carambola - island journal

[g u a v a]

welcome to carambola, established on sept. 23 2022.​

9/23/2022	4/20/2024​

table of contents

- house development
- tea museum interior
- bamboo forest expansion
- carambola photo op
- villager home redesigns
- the fashionista issue
- new villagers, new developments
- birthdays, plazas: mini update
- construction, neighbors and teardowns
- sylvana's new shop
- filling in the in betweens​

 

[g u a v a]

this entry will be dedicated to my house on carambola.

started off on a cute little beach-front lot where i was able to have a fruit tree orchard and a farm nearby to help keep me nourished.

in almost the blink of an eye that once tiny home grew to be this large residence. i had lots of fun decorating each room as i built up the items in my catalog. some of my favorite rooms were:

my first kitchen -- i was struggling to fill this room up with limited DIYs and limited poki with which to order items from HHP.

my first (version i liked) of my main entry room. i really loved the colors and textures of this room and the mom's painting in the background.

and last but not least, my tv room

at this stage of the game, i decided it was time to relocate my home and start giving it some curb appeal!

i moved my home off the shores onto a naturally occurring island surrounded by the rivers. i had a lot of fun creating a private estate for myself with a grand walk-up entrance. i realized at this point that this was too grand for my liking so once i again i decided to clear my entire home and start from scratch!

i came to the realization that i wanted my house to contribute to the character and culture of the local land. the house is now nestled within the lush bamboo forest. i transformed the main floor of the house into a second museum with a spa, botanical garden, outdoor courtyard and a ceramics exhibit. the upstairs and basement are two apartments, i live in the upstairs apartment and rent out the bottom unit to travelers.

stay tuned for my next post with images of the interior.

 

[g u a v a]

here's a look at the inside of the house:

 

[g u a v a]

what's in your wallet?

 

[g u a v a]

~ the bamboo forest ~

this weekend started with a bit of construction work on carambola's bamboo forest.

i cleared paths, set up my construction "trailer" and took a short break so i could let my ideas sit for a moment.

i decided i wanted to re-route my river in order to expand the bamboo forest. here's a look at the path i want my river to follow. i found that tracing changes out with paths first helps me get a better idea for what it's going to look like. it's also a lot easier to adjust paths than it is to just jump straight into terraforming.

the following day i was greeted by a much greener landscape--all the snow has melted! the bamboo forest has never looked greener isabelle announced the start of young bamboo season.. so i guess it's a good time to be expanding.

i did a bit more work laying down paths and plants. i'm really happy with my decision to expand because the views along the paths are 100x better than they were before!

2/24/2023	2/26/2023​

here's a look at the updated map. as you can see, the central island has nearly doubled in size. i still need to work on terraforming the river and do more decorating but already i'm loving this layout a lot better.

 

[g u a v a]

this post will be a picture dump from the last week.

i did more work on the bamboo forest and my dailies so there's not too much to report on. please enjoy the following scenes from carambola

 

[g u a v a]

~ the villager home edit ~

it's been a while since my last post. not much has changed on the island, though i have started to move a few buildings around for terraforming/decorating.

i've been redecorating my villager's homes in order to create more unique buildings on my island. i'm creating apartments inside a second account's house in order to use all of the space available in the villager's homes. it's kind of a pain to get all the items ordered for each room, so that will be a longer term project.

bubble's house became the public library and is located down the stairs from the island's museum. since she's a bookworm, she prefers to live in the library.

gayle runs a bakery near the new apartment building. it's become a popular brunch spot amongst locals.

zucker's izakaya is open late nights and is highly recommended.

sasha's house got a makeover in order to give him expansive ocean views and a better layout.

i'll add to this post as i complete villager's houses.

here's a map update too:

 

[g u a v a]

~ fashion roundup post ~

here's a look at some of my outfits from this season

 

[g u a v a]

~ new villager shop and fashion roundup pt II ~

i haven’t been playing acnh much but i got sick recently and had a lot of downtime. i started playing regularly again and am working on revamping my island. i’m not super happy with how it’s looking at the moment, i feel like i did the first pass on the layout and now i need to go back and revise it.

some ideas i have is clumping together the shop/town buildings immediately as you come out of the airport. i want to create some urban plazas with trees and seating areas/restaurants for my villagers to enjoy. i don’t have any updates to share on that but i will once i get a layout i like again.

i FINALLY was able to move astrid out, she was never my favorite villager and was rng'd because i didn’t have time to do a proper island hunt. in her place, sylvana moved in! As you know, if you’ve read previous posts, i like to turn some of my villagers houses into little shops. sylvana had the vibe of owning a plant shop so i redid her house, take a look!

and last but not least, here’s a pic dump of outfits i’ve worn since i last updated my journal, enjoy!

 

[g u a v a]

~ mini villager updates + work in progress ~

today was zucker’s birthday! i dropped by to find him and gayle celebrating and having a good time. i gave him a blue jacket since he likes blue and simple items.

the other day i saw the lights on in gayle’s bakery and i popped in to check out what new items she had on the menu. that’s when i saw her and sasha hanging out. it’s also when i realized her bakery was still decorated for halloween……which is a little (a lot) out of season. i’ll try to make some time in the coming days to redecorate for easter.

lastly, i’ve been doing a bit of work on my map and laid out a new plaza outside of my town hall. there’s still a lot of work to do but it’s been fun ripping up old decorations and creating a blank slate.

that’s all for now!

 

[g u a v a]

redevelopments, permits, and not a lot of work getting done

well, it's been about a month since my last update so it's probably time for an update....

even though i haven't played much at all since i did get a bit of work done on one area of my island. i'm trying to create more separation between my island homes/shops. i removed a house that was in the middle of the two houses in order to make this dining patio. the building to the left is the bakery and to the right is the ramen shop.

this all started with a simple "sketch" for where chairs/tables could fit in the space between the homes. i was limited on both sides are there's a cliff that can't be adjusted on the left and a slope that takes you down to the secret beach on the right. once i got the bulk of the furnishing laid out it was all about little refinements to the paving/clutter in order to make the space feel intimate but not crowded.

lastly i had a bit of space left to the south of this new plaza so i decided to create a little seating area off the main pathway. i ended up swapping out the azalea shrub in front of the bench for a familiar statue to give it more of a contemplative feel. i'm still not 100% satisfied with this little nook so i'm sure i'll be making small tweaks.

as part of the renovations i finally took down the halloween decor inside of gayle's bakery and restored the pink decor.

before:

after:

that's all for now!​

 

[g u a v a]

~ construction edits, food safety violations, and a new (?) neighbor~

since my last post i made some more updates to the new improvements. i decided to add a third table and a fire pit in front of the bench. i decided to add in a formal bussing station to make it look more like an outdoor dining patio. i'm really happy with how it turned out, now i just need to figure out how to tie it into the rest of my island.

in an effort to revise my island's layout, i got rid of the bamboo forest from my previous entry. i really liked the concept and the amount of space it filled, but the fact that it was located right at the center of my island meant it was really cumbersome to move around. the forest was designed in a sort of maze/wander-y type layout so that didn't help things either.

midway through the demolition, i was stopped by zucker who informed of bugs in his floor--not what you want to hear from the ramen shop owner ;;.

so i took a little break for tea with zucker and we walked over to my house. i had the radio on and got this video of him singing bubblegum kk.

https://imgur.com/a/0s5Xuwp

and these really cute photos

when i got back to the job site i found sylvana taking a nap!! i decided to move somewhere away from her to not disturb her as she napped.

, . : ; ~ ; *` ' construction time lapse ' `* ; ~ ; : . ,​

took a bit of time but now i have a clean slate and an abundance of fully grown shrubs. (this is not even half of what i dug up)

with these changes in place, i can finally start to sketch out the future of the island. here's a look at my current map and some sketches i had in mind:

since i've been time traveling to get the buildings moved and the bridges/inclines demolished, i let teddy move out of the island and decided to go island hopping. after a dozen or so flights with the dodos, i finally ran into sly. he was my original jock on my original island of guanabana. a very full-circle moment.

that's all for now!

hi to anyone who reads this :')​

 

[g u a v a]

~ destruction brings creation and a blooming floral enterprise ~
so, i'm properly addicted to redoing my island. i decided to build out a slightly larger area this time for sylvana's floral shop/farm. she needs a place to grow flowers, cultivate bonsai, and generally just vibe. but before i could create this floral oasis i needed to demolish the remains of my old nook's cranny location.

i set up my work station, got my bulldozer and began the arduous process of filling in the river and removing the pathways.

here's a couple of before photos of this area. the first one is from its glory days and the second one is what's been abandoned since i decided to move all my buildings to the shores.

once things were a little clearer i used paths to block out potential locations for sylvana's house. it took several little adjustments to land on the final layout.

the next few days i logged on and did more tweaks and finally i ended up with a pretty built out gardening space for sylvana. i decided to change the paving up a bit to give it texture and separate the business side from the cultivation side. i can't wait until the farm plantings grow and i finish the landscaping around the perimeter.

i'm really happy with how it turned out. originally i was going to give her a box truck as the business car for floral deliveries/etc, however i like the little car because it gives a small business vibe that fits her shop.

i'm not gonna lie, i did a bunch of other little work in and around the areas from my past post but nothing too concrete yet. i was able to move able's to where sylvana's house was previously located.

you can see in the map that i filled in the river near the shops on the middle cliff level and that's opened up so much space to build a neighborhood park. i'll get around to developing that idea further some other time i have a busy weekend so that's about all i can get done for now.

and lastly, i leave you all with this little poem about my design process:

❀❀❀
my island is like a piece of clay
i love to shape it and reshape it
some things fail and others
cement themselves in place
❀❀❀
that's all for now !​

 

[g u a v a]

~ plazas, townhouses and forced perspectives ~

back again with more updates from carambola. now that i've established a "main street" of sorts on the back portion of my island, it was time to figure out what lies between it and the airport. i decided to create a row of townhouses with a large promenade in front of the homes. it all started out with a very rough sketch using the building facade item from the 2.0 update.

i realized there was limited space in depth so i decided to squeeze all the buildings as close as possible. this also left me with a bit of a gap between the back of the homes and the edge of the river. while i was building this area out i kept using that strip as a shortcut to get to the beach where i store all my hybrids, so i decided to formalize it as a trail of sorts. the area was too big to capture in one screenshot so i made a collage that kind of shows the area. i need to move the buildings next to tangy's house, but i plan on making the exteriors the same style with different colors.

the hot dog bridge (the log bridge to the right) takes you to a large plaza that fills the space between sylvana's garden and the stairs up to main street. here's a look at how it started:

and how it turned out:

i'm really happy with how the island is shaping up now. my first pass at decorating it felt very forced, this second pass feels a lot more like me and reminds me of my first island. i think soon i'll be able to update my dream address and share it with all of you who may want to visit.

in order to prepare for the grand opening of my island, i've been working in the room sketch tool on my nookphone. i'm planning on using my alt account's house as a hotel so i've been planning out the various rooms. so far i've completed a sketch of the basement gym and the back room kitchen for all the guests. i still need to design the lobby, the two side guest rooms and the large second story suite.

it's taken me a while to order all the furniture for my alt account but the basement is officially installed and the kitchen is pending one or two more days of furniture deliveries.

i'd like to close out the post with a few random photos from my last week of gaming with no further context added:

that's all for now !