The past week was a little different in real life because I wasn’t at home and had much less access to my own PC. Running Second Life on my laptop is simply… tedious. It takes forever for everything to load. So this week it was mostly the activities in Cats Hollow that brought me online and in front of the camera with my avatar.

I spent a lot of time building this week, but you’ll have to wait until Wednesday’s Gazette to find out exactly where.

My sister Dveliande and I met at her Manoir Musa Art Gallery to make plans for a project we’ve been working on for quite some time. We also took a photo together. It’s been in the works for a while now, and we’re finally determined to bring it to a proper opening.

Thursday was Book Club, and these sweet sister photos with Ava and Dveliande happened almost by accident afterwards. The Book Club is such a passion project. I simply love how it broadens your horizons by encouraging you to read books chosen by other people—books you probably would never have picked up yourself.

Since Saturday I’ve been back home, and as life so often goes, everyday life always wins over glamour. I found some lovely household items at Canape’s sale, so naturally the first thing I had to do was clean the house. I honestly love Second Life for exactly that little touch of reality. Behind the scenes: While I was recording this, I happened to have The Tudors on in the background… right during an execution scene. Which, unsurprisingly, ended up being captured in the audio. Am I slightly unhinged for briefly considering just leaving it in?

The weather wasn’t particularly great, so the children spent some time playing on the carpet. Those quiet moments with the three of them—when they’re not arguing or shouting at each other—are truly priceless. Villie spent some time with Henry, who has already become incredibly curious about us and the world around him.

A few days ago he turned one month old, and to celebrate the occasion properly, I took a few „boys‘ photos“ of him together with his very proud father.

Liv was completely absorbed in her book. She is still a long way from being able to read, of course, but she’s seen me doing it often enough that she’s now trying to copy me. And she’s just unbearably adorable while doing it… so who really cares that she’s holding the book upside down? Exactly. Nobody.

Yesterday my sister Georgianna told me that her boyfriend Geoff has moved in with her, which made me incredibly happy. Naturally, reporter Annie couldn’t resist and immediately took a photo of the happy couple for the Gazette.

It’s fascinating how different a room can feel when you change just a few little things—or sometimes bigger ones. For this week’s Room Tour, I photographed our entrance area as a before-and-after comparison.

When you enter our house and walk straight ahead, you arrive in the living room with its conservatory and access to the terrace. If you turn left immediately after coming through the front door, you enter a small hallway that leads into the library and then, around the corner past the dining room, into the kitchen. The kitchen connects back to the living room, creating a sort of circular layout.

As you can see in the „before“ photos, these areas originally felt very spacious and minimalist. While beautiful, they also gave off that feeling of „cold grandeur“—something I definitely wanted to avoid in our family home. So I used an old interior design trick and added walls. There wasn’t originally supposed to be a dining room, so we simply created one. The little hallway on the left has now become our cloakroom area.

The bookcase walls in the library actually came from our previous house. They weren’t particularly easy to modify, so instead I designed the rest of the room around them. The window with all the cushions has become one of my favourite spots in the house, and the children love it too. Then again, they have places to play just about everywhere in the house.

In a way, the hallway leading straight ahead is the „official“ entrance, while the one leading towards the kitchen feels much cosier and more like the true family entrance. The family portrait hanging in the official hallway is actually an AI creation that started as a bit of a whim before Henry was even born. All three children have favourite animals. Liv loves foxes, Villie’s favourites are koalas, and Henry apparently already loved raccoons before he was even born—otherwise certain pregnancy cravings simply can’t be explained. So I asked ChatGPT to create a Victorian-style family portrait featuring cat parents raising a little fox, a little koala, and a baby raccoon. I think it turned out wonderfully. What do you think?

See you next week!

Anika