Design Home

Home

and the designing thereof

        It's been an eventful year, this 2023; it's had its ups and downs. The major down, of course, was when we got kicked out of the place we've been renting for the past 11 years (he ended our lease, we weren't evicted) because the landlord wanted to move his granddaughter in there; you forget you're renting after that long, honestly, so it's an understatement to say it was a shock and a major upheaval in my life. This was the biggest of a series of tumultuous life events, and I don't plan to spend this blog post recounting them. I have been househunting, and I'd thought about making this blog post a recap of the best houses I looked at over the course of the year--none of which I got, but it was an interesting journey at least. However, I'd rather not dox myself by showing you all the houses around here I've been looking at, plus it would make for a rather dismal recounting given I didn't successfully obtain any of them. Perhaps I'll revisit that another time, if I manage to get a house in 2024.

        I have found another outlet for my household yearning, though. I picked up a mobile game called "Design Home" which is pleasantly realistic and a little addicting. So, I thought I'd show off some of my favorite designs on there from this year (well, I've only been playing for a few months, but this is my year-end blog post after all). I also want to grouse about how no one has any taste but me with regards to voting and scoring my designs, so brace yourself ;)

This was one of my first designs where I felt like I really had an Artistic Vision behind my design. The challenge was to design a rustic living room in West Virginia, and I wanted to mirror the Appalachian Mountains that were so beautifully displayed in the space's large windows. (From this point on I would like it noted that I have partaken in New Years' Eve celebrations and consumed alcohol, in the event that my prose is lacking. Or it might not be since alcohol mostly makes me sleepy and I got through half of my college essays half asleep.) I chose blue chairs and a soft purple couch to reflect the iconic colors of the mountains. In keeping with the challenge's stated rustic theme, I chose wooden accents--a distinctive large treecut table, log side table, and wood footstool. These also reflect the forests which cover the Appalachian mountains. The rug had been one I had bought for a former challenge, but I loved the smokey blue of it and the rivers of gold across it, which also reflected the Appalachian environment for me. Every aspect of this design was thoughtful and coordinated, and frankly I think the only reason I barely broke four stars was because people in this game fear color and creativity. 

Continuing on with my thesis that the controlling interests/voters/scorers in this game by and large fear color, as per modern societal trends, which favor beige, check out this impeccable primary color scheme I did in the industrial loft open house challenge. Open house challenges are probably my favorite as they let you pick the wall colors in addition to the furniture, and this one even had some decent color choices for the wall and the pipes--the blue and the yellow, which led me to come up with the primary color scheme. With a balanced amount of each color popping in this space, I think it was an excellent design and also deserved a much higher score than it got. Also the fox table is so cute. I still really love this design, it's so bright and bold and maybe not what I'd do in my own house but lovely. 

This was another open house challenge and it scored a bit better. I really like the purple bed/curtain pattern and the lively anthro living chairs there. I was also going to talk about how the furniture in this game is largely real from actual brands you can buy from and this is dangerous because a lot of it is very cool and tempting; however, I don't have a house and I'm trying to save money to remedy that and so I'm saved from too much temptation. Anyways I really like this one. It was going to be even more colorful but then I remembered open house challenges still have required design elements, hence the beige bench and nightstands I had to buy. 

This is definitely one of my all time favorite spaces, even from when the room was empty; I adore a good bookshop. But I loved getting to put in warm red furniture and cozy browns and also this adorable cat I bought, who came with the name Janie! I think it's pretty weird to treat an animal as a design element honestly but that's just the game I guess and I'm love her. It sucks that I can only use her 5 times and then she'll disappear--weird game mechanic, difficult to explain in universe tbh. Anyways this space turned out super cozy and cute and I also love the white poofy footstool by the fireplace; I'd cozy up on that for sure.  

These three designs are from a part of the game called "My Home"--or my homes, but this is the first one I unlocked. The options are still very limited, but I think my design sense, favoring bold color pops, still comes across. I'm less concerned with "good design" since these are my spaces nominally, but I do wish I could put more stuff in them. Less so with the kitchen, but more with the living room and the bedroom (the latter of which is as yet unfinished). I would've done dark wood with a warm red tone in my dream kitchen too, over the blue, but I did the best I could with the options. But I love the purple/yellow dynamic here. Also my design home is nominally in France, I just want you to know I picked that. I'm running out of time for this post I don't know if you've noticed but I'm really hurrying now, ten till midnight. 

I might not actually put a fuzzy stool in my bathroom but it was in the options it gave me so why not! You can perhaps also tell I was doing this one in October, hence the pumpkins. This actually might be the only space that's more cluttered than my real world house probably would be because I probably wouldn't put such large decor pieces on my bathroom countertop. But I don't actually have to brush my teeth here, so why not. 

I love the purple couch (originally purchased for the Appalachian challenge above) but my favorite element here is probably the book coffee table-- I had to save up several days of gems for that but it was so worth it. The peacock table also brings me delight. I wish I could've put Janie in here and also a bookshelf. 

This one's just very cozy. It's recent and not scored yet but I genuinely believe I should score really well in this one. Even for those who fear color, this challenge had to contain green, and I didn't go too crazy with the pallette, so it should get at least 4.5 I think, hopefully higher. Very cozy, I like it a lot. 

This was for rockstars and I think it's one of my most neutral/limited palette designs but I still think I used color tastefully and put together a solid design. I also like how the sharp lines of the couch and the plants complement each other. 

Another just pretty cute one.

I also really enjoyed celebrating Christmas with these Christmas design challenges. This green+gold train is very Lokicore and if I'd had a higher budget it would be even more so but I still think it's great. 

This is the classic Christmas palette, a little corny but I think it fits the holiday party vibe and the space's existing decor. 

This one makes me think of the Yule ball in Harry Potter. I think the turquoise serving cupboard on the left is what sunk me but I couldn't afford something that fit the room better; I still love this design.

        There are many more designs I could share with you and more commentary I could give on these but 2024 draws nigh. Beyond the Violet Mists, we seek home and seek to style places that feel like it with color and artistry. 

Going Places and Doing Things

 Going Places and Doing Things

         Greetings from the Lande Beyond the Violet Mists; I am once again starting my annual post at the last possible minute, and perhaps even later than usual as today is indeed New Year's Eve itself (and, like last year, by the time I'm coming back to finish this post, I have indeed begun consuming alcohol which may affect my writing), but here we are. It being New Year's, the term resolution is floating around quite a bit. I go back and forth on making them myself; funnily enough, the last one I really distinctly made was in 2020. What was my grand plan for the year of our Lord two thousand twenty, you may ask? To travel more. To go more places and do more things. 

          If you have been alive on the planet earth for more than three years, you probably have some sense as to why that was an ill-fated resolution. I couldn't help feeling I had cursed the year with it, actually. But, of course, things have turned around from it a bit now, and I have been fortunate to be able to go some places and do some things over the last couple of years. So, I decided I'd share a bit of a highlight real, in a sort of belated response to my cursèd 2020 resolution. 

          One of this year's highlights was the two concerts I got to go to--My Chemical Romance in September and Badflower in October. The MCR show was a bigger excursion on the whole, since I also made a long weekend of it up in Minneapolis. Looking back, I mostly took videos at the concert, but here are a few of the stills I did take: 

Plus of course some selfies + pictures of the sharpie tattoos I gave myself. 

 

(This was in the morning before I drove up to the concert, but a better look at my outfit in the daylight.)

"Awake and Unafraid" from Famous Last Words on my left arm.

(A better closeup of my tattoo from the night before when I did it, with the saturation/contrast upped a smidge.)

"Keep Running" from Na Na Na/Sing, with a few illustrations from the comics--the Girl's c.a.t.*, the mailbox eye, and Party Poison's mask. *(Logo based on this design by Tapefish on tumblr)

 

I think it turned out particularly well when you consider I did that with my left hand!

(Also featuring the purple cheetah print off-brand converse I got in 2014 on my way to the Tom Petty concert which was my first big concert, which have since become my go-to concert going shoes. They are surprisingly comfy for long periods spent standing, jumping, and headbanging.)

Plus, on my left leg, "God is Love" from 1 John 4:8. This one is, of course, a bit less directly related to MCR, but Gerard has said that he based the design of the Danger Days mailbox on Salvation Mountain, which heavily features this verse, so it's in line with the imagery as well as being colorful. Plus, it's pretty much what I would get if I ever got a real tattoo, so I often do it when I'm doing sharpie tattoos. (I've done it before and posted about it here and here on my much-more-often-updated tumblr blog.)

Also, here's me after the concert in front of the backdrop, still full of post-concert excitement.

I also spent a truly preposterous amount on merch; here's my haul laid out on the bed afterwards.

          I would like to share more from the course of the concert itself, but like I said, those are mostly videos and I don't have a way to directly embed them here; I may someday upload them all to youtube or something, but to be honest one of the things I've learned about filming concerts on my phone is that, because the microphone is so much closer to me than the singers, my singing takes up a somewhat embarrassing amount of the audio, and since the concert is so loud around me, I can't hear myself as I'm singing live, and the result is a bit... well, embarrassing. Maybe someday I'll take screenshots from it, but there are already so many better pictures of the concert from the professionals, so I guess what I have to share is mostly my own presence at it and experience of it. 

          The day after the concert, we also kicked around the cities a bit. My boyfriend took me to a breakfast restaurant with truly massive pancakes:

He got chocolate chip, but I had to try the Hawaiian, which had ham and pineapple cooked into the pancake. It was quite tasty :) 

          We were also going to try going to a roller rink, but the one on the north side of town was closed for renovations, and the one on the south side of town didn't open until later in the day, so we decided to kick around Mall of America for a bit. 

The lego store is full of wonders. Expensive wonders, but still. Wonders :) 

We had some fun with the custom minifigure assembly station :) We didn't buy any of them, but it was fun to mess around with.

I can never resist a good swing ride, so I took a quick spin on the one in Nickelodeon Universe.

 

We also visited this store which was like a mini-Japan in America.

It's really just a darn pretty mall; the lights are even better in person. 

         Also, I was wearing the MCR Boy Zone shirt I got at the show the night before and I saw no less than four other people in the same shirt, so I think it was a pretty popular post-concert location, haha. I talked to a few other MCR fans, although mostly I just greeted them with a sly little "nice shirt".

I also took a selfie with my fellow kitty cat here ;)

          In the same trip, I also got to attend my first Renaissance Faire! 

I bought some lovely faerie wings in the faerie shop! I already had the dress because I got youtube influencer'd by Mo Mo O'Brien (love her, and the dress; I'd already worn it to Christmas Eve service, but this felt like its native enviroment). I also already had the flower crown, but got the bigger flower there too.

 

I also knew going in that I wanted to buy some elf ears; the gold sparkly ones weren't what I was looking for initially, but they were a very pretty fun find. I also bought all manner of tchotchkes and sparkly things; honestly it turned into more of a shopping trip than I had anticipated. 

This lady with the griffin was delightful!

The griffin was very friendly too ;) He was a rescue apparently!

         I mentioned to some people on the bus back from the Faire that it was my first time at a Renn Faire, and they marvelled at the fact that I had a full costume already, but honestly it's already my favorite aesthetic, plus I bought half of it at the fest as I went. It did indeed feel like a place I fit with well.

          Well, the day is getting shorter, and the strawberry daiquiri is definitely hitting (happy new year's!), but I'm going to try and touch on a few more highlights before the year finishes here. I suppose the other main thing I mentioned in my intro was the Badflower concert. I had thought about trying to see them open for MCR out east, but the timing didn't really work out with visiting my dad and everything really does get more expensive that way. So, I waited until they came to Mpls with Awolnation, which was not a band I particularly cared about, but it was a great show on the whole. It was my second concert I attended solo (the first was the Hella Mega Tour show I went to the year prior), and I'm glad I'm getting more comfortable with that sort of thing; it's nice to be able to just decide I want to go out and do something, and then do it. One thing that sucked, though, was that they wouldn't let me bring in my backup batteries, and my phone battery doesn't lasts for farts these days, so once again, my pictures are limited, and I mostly focused on videos at the show anyways. Still, here are some highlights:

The hairstyle I'm sporting here has evolved from one inspired by the lead singer Josh Katz's bangs in this video for Animal; I can't remember whether I touched on that in my fashion post last year or not, but it's a style I've been using with some frequency over the past few years now. Here's an earlier edition of the look from back in 2020, less swept to the side:

(Meanwhile, back at the concert:)

I got so close at this show too! It's the biggest show I've been so close at--by the time Badflower was on, I'd managed to weasel myself up to about the third row from the stage. It was absolutely fantastic. Beautiful lighting too.

I also did a sharpie tattoo for this one which was a recreation of this one I'd done previously.

         Once Badflower were finished, I moved to the back of the crowd because I figured I should let the Awolnation fans be closer. Plus, I wanted to hit the merch booths, which turned out to be fortuitous, because I got to meet several of the performers! Unfortunately, I decided to use up the last of my very limited phone battery filming the last Badflower song because I didn't think I would need it for anything after that (I'd have my backup batteries again after I left). I got to meet the entirety of the Mysterines, the first openers, which was super cool. And then I got to meet Joey, guitarist of Badflower, and I deeply wished I had even an ounce of phone battery left. Another concert-goer took a picture of us together and I gave him my number to send it to me, but due to one mishap or another, the picture never showed up, sadly, so it's just out there, lost in cyberspace, and I'll probably never see it. So that kind of sucks. But I did get to show him my sharpie tattoo and he said it was cool, which was amazing to get to even show him! Plus I also got his signature on my t-shirt:

Plus my Mysterines shirt (they were a good discovery; I like their stuff a lot too.) (I have spent so much money on band shirts this year help. lol)

And I got my new Mysterines CD signed as well! The singer was so nice and she told me my name was cool :) I didn't even realize they were British before I talked with her. I got to talk with her for a while too; I started regaling her with tales from my study abroad in 2018. Also it's a great album, I definitely recommend checking it out!

          Jumping ahead again, my most recent big trip was this Thanksgiving going out to visit my uncle in San Francisco. I got some good airplane selfies:

I was very much living by this song (and I listened to it at least like 70 times on this trip haha). 

         We didn't actually do a ton of touristing about in San Fran (and actually my Uncle lives south a ways and outside of the city it turned out), but I did get to meet his adorable little kittens:

Also saw his neighbors' horses and some very scenic mountains:

And we did visit the San Juan Bautista Mission:

And also go down to the beach in Monterey:

It was a bit cold for swimming, plus I only had tennis shoes so I didn't want to go wading and mess them up, but I did stick my hand in the ocean, marking the first time I had touched the Pacific Ocean in... well over a decade, as far as I can recall. 

My dad took pictures of me sticking my hand in, so I didn't take any of my own, but when he sent it to me it got compressed funny apparently, so sorry that it's all small and blurry. There are pics with my hand in the water too, but I'm fond of the motion in this one. 

Also got to do a little bit of skating around my uncle's neighborhood, though the roads weren't ideal and there were a lot of steep hills (picture via my dad again). Still quite fun, and I'm definitely getting a lot better! 

          Then, we went out to my dad's place and visited D.C. for a bit! There's definitely a lot more I could be covering here, but we're officially in the last hour of 2022 and the wine is really hitting so this is going to be pretty rapid fire.  

  

Visiting the national arboretum for the first time. Columns!!

Bonsai trees! I'm especially fond of the ones that were making little miniature scenes but with live trees. This one is based off of a famous waterfall in China. 

This epic tree survived the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. It's crazy to think about everything some of these older trees have lived through. 

Not sure whether it's disrespectful to take a picture in front of a historic tree that survived Hiroshima, but I guess I do feel the need to document my own presence in a place, you know?

Adorable forest scene.

The deciduous ones were definitely affected by the fact that it was late November, but it's cool that they still go through seasons just like normal trees. It reminds you that they're actually alive and not just funky little models. 

  

The flowers were definitely a smidge past their prime, but still lovely nonetheless. 

Christmas tree in the Smithsonian Castle! As a Virginia native, I've been fortunate to visit the Smithsonian many times, but we had never gone inside the castle before. The decorations were lovely.

Me and my good old buddy ol pal the Eliephant :) Or actually I guess his name is Henry. He's a cool dude ;) 

Remember how I said I grew up visiting this museum? Here's me wearing the same crown, in 2005 and 2022. Somehow the picture quality got worse, lol. Something definitely went wrong transferring these from my dad's phone. I'd try to fix the coloring/clarity in photoshop a bit but I'm short on time.

Also me touching the same massive amethyst cluster (2005 pic ft. my cousin from Texas and my skill for dramatics, haha)

And, well, there's certainly more, but the new year draws nigh, so here's a picture of me "catching" my plane home to wrap things up.

          Throughout my life, I have been blessed to travel a greater than average amount, I must say. In a way, it's perhaps the amount I got to travel as a child that has left me with this insatiable wanderlust. But this world really is full of so many things to see, place to go, and things to do that I think it's only natural to always want to see more with each passing day. There was a quote I was thinking of putting here but I really don't have time to find it anymore, but the gist is that the more different things you can fit into your life, the longer your life seems, because different things form more new memories than same things and routine do. I should've written the deep reflection part of this before consuming alcohol as it turns out, but I do think travel is important to a person for that and many reasons, be it a big trip with airplanes or a 3 hour turn-and-burn like I did for the Badflower concert. May 2023 bring more concerts, more trips, and more adventures for us all, plus more roller skating (mayhaps I'll make a separate post on that one of these days). Beyond the Violet Mists, we are always seeking and exploring the fantastical new realms tucked away within our own.