trips. They are such a great bonding experience for us and so much fun! This will be our 4th big trip together. [I don’t count the week we spent back at the rainforest after camp. That was more of a quick getaway to relax.] This will be the first family trip that Rory and Heath will be joining us on, so that will be super fun to get to include them in on the fun of packing pictures and everything. I’m excited! We have about 3 or 4 weeks until we go!

I’m exhausted, so off to sleep for real. ❤

The House Is Full

Guess what?

THEY SAID YES!!!

Tonight we asked Rory and Heath if they would be official Zanzibars, and they agreed!! We didn’t scare them or bore them away! *laughs*

We asked them in a surprise way, since that’s how we roll around here. Aldwyn had suggested to me last week that we ask them by flying a spaceship up into space. I have a space ball we have used before and planets that explode [which everyone loves to do!] and so we decided that it would be fun to ask them that way. I decided the aliens could greet us “in space” with the sign. Of course, the ride to space was… well, it’s US. What can I say? We’re just US.

But we eventually made it to space, and the aliens were holding the sign, and there was a flurry of “YES!” and “YAY!” and screams and everyone was just incredibly happy. 🙂 Then the time came for them to accept their new names.

[21:01] Second Life: Heath Matters (Heath Pevensey) is now known as Heath Ryan Zanzibar.

[21:01] Second Life: Rory Matters (Rory Larnia) is now known as Rory Olivia Zanzibar.

We really could not be happier! When Aldwyn and I had talked about possibly adopting again, probably late last summer, we had planned on just one kid or perhaps just being godparents again. But these two just slid into our lives so perfectly and are exactly the kids we needed to complete our family. This is it – our last adoptions.

I think we did brilliantly. ❤

We’re Two of a Kind, Workin’ On A Full House

Remember in my last post, I said we had plans and I’d talk about them later? Later is now! 🙂 Guess what we did?

That’s right! Our family is growing! Well, in the way that SL families grow – by trial and hope and luck!

Over the past few months, I’ve gotten to know our friends, Rory and Heath, better through camp, and plurk, and they have showed up at some of our family events. They are exceptionally darling kids! When they mentioned back in November that they were putting up a panel at Heritage…well, thoughts started forming in my mind. *laughs* But after the “little blonde girl that wasn’t” debacle back in October, I was hesitant to even bring up my thoughts with the family. But believe me. I had thoughts!!

A bit before Christmas or so, my thoughts suddenly became pretty much everyone’s thoughts. We had the room for more kids. We definitely have love in our hearts for more kids. Our girls let us know that they would like to have more siblings. Especially these two kids, given that they were already becoming big parts of our lives. But our holiday schedules were all over the place and I did not feel comfortable bringing someone in for an adoption trial if we were not going to be around very much. So we waited.

So cut to last week. Aldwyn and I sat down and had a talk with each other on if this is something we both really wanted. And we talked to the girls because, ultimately, this affects them more and we would never want to expand the family if they were not completely on board. But of course they were! They have been so excited about this! They have been asking me almost daily WHEN we were going to do this!

But, things had to be ready. We needed a bigger house. I know, it would be easy to have the kids share rooms. I simply like for each kid to have their own spot. We really don’t spend a ton of time in the bedrooms or anything, but I think it’s best if they have their own little spot that is JUST theirs. And, again, I really did want to go back to using our old house! So we packed up, put out the old house, had Lolita fix our landscaping [we just went spring on Bluebonnet!!!], I made a sign for Rory and Heath, and we were ready to go!

Of course, being us, it didn’t go as planned. We actually planned to do it Friday night but well. *laughs* It’s okay, though. It actually worked better doing it Saturday night! I think we were all nervous. I know I sure was. I mean…they could have said no. I was literally shaking! AND THEN THEY SAID YES!! We have demo kids! LOL! Abby and Birdy have never had a brother before, so they are pretty excited about that. Poor Heath. So many girls. *laughs* But now we have FOUR guys in the OZ family. Oh my heavens. 🙂

Aldwyn and I spent some time with all of them and then said goodnight to our kids and went for a short date with each other. It was good for us because we have not had this chance in a while, and also I am eager for the kids to start developing more of a sibling bond with each other outside of when we are with them.

How long will the trial last? Couldn’t tell you. As everyone knows, we believe in long trials so we can get to know each other well and make sure that everyone is on the same page, family-wise. It’s better that way! But…we have known Rory and Heath for a while, and I think they have a pretty good idea what our family is like, so who knows. I’m not rushing anything. We’re not going anywhere. ♥