Decorating Your Home Away From Home
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
In Home there are a lot of options, for not only things to do but also things to buy. Kassadee Marie has had a wonderful series of budget articles to give you a good grounding in the kinds of things you can get at a bargain, not only for your avatar but also your personal estates.
Some people have a lot of these, others not so many. I have friends who own all of the estates available, which is a huge expenditure — one that is beyond my means and the means of many others. But I think it is what you do with what you have that counts, not how much you have.
My Playground museum
There are many clubs that are now arising in the community based on decorating. They have quite a few members, as this is one of the many meta-games that have shown up in Home over the years. Because Home itself has no real direction or goals most of the time, people have had to use their imaginations and make their own. Fashion clubs and decorating clubs are a couple of the results of this.
Decorating a newly bought space is a very personal thing. All of us have different tastes, for not only decorating our spaces but for dressing our avatars as well. Some lean toward the weird, others toward the conservative. Some, like myself, look at a space and let it speak to us, then decide what the possibilities are. My tendency is to go toward the more realistic. I like to make my spaces look lived in if they look like real homes, but I have also done a few unique things with them as well.
For example, I turned my Playground Apartment into a art museum of sorts. For some reason, that was the impression of it that kept lingering in my head when I first saw it. Though I tried to do a more normal space at first, that museum kept leaping out at me every time I visited the space. At first I didn’t have enough pieces to do it. I had the pictures for it and they played an important role, as there are thirteen slots there, but I didn’t have the statuary or smaller table pieces to make a realistic museum.
After about a year or so, I had finally accumulated enough to do what I wanted, and I went back there and started the transformation. One of the things about decorating in Home is that, as you do it, you will find yourself revisiting and adding or subtracting on a continual basis as you get new things. When purchasing things to decorate I always find myself thinking about the spaces I have and where that particular item will fit best. I am still revisiting my art museum and all of my other spaces, adding pieces as they come into my possession. This will probably continue for me for as long as I can come here.
This is especially true since the bathroom and kitchen items have become available. We asked for these things for a long time. Many of the developers listened, and now we have a lot of choices. I tend to buy the ones that are more easily added to any space, so I got the wood grained and the stainless steel first for my kitchens, and the more neutral toned things for my bath.
A kitchen and a bath
Of all the spaces that I own, the one that I find myself redoing the most is the one we all own, the Harbour Studio. For me, it is still the most versatile space in Home, and I have redone it many times as I have gotten new pieces. The thing about the Harbour is that it is small, yet it gives you a lot of latitude when it comes to decor. The wallpaper abilities add to the choices for furnishing, and though some are wilder than I prefer, I have seen many places with those crazier prints that looked amazing.
The Harbour Studio can reflect your personality better than many of the spaces you can buy simply because everyone has it. So you quite literally have to make it your own in order to stand out from all of the others. It is a box that stands empty and devoid of personality until you give it one.
The layout I have now is a result of years of buying furniture and receiving rewards. The small size of the space can be daunting when making decisions about item placement, but I am very happy with mine now. And though I have changed a few pieces here and there, and will continue to do so, I think that it will remain largely the same. It has both a kitchen and bathroom now, and looks quite like a lived-in space, which is always my goal.
Decorating your personal spaces can be challenging yet very rewarding, so let your imagination run wild. The possibilities are endless and don’t always stick with your original layouts. Experiment — that is half the fun.
October 10th, 2013 by Burbie52 | 3 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
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Great article Burbie. I love to deco. I have recently gone on a streak of doing just that. I look through my list and start to hit them one after another. I just throw stuff out there and let the design flow, after a while, it starts to take it’s own shape. I also do go back a lot for minor tweaks. Recently I got a laptop computer from Peakvox and went crazy throwing that in my favorite places, as I have always wanted one that was really good looking. I love to deco, and could spend all day doing just that. What ever will I do when I deco all my homes…buy more?
I loved this article Burbie. I seem to be in a never ending decorating cycle myself. I will even change stuff around with the changing seasons. I just recently made my peace with the city penthouse apartment and finally decorated it after not knowing what to do wit it for years!
Although I’ve already decorated it as a home, these last few days, Seaclyff Retreat has been calling to me to re-decorate it as an art gallery. I’ve wanted to make one on Home for a long time and I think I have enough “art pieces” to make one.