I decided to take time off from blogging & exploring for a day and focus on things at my home on Blake Sea. Having seen a number of outstanding home and garden designs recently, I felt more could be done with my own place, so I took the day off for more involved blogging to see what I could do both within the constraints of the parcel size (2688 sq m), capacity (800 prims) and the requirements of the estate covenant (which limits things like terraforming, build types, etc).

The first thing I knew I needed to do was to re-work the house; when I moved in, the orientation of the build was such that the bedroom faced out over the sea, and the lounge sat towards the back of the land and faced into the parcel, something I’ve wanted to revise for a good while now, so the lounge would be more forward and facing the sea.

Once this was done, it was time to get to work on sorting out what else I wanted. This was actually a case of trial and error, as it turned out to be another of those situations where I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what I actually wanted; just a vague idea of paths, trees, flowers and water all somehow mixed together. Inspiration finally hit when I decided to take out the wooden dock I’d built for the Lady of Calas, my little E-Tech Sparrow cruiser. With that out of the way, I could re-work the house further and introduce a couple of stepped terraces down to the water’s edge, the lowermost of which could also form the quay for Lady of Calas?

It was a pretty simple idea, but one which let me get around the issue of terraforming, as it meant I could add walls and planters to the terraces, offering lots of opportunity to display flowers and add colour and have to worry about tweaking the land in order for things to look right. A shopping spree also saw me splurge a little as I picked-up some items from some of my favourite designers: Alex Bader, Cory Edo, Eko Zhong and Kayle Matzerath (I still love Kayle’s Luminaria build for Fantasy Fayre).

I don’t pretend the finished article matches up to anything like Crystal Oak Falls. I’m not even sure it is finished; I still have some capacity I might yet use; at the very least, there are some Koi Carp boxed somewhere in my inventory which may end-up in the pond, and I’m having further ideas about making the gardens somewhat more “formal”. But is it is, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve managed to achieve, hopefully without bending the estate rules *too* much in the process. As it is, the house is now decently oriented, and I’ve given myself a little more organised space around the house through the use of the terraces, including finding a nice new home for my piano. I’ve also gained a new outdoor seating area out over the water on the far side of the parcel.

There are a few more things I might do over the next few days in order to refine things further, but for now, methinks it is time to get back to blogging!