Tag: 12 Days of Christmas

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Your Guide to the 2023 Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars in Second Life

December is the most wonderful time of the year—for freebie fashionistas in the virtual world of Second Life! This month heralds another edition of the popular Holiday Shop and Hop shopping event* (running from December 1st, 2023, to January 1st, 2024), with a gift at every participating vendor booth. We can also expect another iteration of the annual LeLutka Holiday event (dates as yet unknown), where you can pick up free male and female LeLutka heads, as well as many other freebies from a variety of creators supporting LeLutka, such as LeLutka EvoX skins, hair, and cosmetics. There will be sales and freebies galore all month long!

But the biggest reason why December is such a great month for freebies is that so many stores have an Advent calendar*, or a Twelve Days of Christmas calendar, where you can pick up a gift each day until (and sometimes, including) Christmas Day!

Various Second Life stores, groups, and organizations are still putting the final touches on their calendars and lists of calendars, but one that is already up and running is TeleportHub.com’s Advent Calendar Store List.

TeleportHub maintains a good list of Advent and 12 Days of Christmas calendars

UPDATE Dec. 1st, 2023: Another popular list of calendars is Seraphim’s 2023 Holiday Sales and Advent Calendars List, which also includes details on December sales being held at various stores.

Seraphim compiles a list of dozens of stores with holiday sales and Advent calendars

UPDATE Dec. 1st, 2023: Fabulously Free in SL (or FabFree for short) maintains the December Advent Listing of 24/25-day calendars and 12-day calendars. They also helpfully subdivide each section into free (or free-to-join group) calendars, and calendars where you have to pay a group fee to pick up each day’s gift.

Remember that these lists are updated often, so bookmark them and check back regularly. As I hear about other lists of Advent calendars, I will add them to this blog post! And please feel free to leave me a comment if you know about a store Advent calendar (or calendar list), thanks!

PRO TIPS: Dreamer Pixelmaid runs a Discord server, called Dreamer’s SL, with a dedicated Advent Calendar channel. Here’s your invitation to join us.

Popular Second Life YouTuber Naria Panthar also runs a Discord server with an Advent calendar channel; here’s the invite to join her Discord.

Volunteers (like me!) will try to post pictures of the gifts from various calendars to these Discord channels, but it will be somewhat hit-or-miss. Please see the next paragraph of this blogpost for another way to stay on top of the avalanche of Advent calendar gifts in Second Life!

UPDATE Dec. 1st, 2023: For the past couple of years, the very hardworking folks over at the Russian-language VKontakte group Second Life – FREE have posted a daily roundup of that day’s Advent calendar gifts, with pictures! And those Russian-speaking freebie fashionistas are doing it again for 2023. They even went so far as to create a handy directory of stores with links to pictures of each day’s Advent gift!

Bookmark this list and check back daily; this is probably THE easiest way to actually see each day’s calendar gifts without teleporting all over the grid, collecting and unpacking items! (Please note that you do not need to set up an account on VKontakte; if you click on an image, and it asks you to sign in, just click on the X icon in the upper-right hand corner of the pop-up window—see image, right. The image will then load in full size.)

To get around the language barrier, I usually have the VKontakte list open in one browser tab, and Google Translate in a second browser tab, and just cut and paste the Russian text into the translator. As I said, this is a very useful hidden resource for us seasoned Advent calendar plunderers! 😉

UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2023: The HuntSL website has a number of posts about Advent calendars; you can find them all here.

UPDATE Dec. 5th, 2023: I just discovered another Advent calendar list which I had never heard of before, by AmigoUFO, called Christmas Advent Calendars List 2023, which seems to focus on just the free ones (or those that require a free group join). Amigo also maintains lists for Advent calendars for dinkies, tinies, and child avatars, and Christmas trees with gifts.

Bookmark this blog post and come back often for the latest updates! I will do my best to keep this blogpost as up-to-date as possible throughout December, and into the new year (yes, a few stores do have New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day gifts!).

Happy freebie shopping!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

* I regret to say that, as I did last year, I will NOT be doing a daily round-up of Advent calendar gifts every day, either here on the blog or in the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals, and Freebies Second Life group (although I will still try and post some fabulous freebies and bargains to the latter, as I come across them). I’m sorry, but it’s simply too much work for me this year, and therefore I will leave that task to others. I have already posted my picks for the best 2023 Holiday Shop and Hop gifts to the group notices of my group. Happy holidays to all!

UPDATED for December 10th! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars in 2022

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

It’s that most wonderful time of the year! And I’m talking about the time where on-the-ball freebie fashionistas can scoop up dozens of free gifts from the many Second Life stores which have either an Advent calendar (running Dec. 1st to Dec. 24th or 25th) or a Twelve Days of Christmas calendar (usually running between Dec. 12th or 13th and Dec. 24th or 25th).

Lists of Stores with Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars

The Advent Calendar list by TeleportHub.com

If you’re looking for a list of such calendars, here are some that I have found useful (note that this list will be updated as I find new ones; many are not published until later in the day on December 1st, or even on December 2nd!):

  • TeleportHub.com’s Advent Calendar Store List 2022 is already up!
  • UPDATE 9:53 p.m.: December Advent Listing by Fabulously Free in SL.
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2022: Holiday Sales and Advent List from Seraphim.
  • UPDATE Dec. 6th, 2022: Dreamer’s 2022 Advent Calendar List, from the Dreamer’s Virtual World blog (there’s also a gallery on Flickr). Dreamer’s list also tells you which calendars allow you to collect the previous days’ presents, either for free (no group needed), free with group, or paid with group! Very handy info to have. What I like to do for those Advent calendars where I can pick up all the previous days’ gifts, is wait until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, teleport in, and then pick them all up at one time!
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2022: Second Life Syndicate has a Google spreadsheet with over 200 Advent and Twelve Days of Christmas calendars, which you can access here (scroll down and click on the link that says “Commenting Spreadsheet”, which can only accommodate up to 100 people at one time; a second spreadsheet, called “Published Spreadsheet”, will be published soon, but is not yet available).
  • Low Price Fashion in Second Life is a little-known Japanese blog which, last year, posted a daily roundup of that day’s Advent calendar gifts. I expect they will do the same this year.
  • Last year, the very hardworking folks over at the Russian-language VKontakte group Second Life – FREE posted a daily roundup of that day’s Advent calendar gifts, with pictures! And those Russian freebie fashionistas are doing it again for 2022. They even went so far as to create an alphabetical list of stores with links to pictures of each day’s Advent gift! Bookmark this list and check back daily; this is probably THE easiest way to actually see each day’s calendar gifts without teleporting all over the grid, collecting and unpacking items! (Please remember to use the Russian-to-English translator in your Chrome browser, or Google Translate, to read the posts in this Russian-language community. You do not need to set up an account on VKontakte; just click on the “Not Now!” link every time the nagging pop-up appears asking you to log in.)
  • UPDATE Dec. 10th, 2022: I don’t know how on Earth I could have missed this wonderful resource until today, but Second Life YouTuber Naria Panthar has a Discord server, which you can join here. And in that Discord server is an #advent-calendars channel, where somebody posts pictures of as many Advent calendar gifts as they can find! There’s much less clicking involved than with the VKontake group I mentioned above, all you have to do is scroll through each day’s listings! Even better, a direct SLURL to the gift is included. A big thank you to hupe, who makes these valuable posts! This might well be the best and easiest way yet to see what each SL store is offering, without having to teleport all over the grid, and then unpack and try on gifts.
A sample of hupe’s work from the #advent-calendars channel on Maria Panthar’s Discord

Ryan’s Picks: Stores I Will Be Visiting Every Day

This year, instead of wearing myself out trying to hit every single calendar on the grid, I will be focusing my energy on just a select few which, year after year, consistently offer the best gifts. Here are my top picks for 2022!

  • Firelight Hair has a Twelve Days of calendar running from December 13th to 24th (you do need to join the Firelight group for free). You have to pick up each gift on the day it is offered. The gifts are mostly women’s hairstyles, but there will also be a few unisex styles. All hair gifts usually come with a mini 2 or 3-colour HUD.
  • 7 Deadly s[K]ins always has an advent tree in their store, with generous gifts every single day from Dec. 1st through to the 31st! Please note that you do have to join the store group, called SEVEN – [7DS]; there is a group join fee (when I checked on Nov. 30th, it was L$500). To get each day’s present from the tree, simply pay the vendor L$1, and it will automatically be refunded. If you missed a day, you can buy previous days’ gifts for L$25 each. Apparently, they are also giving away gifts each weekend, so pop in!

In the room immediately to the left of the 7 Deadly S[k]ins Advent tree, you can purchase a fatpack of skins for L$1 from the Today’s Offer board, as well as pick up another free skin fatpack from the Giftboard, plus there are six Mini-Mania boards to try your luck for even more skins (see arrows in the picture below):

  • WOW Skins had extremely generous gifts of skin fatpacks every day in their Advent calendar, and I expect nothing less this year! (UPDATE Dec. 1st: Looks like this year it’s just single skins each day, no fatpacks!) You do have to be a member of their group (the group costs L$350).
  • Essenz has an Advent calendar running from Dec. 1st to 24th, where you can pick up a gift of high-quality women’s footwear every day (you must be a group member; the Essenz store group costs L$350 to join). If you missed a day, or you are not a group member, you can pick up previous days’ gifts for only L$50 each.
  • Every year, the Baby Monkey 12 Days of Christmas calendar (Dec. 13th to 24th) offers a free gift each day (women’s clothing and footwear). All the gifts together form a complete, colour-coordinated capsule wardrobe! You do have to show up each day to pick up that day’s gift (no group needed; just pay the vendor L$1, and it is automatically refunded).
An example (from 2 years ago) of the gifts from the 12 Days of Christmas calendar at Baby Monkey; every year, the gifts form a colour-coordinated capsule wardrobe in three colours!
  • JUMO will be giving away lovely gifts of women’s apparel and jewelry from Dec. 15th, 2022 to Jan. 1st, 2023 (no group required, and you can visit on New Year’s Day and pick up all the gifts at one time). This is the place to pick up some beautiful ballgowns and costume jewelry!
  • Last year, SOFIA had some absolutely gorgeous ballgowns and jewelry in their advent calendar. This year, their calendar will run over 20 days, from Dec. 5th to Christmas Day. You must join the SOFIA store group for free to pick up these presents!
  • ALB Dream Fashion will have a calendar again this year, stuffed with gifts for both male and female avatars (the first Advent gift is already available when I checked on Nov. 30th!). If interested, join the group now while it is still free (the name of the group to search for is “LAMU GROUP”). Per the notices, it will be L$500 to join beginning Dec 1st, 2022.

UPDATE Dec. 3rd, 2022: I just noticed that ALB Dream Fashion has provided a sneak preview of some of the presents from their Advent calendar! As you can see, they will have an assortment of wonderful gifts this season, for both male and female avatars.

  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2022: Both Vagrant (womenswear) and its sister store Zerkalo (home decor) have Advent calendars running from Dec. 1st to 24th (both require a free group join).
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2022: Salt and Pepper will be offering clothing gifts on December 1st, on the weekends, and on Christmas Eve, and gift cards on weekdays, which can be applied to any merchandise in the store. The Salt & Pepper group costs L$300 to join.
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2022: Glitzz has an Advent tree encircled with 24 teddy bear-adorned giftboxes, where you can pick up each day’s present for free (no group required). Previous days’ gifts can be purchased for L$25 each.
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2022: Celestina’s was slightly delayed in setting out their Advent calendar gifts, but the first few are now out, in a row along the front counter of the store. If you act quickly, you can pick up the gifts from both Dec. 1st and Dec. 2nd today, a strapless violet ballgown and a salmon shrug. The gifts for the next few days have previews on the boxes, and they look very nice! You must join the Celestina’s group for free to pick up these presents. If you miss a day, you can buy that day’s gift for L$35.
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2022: Seniha (womenswear) has an Advent calendar located outside their store. You need to join their group for free to obtain each day’s gift.
  • UPDATE Dec. 3rd, 2022: The advent calendar at ALTER is giving away lovely gifts of women’s clothing (you must join the ALTER group for free to get these gifts). If you miss a day, you can buy the previous days’ presents for L$55 each.
  • UPDATE Dec. 3rd, 2022: If you’re looking for something a little bit naughtier in your fashion, why not visit the Advent calendar at Erotik? Join their free store group to pick up each day’s gift. Previous days’ gifts can be purchased for L$35 each.

A final note: I regret to say that, unlike previous years, I will not be doing a daily round-up of Advent calendar gifts each day, either here on the blog or in the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals, and Freebies Second Life group (although I will still post some fabulous freebies and bargains to the latter, as I come across them). I’m sorry, but it’s just too much for me this year.

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATED AS OF DECEMBER 12th, 2021! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies—What Advent Calendars and 12 Days of Christmas Calendars I’ll Be Hitting This December (2021 Edition)

TWO IMPORTANT NOTICES, PLEASE READ:

I am taking a vacation from blogging for the entire month of December. Between the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the recently concluded faculty strike at my university, I am utterly exhausted, and I need to take a break. I hope that you understand. I will be back in January 2022!

I will *NOT* be doing a daily blogpost of that day’s best Advent Calendar/12 Days of Christmas Calendar gifts this year; instead, I will be posting a notecard with all of my picks of the best gifts for that day (with store SLURLs) to my new Second Life group called RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies. The group costs L$50 to join.

Photo by David-Olivier Gascon on Unsplash

December is truly the most wonderful time of the year for freebie fashionistas in Second Life! Many stores have either an Advent calendar or a 12 Days of Christmas calendar, where you can pick up a free gift each day.

This year, instead of wearing myself out trying to hit every single calendar on the grid, I will be focusing my energy on just a select few which, year after year, consistently offer the best gifts. Here are my top picks for 2021!

Please note that I will be updating this blogpost regularly between now and Christmas, so bookmark this post and check back often for any changes or updates.

Lists of Advent Calendars for 2021

TeleportHub.com’s Advent Calendar listing is already up
  • The 2021 Advent list by SL Hunts
  • The Advent Calendar Store List 2021 by TeleportHub.com
  • The December Advent Listing by Fabulously Free in SL, which is the biggest list
  • UPDATE Dec. 1st, 2021, 2:13 p.m.: The 2021 Seraphim Gift List (which includes Advent calendars, holiday sales, and stores with giftable vendors and transferable items) has just been published!
  • UPDATE Dec. 1st, 2021, 10:25 p.m.: The Second Life Syndicate is taking a different approach! Instead of a list, they are maintaining a Google spreadsheet, which you can access here. The group-edited spreadsheet already has over 180 rows!
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2021, 1:40 p.m.: The hardworking folks over at the Russian-language VKontakte group Second Life – FREE are posting a daily roundup of that day’s Advent calendar gifts, with pictures! And they are actually building a list of stores with links to pictures of each day’s Advent gift! This is probably THE easiest way to actually see each day’s calendar gifts without teleporting all over the grid, collecting and unpacking items! (Please remember to use the Russian-to-English translator in your Chrome browser to read the posts in this Russian-language community. You do not need to set up an account on VKontakte; just click on the “Not Now!” link every time a pop-up appears asking you to log in.)
  • UPDATE Dec. 2nd, 2021, 2:13 p.m.: Low Price Fashion in Second Life is a little-known Japanese blog which usually posts a daily roundup of that day’s Advent calendar gifts (again, you will need to use the automatic Japanese-to-English translator in your Chrome web browser to read the posts).
  • UPDATE Dec. 3rd, 2021, 12:29 p.m.: Advent Calendars 2021 With Previews Updated Daily is a truly heroic attempt by Snarkness of the SugarSL blog to cover as many Advent calendar gifts as possible each day. Thank you, Snarkness!
The December Advent Listing from FabFree has the biggest list of Advent and 12/15 Days of Christmas calendars on the grid!

Five Advent Calendars I Will Be Visiting Every Day

The Advent calendar at Essenz women’s footwear store
  • Firelight Hair has an Advent calendar running from December 1st to 24th (you do need to join the Firelight group for free). You have to pick up each gift on the day it is offered. The gifts are mostly women’s hairstyles, but there will also be a few male/unisex styles. All hair gifts usually come with a mini 3-colour HUD.
  • 7 Deadly s[K]ins has an advent tree in their store, with generous gifts every day from Dec. 1st through to the 31st! Please note that you do have to join the new store group, called SEVEN – [7DS], to pick up these gifts; this group is free to join until Jan. 1st, 2022! So you have no excuse this year not to pick up some new skin for your avatar.
  • Virtue offers an Advent calendar with beautiful clothing gifts for women. The emphasis here is on classic, modest fashion. You do need to join the Virtue group for L$25 to pick up these gifts; you also need to show up each day to pick up that day’s gift.
  • Entice offers Advent calendar gifts of womenswear from December 1st to 25th (you do have to join the Entice group for free). Again, you do have to show up each day to pick up that day’s gift.
  • Essenz has an Advent calendar where you can pick up a gift of high-quality women’s footwear every day (the Essenz group costs L$350 to join). If you missed a day, or are not a group member, you can pick up previous days’ gifts for only L$50 each.

Three 12 Days of Christmas Calendars I Will Be Visiting Every Day

The 12 Days of Christmas calendar at Baby Monkey starts December 14th, 2021

Most of these calendars start on Dec. 12th, 13th, or 14th, and run until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (and a few stores are having a 15 Days of Christmas calendar starting Dec. 10th, so be sure to check!).

  • The Baby Monkey 12 Days of Christmas calendar offers a free gift each day. All the gifts together form a complete, colour-coordinated capsule wardrobe. You do have to show up each day to pick up that day’s gift.
  • JUMO usually gives away lovely gifts of women’s apparel and jewelry from Dec. 12th-Dec. 24th, as well as on New Year’s Eve (the JUMO group is free to join). This is the place to pick up some beautiful ballgowns and costume jewelry!
  • UPDATE Dec. 12th, 2021: It would appear that the eBENTO Event has been cancelled for December, according to chatter in the eBento group in Second Life. So that means that there will also be no Advent calendar from them this year! 🙁
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: End-of-Year Freebies for Male Avatars

Well, Advent calendar season is almost over, and I have spent most of it focused on fabulous freebies for female avatars, but I wanted to blog about some men’s freebies that you can pick up today.

First, please meet Silver Quick, my handsome male alt who will be modeling today’s finds:

Silver Quick is wearing:

  • Head, Eyes and Eyebrows: the recent group gift of the Alain Bento, Bakes on Mesh head from LeLutka
  • Body: Romeo by Altamura (a Valentine’s Day group gift a couple of years ago; to use Bakes on Mesh skin on this body, you must first purchase an Omega system kit for Altamura for L$99 at this exact SLURL, and obtain the free Bakes on Mesh kit from Altamura (at this exact SLURL in their in-world store)
  • Bakes on Mesh Skin: Delphinus by Altamura (included with the Bakes on Mesh kit mentioned above)
  • Hair: Jamie by Firelight, a free gift available here
  • Shorts: Alejandro shorts from the starter avatars in the Library folder of your SL inventory
  • Animation Override: Tuty’s Daily sLIFE Free Bento AO (free from the Tuty animations store)
The Altamura Bakes on Mesh kit includes a BoM Omega relay and the Delphinus skin

Our first stop today is NERO N7 menswear store, where (if you join their store group for free), you can pick up a free L$500 gift card, good for anything in the store:

Next, we hit a couple of Advent calendars that are still up!

Donni’s Dollies has an Advent calendar where the odd-numbered dates (plus Dec. 12th and Dec. 24th) have gifts of menswear as well as womenswear (no group is needed). Here is the black and gold tuxedo from December 24th:

No Shot still has their 12 Days of Christmas calendar up, too. Here is one of the 12 menswear gifts you can pick up, a camouflage outfit with boots:

Here’s another nice outfit from the No Shot calendar, which also includes the shoes:

And here’s a business suit outfit from the same calendar, with shoes:

The ACCESS shopping event has many lovely gifts for both men and women (you have to join the ACCESS group for free to pick up these gifts).

Here’s a pro tip to help you quickly find the gifts you want at this and at other events: if you are using the Firestorm viewer, select Area Search under the World menu, then enter a keyword you are searching for (e.g. “varsity”). Then, from the list of search results, right-click the one you are interested in, and select Zoom from the pop-up menu as shown here:

Your camera will then zoom in on the specific giftbox you have selected! All you have to do is click on it and it’s yours! This tip can save you a lot of wandering around at crowded sales events where there are dozens and dozens of vendor booths.

Do a keyword search for “GRAILED” to get this Zion hoodie fatpack by GRAILED, which includes a HUD with 30 different colours and patterns:

And do a keyword search for “Varsity” to pick up this Randon jacket and long sweater combo from Varsity, with two HUDs to change the colour of both the jacket and sweater. You’ll need to alpha out your arms and hands for this hands-in-pockets look!

Our final stop is the Shop and Hop event, where there are a few men’s freebies to pick up. The gift from Etham is this shirt-and-hoodie combo, which comes with a HUD to change the colour of both the shirt and the hoodie individually:

The gift from Mossu is this cheerful Christmas cardigan:

The present from Lapointe and Bastchild’s SWEAR store at the Winter Shop and Hop are these wonderfully-detailed tundra patrol boots, in a camouflage snowflake pattern:

Happy freebie shopping!