Day: December 12, 2020

Moving to Bray’s Place in Second Life: One of the Best Decisions I’ve Ever Made

Up until now, I have either owned my own place in Second Life (for several years I had a rather expensive homestead in Bay City), or I had a Linden Home as part of my Premium membership.

But recently, I decided to move into a community run by Bray Preston-Rising, which I have written about previously on this blog, called Bray’s Place (SLURL; website). In my 14 years of visiting thousands of Second Life sims, I have never received such a warm welcome, or encountered such a wonderful community! I have truly found a new home.

Parcels range from ocean view bungalows at L$199 a week for 119 prims, all the way up to a large lot where you can erect your own home (or choose from one of Bray’s large selection of homes) at L$850 per week with a 630-prim allotment!

Here are some of the features of these parcels, from the Bray’s Place website:

Brayniac Shores Rentals – Waterfront & Sky Garden Properties

• Below Market Value, Affordable Prices
• Generous prim allowance
• Special Satellite radio with the club stream
• House and landscaping not included in the rental prim allowance – They are ‘gifted’
• No Lag Sim
• Professional landscaping and large garden areas
• Choice of house styles or the option to use a house of your choice.
• Private parcels with radio stream options
• 124 couple dances HUD on each property
• Access to our active and friendly Blues club community, large public beach, voice-enabled games room (Greedy, Skippo, Dominoes, and other fun games), state of the art photo studio, meadow and campground.

The games room is just one of the thoughtful amenities at Bray’s Place (there’s a professional photo studio upstairs)

All the parcels (except the skybox cottages) have either ocean, lake or river frontage, and all are beautifully landscaped. And, if you wish, Bray will even decorate for you, taking into account your personal tastes and even your favourite colours! (Bray tells me this service is popular among certain renters, particularly males.)

Here are just a couple of examples of Bray’s decorating work:

If you wish, Bray can also come and install a special radio that plays the music stream from the deejays and performers at Bray’s Place Blues Club! Or, you can set your own parcel music stream to any internet radio station you like.

I had originally intended to rent the Lake Villa property at Bray’s Place, in the vicinity of the Blues club, just for a single week, so that I could take the following pictures. However, after I had finished decorating, I fell in love with the place, so I actually gave up my Linden Home, and moved into my new home at Bray’s Place permanently! It’s one of the best decisions I ever made.

Good bye, tiny old Linden Home!
Hello, Lake Villa at Bray’s Place! This is definitely an upgrade!

I pay L$625 per week for 510 prims, and after decorating my little heart out, I still have almost 100 prims left over to play with! If you wish, you can get more prims from Bray, although I honestly don’t know why I would need extra! Even ancient, prim-heavy furniture from ye olden pre-mesh days can fit easily into my allotment. As you can see from the pictures below, I have added all kinds of finishing touches to the rooms in my Lake Villa home, like stacks of books, wine glasses, teapots and tea cups—even Christmas stockings hanging from the fireplace mantel!

I can see Bray’s Place Blues Club (and the covered bridge) from my living room
I’m all decorated for Christmas!
A view of the living room, hall, and dining room
Having tea in the dining room
A view of the kitchen
The bedroom has doors that open onto the back deck
Another look at the bedroom
A look at the bathroom
The back deck features a fireplace
The rear of the property features a private beach, and there’s more than enough prim space to set up this English garden shed in the backyard, a recent free group gift from Hisa!

If you are interested in renting a home from Bray’s Place, here is a listing of properties currently available. There is also a rental display on the wall to the right of the front door inside the main club building, with photos and a teleport to each parcel (here’s the SLURL):

See you at Bray’s, either as a visitor to the Blues club, or as a fellow renter! As I said, this is one of the best decisions I have ever made in all my years in Second Life.

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Advent Calendar Gifts for December 12th, 2020

Here’s my blogpost with links to four lists of Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars, plus my “Top Ten” Calendars you should not miss in 2020!

Both of the Advent calendars at Wow Skins and Essenz Shoes are completely overloaded, and so far (despite several attempts), I have been unable to collect today’s gifts from them, which is irritating but not unexpected. After all, I am adding to the traffic at these locations with my regular morning roundup of Advent calendar gifts!

Here’s the gift from Entice, a lilac skirt and matching top with some nice lace detailing (the Entice group is free to join):

Today’s gift from Virtue is this lovely yellow dress, which comes with a matching bolero jacket! The Virtue group is free to join.

From Firelight Hair comes the following long, wavy Taya hairstyle, which comes with a HUD with six colour options (the Firelight group is free to join):

And today’s Hope skin gift from 7 Deadly S[k]ins is in the cashew skin tone which, along with yesterday’s caramel skin tone, I quite like! Remember that the 7 Deadly S[k]ins group costs L$1,000 to join during the month of December. By the way, you can purchase previous days’ Advent calendar gifts from the tree-shaped Advent calendar at 7 Deadly S[k]ins for only L$25 each, so if you saw a previous gift of theirs here and are kicking yourself that you happened to miss a day or two, you can still go back and purchase them. I wish more Advent calendars offered this as an option!

The present from Celestina’s Weddings is the Melanie summer dress in a blue tropical print (the Celestina’s group is free to join):

The 12 Days of Christmas calendars at some stores start today (in other stores, they start tomorrow). At the Altamura main store, there is a Christmas tree where each day’s gift will be placed. Today’s gift is the following system/Bakes on Mesh outfit, with two different shades of red for the top and eight festive textures for the pants:

The December 12th gift includes the Christmas stilettos shown in these pictures, which come with a HUD with red sequins and five other red, seasonal patterns. These shoes come in sizes to fit Maitreya, Slink, and Altamura mesh feet (although the feet on Altamura bodies are supposed to be Slink compatible, so I’m not really sure why they were included the latter as a separate version).

You will need to join the Altamura Design/Mesh Avatars group to pick up these gifts, but it is currently free to join the group; the normal Altamura group join fee is L$100, so you might want to subscribe now, and stay subscribed if you can afford the group space, since the group will give you access to future Altamura group gifts throughout the year!

Another store with a 12 Days of Christmas calendar that started today (instead of tomorrow, as I had previously reported on the blog), Baby Monkey offers twelve gifts that combine to form a complete colour-coordinated capsule wardrobe! Each piece comes with a mini-HUD with three colours as shown below for the December 12th gift, these Benina pants:

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATE 12:29 p.m.: The Advent calendar at Wow Skins is finally working, and I was able to pick up today’s gift, the beautiful Jolie Bakes on Mesh skin in the sandy skin tone (the Wow group costs L$199 to join):

And today’s gift from the Abranimations Advent calendar is this truly wonderful animesh flying carpet! Instead of attaching it, you rezz it to the ground and then sit on it. Here’s a 20-second video of it in action:

I will be loading up a few alts today to pick this beauty up!

UPDATE 1:36 p.m.: O.K., one more fabulous freebie, this time from Loki—this red Santa Claus sweater, which comes in a size to fit Maitreya Lara mesh bodies only. You don’t need to join any group, just teleport in and buy it for L$0!

By the way, these Christmas ball earrings and skirt are free gifts from the 2020 Winter Shop and Hop event, which opened yesterday and runs until January 3rd, 2020 (more details here).