2021

Animal Crossing – New Villagers

stargrace April 21, 2021 0Comment

I recently joined a discord that a few good twitter friends are on, and they’ve been playing Animal Crossing. Now, I bought this game back when it released, and adore it of course, but I stopped playing some time ago (and if my friend’s list is any indication, so did almost everyone else). I decided to get started again and see what all I have missed. First, I set myself a few small goals. I want to work on collecting sheep villagers. This is not as easy as it sounds. I did end up getting Muffy so far, from an amiibo card that I had – yay! I love her personality.

Next I wanted to optimize my island a bit. I had a lot of trees, and it turns out that you can cut down all but the fruit trees & 7-10 others for shaking (2 pieces of furniture, 5 wasps). I spent an entire day chopping down trees and arranging where I wanted my orchard to go. I also finally learned how to terraform the land, and I removed a few physical bridges and made land bridges.

Next it was time to import some designs and truly make the island my own. I started with paths. I have a really cute pusheen path that leads around my villagers home and sets the mood for the island. It was easy to get them set up and I can’t wait to add more little details. I’ve been thinking about arranging the rocks on my island, but it turns out that’s a whole other ball game.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Real Life

Organizing Hobbies

stargrace April 20, 2021 0Comment

I enjoy a lot of craft related hobbies, but I rarely have time to dedicate to all of them, and I tend to binge craft and then forget about everything else for months at a time. Other times I’m so tired that without a clear idea and path of what to work on I’ll just sit at my desk and do nothing. Then it’s bed time. So I set out a schedule for my crafts and then organized them according to whether I can do them when the kids are awake / around or if I need to wait until they’re asleep (ie: using needles in cross stitch means I need to wait until they’re asleep).

Anyway, I’ve been using this schedule for almost a week and so far it’s going very well.

Knitting: Tuesdays
Cross Stitch: Monday/Friday
Miniatures: Saturday/Sunday
Spinning: Wednesday
Drawing: Thursday

I figure that this way at least my crafts / items are being used, and over time projects will get completed even if I don’t binge on them. I also made mini goals for each craft so I know what I’m working on. Now, this may seem counterproductive to a creative mind but this method works for me and actually has me feeling better about things than I have in a while. If I’m not feeling up to working on something I just don’t. No big deal, these are not hard set rules or anything like that, it’s just a bit of direction.

Maybe when I have a bit more free time than 2 hours in the evenings I’ll be able to open this up a bit more but for now, I’m just going to keep doing what works.

Real Life

Happy Corner (3)

stargrace April 19, 2021 0Comment

Last night was another miniatures night (Saturday & Sunday are the two evenings I’ve set aside for this hobby) and I built myself a little cash (complete with menu) and a shelf unit – I also glued together two chairs and a table, but they have to dry before I install them into the small tiny coffee cafe. My glue work needs .. some work, but at least it dries clear and shouldn’t show up quite as much.

I’ve been having fun working on this little project. It’s a trial in patience, which is pretty rare for me (as in I have no patience). I’m eager to get this place wired properly and have the lights working, it’s really going to look swell then. I also need to find a better way to photograph the thing.

Real Life

Happy Corner (2)

stargrace April 18, 2021 0Comment

I recently created a schedule for myself to organize my hobbies – I know, it sounds a bit silly, but I have a lot of hobbies and I wanted to make sure I worked on them a little bit each week, so that at the end of the month I could see some actual progress. I can assess the hobbies any time and they’re not in stone or anything like that, it’s more to do with the fact that in the events I tend to sit at my desk and think about all the things I could be doing instead of actually doing any of the things I could be doing (if that makes sense).

Last night was miniatures night (and so is tonight). The schedule is organized so that activities that HAVE to be done at night (ie: after the minions are sleeping) get a little more time than hobbies I could potentially do while they’re awake, or when it’s the weekend. Since this hobby uses knives and glue, it’s something I don’t want to do with the 2 and 4 year old poking into everything.

I’ve been working on my first miniatures kit. I bought it some years ago from Wish, which is pretty hit and miss if you’ve ever ordered from them before. I think I spent a total of $15 per kit, and I bought three of them. They are TINY scale, much smaller than 1:12, and that makes it awkward but I’m having a lot of fun slowly working on it. This kit is called ‘Happy Corner’ and is a bunch of little shops and some cute accessories on the street. I had to build the balcony from scratch, and you can see my glue is drying (it will turn clear once it dries) but I still love it so far. I also had to add lights, do the wiring for that, and there are a billion other little small details and pieces I’ll work on. I can’t wait to see it done and get it all wired so that it works.

Gaming

Spellcaster University (2)

stargrace April 17, 2021 0Comment

I had some sort of unfortunate accident when I played this the first time – I could not save or exit the game. Thus I lost all of my progress. The second time I played I didn’t have this issue (thankfully). I managed to grasp a few more of the basics of the game. You’re given a small timer in the form of ‘evil’ that marches across the top of your UI. When it gets to the end, you flee your current school and set up elsewhere. In the meantime, you’re meant to stave off evil as long as possible, and get as many students through the school as you can. There are mini goals and achievements to get along the way, and so much cuteness. Each room you place has slots for items to be placed, either on the floor or walls. As you draw cards, you get these items. Cards cost a currency depending on what school of magic they belong to. You’re also responsible for talking to the locals and working on your faction with them.

This round I opted to place the school in the woods – there happens to be a troll that lives there, so I need to worry about him as well as the regular factors. If he wakes up apparently there will be hell to pay.

It’s a cute game, still in EA, but I’m glad I gave it a try. I’m looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Animal Crossing – New Villagers

Organizing Hobbies

Happy Corner (3)

Happy Corner (2)

Spellcaster University (2)

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