Animal Crossing Update

Hey, hey, it’s MJ, 

            Sorry this post is late, I kind of forgot that today was Wednesday so I am writing this at work, I am hoping that this gets posted today but it will for sure get posted tomorrow if I don’t have time to actually post it on Wednesday. It’ll be up eventually, I promise. 

            So Animal Crossing has been out a year now and my island will be one year old on the 26th. My best friend bought me the game for my last birthday and my island has grown a lot over the last year and I know I still have a lot to do on my island to make it exactly what I want it to be. 

            In my last Animal Crossing post I just showed my house, this time I am going to be showing some updated rooms and some of my outdoor spaces. They are not Pinterest worthy, not even close but it’s my island and I’ll do what I want on it. 

            I have been playing the game for a year now and participating in almost daily play still because I just really enjoy being on my island with my villagers. I don’t pay as much attention to them as I should because most of my time on my island is spent running around looking for things or trying to finish out my Critterpedia. 

            I actually put a bunch of pages in a journal for all of the museum categories that I have and that I am missing. I had a really stressful weekend one weekend and did it all on a Saturday because I needed to get my mind right, so I made lists. 

            Some of my fave outdoor spaces though, let’s start there. Some of these are finished some are more in progress because I need more materials or crafting patterns to actually complete them. 

My 50’s Diner

            This was an idea I had over a month ago, I still want to do more with it or potentially move it so I can expand it a little bit. It’s not finished yet, it’ll be finished eventually but that’s what ACNH is like, it’s never fully done and you can grow and evolve your island whenever and however you want to. 

My Tiny Library

            Another space on my island that isn’t finished yet. I have a lot of those spaces where I start a project and then realize to do the whole thing I need DIY recipes that I don’t actually have yet. It’s never fair. I just wish that there was some way to purchase seasonal DIY’s before they were suddenly gone. 

Astrological/Zodiac Garden.

            This is not going to be the permanent home of this feature on my island and it will get done some day, when I have all the celestial DIY’s I need but that will be no time soon because I need star fragments and DIY recipes but for some reason I feel like Celeste never visits my island and I miss her, she’s one of my favorites. I have seen some cool things with the celestial DIY’s on the internet and I want something cool of my own on my island.


Up Top Flower Garden

            For probably 10 months my island was covered in flowers, I mean I had flowers everywhere and I decided one day that I didn’t need all of those flowers everywhere, so i started to pull them up. This idea came from me using flowers in the colors I really liked to create a little contained flower garden. I still spend way too much time picking flowers/ digging them up after a rain storm and it rained on my island for like two days so I know when I log in tonight I am just going to have more flowers to pick. I will probably add more things beyond just the bench in here but for now I am happy with this one.


Greenhouse

            This was an idea I saw on Pinterest and I pretty much copied it because I was looking for ideas on what to add to my island and this was one of the ideas I really liked. I had a flower patch here at one point but I got rid of that when I stopped caring about crossbreeding flowers when I decided to get rid of 75% of my flowers. This is pretty much the one thing on my island that is like 99% done. I may use a simple panel to put on a door but I don’t know yet, I haven’t decided. I may expand this one as well and put a couch or bench in it so I can hang out there if I want to. Let’s be real. I want to live on my Animal Crossing island. 


House Updates

            I haven’t really changed much in my house, I have updated my living room, kitchen, and bedroom a little bit so I will show those again because looking back at my house from my last post. I have put more things in all of my rooms because I am still a trash goblin. Happy Home Academy tells me every week to have furniture all the same color and I don’t wanna so I wish they would stop telling me that.

            So that’s about a look my outdoor spaces, I wish there were a few quality of life updates that they would bring out but I don’t remember a single one at the moment. Maybe except a cart in the Able Sister, also being able to buy seasonal DIY’s that you are missing as the season ends. Like I didn’t get the Sakura bonsai tree recipe and I needed that for another DIY project so now I have to wait until next year to get it and that’s annoying. 

            I should find other games to play but let’s be honest with ourselves, i am like really bad at gaming because I get frustrated more than I should, I love playing games but I am more on the line of The Sims, Minecraft, and Animal Crossing, casual world building games because they aren’t as stressful as other more involved games and I don’t want to be angry when I game, I just want to enjoy myself. 

            Alright, well that’s it for me today. I will be back over the weekend with another post so until then I hope everyone stays happy and healthy.

            -MJ

MJ Plays: Animal Crossing New Horizons

Hey, hey it’s MJ,

            I am not really a gamer, casually at best. I am the person who when playing Assassin’s Creed Syndicate I apologized every time I ran into people then got stuck on the train which is like mission two and stopped playing. I want to play it I really do but I get pretty frustrated by games. I think the last game I beat was Pokémon Ruby, so it’s been a while. Like a said casual gamer, sometimes I play Minecraft on peaceful because well Creepers are terrifying and I don’t like to be stressed out when I play games. 

            As the world was falling apart my birthday happened and my best friend being her best self sent me a copy of Animal Crossing New Horizons and I have been obsessively playing since late April. Maybe it’s because I am such an escapist or maybe I want to sell my soul to a tanuki named Tom Nook, who knows. I like the idea of living on an island where I can sell literally anything to two other tanuki’s and make millions of bells, don’t judge me. 

            I feel the need to clarify something early, I didn’t play Animal Crossing as a kid I was aware of it and I was confused but I have been playing Pocket Camp since it came out so having a console game with the full Animal Crossing experience has been great in this time of what seems like never ending quarantine. (which is a word I still can’t spell properly, thank you autocorrect)

            I feel like a lot of people are playing Animal Crossing right now and that is totally okay because we all need something to smile about. This isn’t a review or an island tour (if I was still actually using my YouTube channel (one day I will get back to to) I would do an island tour video but that’s just not in the cards at the moment.) Also a piece of MJ trivia as a child I could not for the life of me understand how island was pronounced as it was and my third grade teacher got really mad when I kept spelling it iland because that is how it should be spelled, the English language man it was my first language and my only fluent language and even in my late 20’s I still haven’t mastered it. 

            My character had a closet full of cute little outfits that I wish I had in real life and enough hats to attend several fancy parties, because, hats. Also let’s be honest Pinterest has given me unattainable expectations of what I want my house to look like because they have so many cute ideas and it makes me feel like my house in inhabited by a trash goblin who had no tastes and then I remember I also see those houses on Pinterest and feel exactly the same way about the real place I live. So trash goblin makes sense…

            My residents are really cute and I have cycled through a few since I got my island at the end of April but for sure my current faves are Bones, Zell, and Sherb they all are just so happy and cute and I love them. I got Lyman as an original villager and he’s a koala which are my favorite animals so he is eternally my fave. 

            The NPC’s that visit the island are I feel like becoming more numerous and they are great but it means that you don’t get to see certain ones very often, there are some that are there every day so I don’t count them, so Isabelle (whose morning updates I love because that would be me as someone who had to do morning announcements just telling people all about my TV habits), Tom, Timmy, and Tommy Nook, Mabel and Sable Able, Blathers, and Pascal (who is the best). But I’m thinking more Sally Mae who brings the turnips on Sunday mornings, Celeste who is Blathers sister and brings you star fragment recipes, Gulliver and Gullivarr who are both sea gulls who wash up on your island because they are not really great seafarers, Red who tries to sell you art but some of it is fake art, Leif the sloth who sells plants, Kicks the skunk who sells accessories, Label who is the last Able sister who is a fashion designer, CJ and Felix who collect fish and bugs respectively, Wisp the ghost that you have to find his spirit pieces to get items, and I know I am missing a few but my brain at the moment can’t remember, I could look it up but I feel like that’s cheating. 

Pascal is for sure one of my favorites because he gives you these “deep truths” and for some reason I feel like I am talking to the stereotypical hippie and he’s just the best.

            I just paid off my home loan completely, so I don’t have any more expansions and now I get to focus on other things on my island like making it a five star island and trying to breed certain colored flowers, blue I have got but purple and black are evading me at the moment. 

            It’s just been something that I have been whole heartedly enjoying and I have logged something like 200+ hours in it so far which I feel is a little excessive but come on, I want to get all the critters and creatures for museum and balloons are great so I play as much as I can and want to. 

            I’m not the most experienced player nor do I want to be, I don’t want to know how to get rich quick or try and outsmart the game because I just want to enjoy it. Like I use all sorts of cheats on The Sims 4 but rarely anywhere else. 

            If you play Animal Crossing what’s your favorite things, got a room you’re proud of, a resident you love to pieces, or even a fish or bug that’s your favorite? Let me know! 

            I hope everyone has a great rest of the week and I will see you on Sunday with a new post!

            -MJ