Looking through the ‘drafts’ of numerous posts, I see I’d earmarked the photos, from Burning Man, above as potential ‘SL replicates RL’ photos.

They work quite successfully transferred to SL without the need for an enormous outlay.

‘Dirt/dust’ tattoo, L$45.

Stempunk goggles, L$5

Umbrella pose, L$5

For whatever reason, before now, I’d never got to finish that post (which really should have been in advance of Burn2 in October or their more recent Breakout on the Playa event, which I’m sorry to say I missed entirely).

The Playa is looking pretty bleak and wintry right now, but we all know it will return next year! 🙂

Ella

The Blue Lagoon Naturist Estate in SL has disappeared. Before you reach for the smelling salts regarding the loss of yet another SL naturist sim, all is not lost! BLNE are rebranding, as Amarylis Dream!

The intention is to create a 20(!) sim world with sections dedicated to various parts of the real world. I teleported over to the new location (I’ll not provide a link just yet) and it’s a work in progress, with an international airport in construction, as are locations like ‘Greece’ and ‘Italy’. But it seems that by ‘world’, the creators of BLNE/Amarylis World want to create sections dedicated to Africa, Asia, the Americas, etc.

Hopefully all within a naturist context!

I think it would be truly wonderful if sims were divided up into different geographical locations and reflected naturism around the globe!

In the meantime, a Blue Lagoon Marina survives, presumably as a stop gap until the new sims are up and running.

I shall update you as I receive further information.

Ella

Most of the attendees at Howie’s parties are mostly RL naturists. Those that aren’t are SL naturists with a desire to try naturism in real life. Often, it’s only the lack of local naturist facilities that stops people from participating in RL naturism. I often think of that ‘build it and they will come’ ethos. If we were able to provide more naturist facilities, more naturists would suddenly become visible.

Lastminute.com  did a poll that revealed over half of the UK’s population would bare all on a beach (35% of men, 17% of women).
There’s little doubt that we’re out there.

I mean, that’s over half of us in the UK, which is a relatively body-phobic society.

At these parties we tend to discuss where we’ve been on holiday, where we’re going next, what restaurants we’d recommend in which resort and so on. Another major topic of conversation is -given that we’re all SL users- our favourite SL naturist destinations and…other SL-related stuff.

Poses are, for me, a hot topic as I’m always keen to utilise poses into the photography I use on this page. Which is where the photos (above) come in…

Someone said there was an event on called ‘The Men Jail’, which featured a set of poses called ‘Naughty Santa’. Next thing I know, Howie has teleported away from his own party, only to return five minutes later with the set purchased.

The top photo has a lovely sense of ‘welcome to my party’ about it, the second in which he’s added the strategically placed Santa hat. L$225 for the full set at the Men Jail event.

Just a bit of fun for our Christmas party.

Diego and Camille at the BBQ

Kasper and Pookes dancing

New avatar Kimberley adds more decorations to the tree

Lavinia shows off a set of wonderfully discreet tattoos (above and below) beside the tree and talking to Spencer

Melanie stayed ‘dressed’ in a net ‘cover up’ that covered up nothing. Here she is talking to Henry

I have to say that, based on observations from when I was at the party, and from other photos received from Harry, things were a little more…cuddly around SLN-HQ this Christmas than previously. Of course, part of this comes down to the props made available from Howie. But the general mood of the party, when conversation drifted to the real world, was that holding someone close in times of real-world uncertainty certainly captured the mood of our times. A year into Trump, 18 months into Brexit (note : this comment isn’t intended to be political, just a statement of fact that these events have created uncertainty, regardless of which side of the Trump/Brexit politics we stand on), too bloody long into the unhinged threat of North Korea…all of these and more dwelt on our collective minds and I picked up on a ‘hold me tight and let’s make it through next year’ kind of mood.

Jill and Hugh get close by the pool

Time for the food!

Howie brings the cake out for Helene’s inspection. This is intended to be a ‘naughty’ Xmas pose (available at KPoses at the Hipster Men’s Event, priced at L$150, but it doesn’t work so well at a naturist event, does it? 🙂 )

While Howie goes off to find a knife to cut the cake up, Helene and David pose for Harry’s camera beside the tree (below)

I’m informed that there may well be a Part 3 (and even 4) to the Xmas party next weekend, but that’s rather dependent on whatever else SL can throw up in terms of naturist partying.

Ella

Makeover time. Kim getting make up and her hair done.

So how’s ‘Kim’ coming along? That alt-avi I see up a couple of weeks back. Great, thanks!

SL time is limited as we’re into a very busy period of RL. Nativity plays, dinners and so on. Even numerous blog postings to research and write up!  But in between times ‘Kim’ has developed.

Everything you see on Kim is free.

Skin is from LAQ (free group join, free group gift skin at the back of their store…and permanently free, not just for the Xmas period)

Hair is from Diva (free)

These are the two ‘essentials’ I’d think were necessary on a great looking avatar. Everything else is dressing up…and as naturists, well, non-essential 😉

But the dress in the top photo is from Jumo, as part of their advent calendar, so that is something you may wish to chase down quickly if you want to grab it before it disappears on the 26th!

You’ll find a link to many of the Advent calendars at this link (via Fab Free) and you could almost certainly spend several hours a day inworld and grabbing a huge wardrobe right now.

Ella

Frank, a reader in the US, provides a short, yet very valuable, recollection of his first experiences of naturism and the values it instills in people from a. very young age. He writes…

Hi Ella. I saw this photograph [attached by me, Frank an attachment in his communication : Ella] online and it reminded me of my own childhood, growing up as a naturist child to parents who belonged to a landed club here in the US in the 60s. I can’t actually remember my first time as nudism was always there in my family. I’d have been taken maybe weeks after I was born and been wandering around there before I can consciously recall. I took some of my first steps at the club and learned to swim at the club. I can recall running around playing with other kids, male and female, all around the same age, without ever thinking ‘hey, she’s different from me’. We were just kids loving life in the sun most weekends and vacations.

I can’t remember now, but I guess I’d eventually have begun to notice differences in boys and girls as we all hit puberty but it still didn’t seem to matter even though we were all going through that highly-charged period of our development. I also recall developing a crush on a girl a couple of years older than me when I was about 14-15. It had nothing to do with her being a beautiful (and naked) young woman and more to do with her just having such a sense of fun, of being the life and soul of the teenager events the club held at weekends. We’d dance to Beatle records and just have the most fantastic time with much more in the way of the freedoms than non-nudist children. Being outdoors at weekends, naked in nature, also gave us a love of nature. The girl I had the crush on, being a couple of years older, seemed so wise and educated. I could sit there for hours, open-mouthed, while she talked about the bugs and birds that we’d find around the club.

By the time I started dating girls and had a car, the nudist lifestyle had given me a great sense of respect for women. I knew what they looked like under their clothes. I had no curiosity. One girlfriend remarked how we’d gone to a drive-in and she’d seen the movie, rather than fighting off someone desperate and determined to get his hand into her underwear. She liked it. She felt that my respect was kinda chivalrous and gentlemanly. It was enough to sit with my arm around her shoulder, and just kiss her when I left her home. Nudism had created a sense of chivalry and gentlemanly behaviour towards women.

So when I look at this photo (see above) it transports me back in time to my early childhood and parents who gave me, through nudism, a deep respect for women I carry with me to this day.

Frank

Just to clarify. Frank and his Mum aren’t the people in the photograph. My titling of the blog entry is a little misleading in that, at first glance, it suggests they are the folk in the photo. As Franks says in his text, it just evokes a memory of that time for him : Ella