SL Home & Garden Hunt bounty #1

Well, despite my hubby being stymied by two malfunctioning ink jet printers and a daughter applying for part time jobs online last night (Mom! What's the street address of my place at college? What's the zip code? What month did I quit the part-time job in my junior year of high school? Am I assertive or tactful?), I did manage to go to a few additional stores in the SL Home and Garden Hunt (Little Boxes, which I otherwise love, is now is at the top of my picks for most sadistic hunt item placement!) and unpack some of the bounty of gifts from the hunt. I even managed to snap a few pictures at my skybox. Without further ado, here are some of the hunt finds.

Above, #1 - Theosophy. Forgot to check the prim count but somehow I doubt this is all that low in prims. Cute, though.

Below - this was actually the container for #3 - Cleo Designs. Or, at least I think it was. If so, I think I lost the items. If I can find out what it was, I may go back and get it. I might save this and use it.

Below, #22 - Art Dummy! Chair and Table. The table isn't all that unusual, but the chair is really cute, IMO.

Below: I find it heard to be live that THIS is what we were all hunting for so long at Aria. I'm assuming that those are blank canvases, and one is supposed to unlink them and put textures on them? Or leave them blank? The linked canvases and frame were no mod but I didn't try to unlink them. I might use the books somehwere, but that's about it.

On the other hand, #18 - Melia, below, had a pleasant surprise or two in their gift. That lamp is just...warm...in a way most virtual furniture never could be, and it's not simply the color, it's also the soft lines of the lamp shade.. I'd totally use this in the right style of a setting. The cute little glass piece with shells in it would make a nice accessory for a beach house.

SL Home and Garden Hunt...some impressions

The Second Life Home and Garden Hunt officially opened Sunday, August 1^st. I really wanted to do this hunt “right” – the first day, chatting with the official hunt group, and in order. This is the first time I’ve done a hunt in this manner! Let me share with you some things I’ve learned from this hunt.

1. Hunting before there is a hint and/or SLURL list is really time-consuming! Especially with big hunts like this one (50 items). It ended up being a commitment of about 4 ½ hours of my time on Sunday, broken up into 2 hours + 1 ½ hour + 1 hour segments. I have not even finished the hunt. I have maybe 42 of the 50 items.
2. Many of the folks who are into designing and blogging about home furnishings in SL are really, really nice people! The official hunt group chat was full of helpful folks who would trade hints and help those who were getting stuck. As the day got later and an unofficial SLURL/hint list was posted at The Hunt Locations blog, there were less people on the group sharing hints. 
3. Home furnishing stores in SL tend to be either really, really big (Aria, What Next) or very small. Generally, it’s easier to find an object in a small store than a larger store. However…
4. some store owners (both larger and smaller stores) are almost sadistic in their hiding of items (nothing new there!). There were many items on this hunt that I never would have found without a hint or help. There were some shops with obvious hunt gift locations (there was a group of 5 or 6 in order that were astonishingly easy).  And then there were the ones that were so hard, very few people could have ever found them on their own (Aria, for example). Store owners should take into consideration that it’s not just about who can be the cleverest in their hiding of items, because this can backfire on them, aggravating a potential customer. Personally, I bought three things while on this hunt, considered several other purchases, and found several stores that were new to me. I’ll remember the aggravation I had in a few stores as much as I’ll remember the items in their stores.
5. Albero has got to have some of the silliest local chatters and hangers-on that I’ve seen at a SL shopping location or shopping-related event. That’s twice now in just a week – at the Gatcha festival round two last week, and now during this hunt. I’m not talking about event-related chatter, or even simply friendly chatter.  At the Gatcha Festival, I ended up adding a bunch of trash talkers to my personal ban list. This time around, it was a constant stream in Chinese. People…can’t you IM or start a group or something?

Obviously, the hunt became a big black hole of time for me yesterday, so I threw the fashion post and the other home furnishings post that were in the works out the window in order to make the progress that I did. And I don’t have any shots of hunt items to show you yet. But I hope to, later today. I can tell you that I’m excited to start unpacking, based on what I’ve seen from other bloggers!