Not going to be posting for awhile . . .

due to extreme laziness, and not really having time to play UO. Please make use of the links and my pictures to carry on decorating your UO homes. Oh, and Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

Won the Deco Contest - 1st Place

Had a bunch of other stuff going on, so I haven't posted until now. I won first place in the deco contest mentioned last month. Anyway, here are the screenshots of my Workshop/Greenhouse on all levels.

Outside view:

Interior 1st floor:

They did a server restart 2 days before the judging, and a couple of the "handles" (skinning knives) on my custom drawers/cabinets went behind the wooden boxes. No matter what I did, I could not get them to stay over the top of the boxes. So, some have handles and some dont. Frustrating.

The rock garden and pond didn't come out nearly as well as I had hoped. The bottom half looked decent, I thought, but the top half of it was a bit *blah*.

Interior second floor:

I won a plaque, a funky polar bear head, and a 20 mil check, heh. Here's the plaque (I hung it up in the greenhouse)

I have two more houses going at the moment: a church and a villa. Mostly I am waiting on more plants to grow. I have the structures built. I seem to be stuck in a theme with the grey brick and red rooftiles. It used to be sandstone and tan stone walls. I am just finding this color scheme appealing at the moment. I am going very slowly on the next two, mostly due to spending a lot less time in-game working on my personal spiritual pursuits, as well as exercise, reading, and chores. Without the deadline of a contest, I am gaming much more casually =).

Home Deco Contest on Ultima Eclipse

Scheduled to be judged Oct 3. Wheeeeeee . . .

Its only my 27th day here on this server, and I do not have any houses "fully operational" yet. I have3 18x18's mostly built, one halfway decorated, another less than halfway, and my Greenhosue & Workshop not at all. So I decided to go with my Greenhouse and Workshop, because it is really my favorite design of the 3. I started decorating yesterday, and put a lot of hours into it. It will be another 1-2 days before my 3rd generation plants bloom (hopefully mo longer than that). Then Ill be able to finish the decorations entirely.

Made a quick picture of the exterior - here it is so far:

If you peruse the internet as often as I do, you may recognize this as a design by Popotum . Its the first time I have ever built an "L" shape (as opposed to the ┌ shape) with the yard in the back, and the first design I ever saw like this that actually appealed to me. I made some minor changes, like adding a second story on the right side, and the whole shop setup in the interior. Doing the ┌ shape, while handy and probably the most efficient for space and room to deco (and much better than "the cube"), is highly overdone. So, I was really quite eager to give this new look a try.

So far, this house really resonates well with the shop look and feel. The opening on the left side ground-floor is a vendor stall, with a tailor shop behind it, and a smithy in the back. The right side is a 2 story greenhouse with an interior balcony. I also added some flower boxes. The second story on the left (above the shop) is a small apartment with a small but complete kitchen. Once the flowers have bloomed and been placed along with the rocks, Ill do another pic of the exterior and do all the interior pics as well.

What I am working on now -

I am currently playing on Ultima Eclipse , a free server. Its nice for the fast skill gains, fast money, and nice items. But my favorite part is the 5 houses per account! So, needless to say I have a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. One house is just a rehash of another old design I havent posted yet. I tend to do that so as not to have a blank plot while I am trying to come up with ideas and inspiration for a new design. The second is a workshop/greenhouse (which is coming along very well). The third (and final for the moment) is this one pictured below. It serves basically as my main house, and "guild" HQ. I put guild in parentheses, because it consists of me and one other person. Most free shards tend to be like this though. The most I have ever had in a free shard guild based on home design and decoration was 4. Its all good though.

Anyway, here is the completed construction with some minimal decoration. Still quite a ways to go.

I have the 1st and second floors about 50% decorated, and will add the pics in later when it looks presentable.

First house I ever did a screen shot of.

This is a house I built on a free shard a couple years ago (which is no longer in existence). This was the culmination of a lot of ideas, and combining a lot of "high points" of several different houses that I had been recently admiring. This was my first home I ever thought to take a screen shot of. I was primarily motivated by the fickle nature of free shards, and the immense amount of time that I put into it. This was all experimental, and I did not use UO House Builder or anything to try it out first, so it was mostly build here, adjust there. I can't really guess at the amount of time I put into it, but it was ridiculous. The deco was even more time consuming, both in acquisition and placement. I edited the screen shot with Paint (and left a big line through the middle, oh well)

I did use a yard wand on the exterior (which, if you have never been on a free shard, you have never seen - most free shards do not even offer them).

Here is the interior of the first floor.

Interior of second floor

And the third floor.

Under Construction

I'm still figuring out how to put things where on this, so bear with me. I'll be posting stuff momentarily . . . which could mean any amount of time, really. I also am making sure that the pictures I have aren't violating anyone's copyrights, etc.