review of december

Review of December

Now the last month of this year is also over and it is already time to look back. Actually, I should write a review of the year right now, but that will have to wait a little bit. Now first of all the monthly review. Of course December is the Advent season and then Christmas and New Year's Eve. So also at the Sunshine Realm. But also Chanukah belongs to December.

Also at the Sunshine Realm it was Advent time and we opened our Christmas market and the new Winterland. We had a lot of fun to built it again. And also the Sunshiner's Pub was decorated pre-Christmas. But the month started differently.

On 3rd of December we had our first event in the Sunshiner's Pub. The theme was "One Love - Reggae Night" and DJ Yezika entertained us that night. We had a lot of fun, even if we had less guests than we had hoped for. 

But that didn't hurt, DJ Yezika played a good set with fitting music and we had a lot of fun.

On 6th of December we went to our Caribbean beach for the last time. We had to give it up for our winterland. We had already changed some things around, the tropical volcano had given way to an ice island with a lighthouse and ice floes were floating on the sea. The theme was also winterly. We met for "Ice Fishing". 

And more than 60 guests followed our invitation. Actually DJ Valantine was planned for this night, but she hasn't been there since. We all miss her and hope she's all right. Luckily DJ Polpeta made the entertainment at short notice and covered Valantine.

To get time for the winter build on the ground, we went into our skyboxes for the next 3 events. 

We started with a formal ball. "Winter Penguin Formal" in the Sunshine Temple was a wonderful ball on our Mount Olympus. The temple is really always a very special place. And so also this time many guests came, in the end there were almost 80 visitors and almost 70 together at the end of the main event. 

Thanks to donations we had a jackpot of 3,000 L$ and 55 people voted. Everything was in tail and white and many had found really beautiful clothes.

It was a really wonderful and unforgettable night in the Sunshine Temple.

We went to the Burlesque Palace on the 10th of December. But that evening it was our Playboy Mansion and all women came in bikini or as bunny. And the men came in evening attire or pajamas. The theme was "A night in the Playboy Mansion". It was a very erotic event, and more than 40 people came to the Sunshine Realm during the week.

During this event there were unfortunately a lot of things to clear up. Some guests came in everyday clothes and didn't want to accept that we had asked them to leave the event. This was then carried into the Sunshine Rocker Group and we became once again the sim in which only ALTs are. So there were some references. But also a blog post "some about ALTs" on the topic.

Then we went to the Realm of Shades for the next event. On Friday the 13th it was called "Nightmare before christmas" at the Sunshine Realm and it was a contrasting horribly beautiful event in our old church ruin. It had started to snow here as well and we had some trouble to make the landing place and the ways to the ruin snow-free before the event. 

But inside the fire was burning in the coal basins and the Realm of Shades is always good for a special event. This time every visitor should also have a mask as an additional challenge. More than 40 visitors came to our event in our counter-earth. Since we still missed DJ Valantine, DJ Polpeta took over the entertainment again at short notice.

We had used the days to convert the floor area. First the road in front of the Sunshiner's Pub was finished and everything was snowed in. We had set up a Christmas market. So everything was ready for our first event here. 

So on 14th of December it was called "Winter Wonderland" and we went with our guests to the Christmas market and in front of the new winter stage in the alcove and spent a wonderful evening together. More than 40 guests came to our event that evening. 

DJ Yuimetal and DJ Polpeta had swapped their sets that night, as Yui had previously been at the year-end event of their baby metal tribute band. So DJ Polpeta opened with a mix of Christmas and Christmas Country music, while DJ Yuimetal took over the after-party from 6pm.

The following Tuesday the 17th we went to the Sunshiner's Pub again. Also here everything was now decorated in a pre-Christmas style. And in America children hang their socks on the fireplace so Santa Claus fills them. That was our topic that evening. "Hang your stockings by the fire" was our event and DJ Yezika entertained us again very well. 

We had 40 visitors that night, which is really good for a Tuesday. All guests should come to the Sunshiner's Pub only on socks. And they followed this invitation.

And then it finally happened. We went to our new winterland on 20th of December for the first time in this winter season. And it really has become a fairy tale forest. Our event "Christmas story time by the campfire" was a wonderful experience and more than 50 guests followed our invitation. 

It was the right mood for the Christmas events. As on the Friday before, DJ Polpeta took over the entertainment again and put together a really matching set and entertained us all really well.

And of course, we danced topless and in lingeries to the After-Party too. We really had fun.

On 21th of December we went to our "Santa's Helper" party again on the street in front of the Sunshiner's Pub. It was the last event on the Christmas market before it was taken down again for Christmas. It was a nice event and everybody came with an outfit matching the theme. Especially at such events it shows again and again, which possibilities SecondLife gives us to unfold our creativity and fantasy. 

We had 60 visitors that evening, and thanks to a generous donation a jackpot of 3,000 L$. DJ Yuimetal opened the evening and entertained us for 2 hours before DJ Polpeta took over for the after-party. It was a wonderful night at this amazing place.

Christmas Eve is the central Christmas holiday in many European countries as Holy Night, while in the USA and many other countries the children get their presents on the 25th. We had already hung up our socks on the fireplace. 

On 24th we therefore had our event "Christmas Morning breakfast" where everybody was invited to come in pyjamas and socks. As many of us might have run down the stairs to the living room as children to see if Santa Claus was there. DJ Yezika and Vanny had come and entertained us. And almost 50 guests accepted our invitation.

Now Christmas was actually over, but not at Sunshine Realm. We invited to our event "Ugly Sweater" again in the Sunshine Winterland on 27th of December . DJ Polpeta had again taken over the entertainment and almost 70 guests came to this event. 

While we had lesser guests in the middle of the month, the last events made up for a lot. It was a wonderful evening on the frozen pond and everybody had a lot of fun.

And then came our monthly highlight. We had invited to the event "Silver&Gold" on 28th in the Sunshine Temple. A formal ball and it should not only be our christmas ball but also our end of the year. Around the temple snow had fallen and everything was silver and gold. 

It was an magical place, and snow cleans places. And also the guests came dressed in elegant and formal clothes, it was a wonderful view. We had a jackpot of 2,500 L$ right from the beginning and 70 guests followed our invitation. DJ Yuimetal opened the event and entertained us for the first hour. Then Joaquin Gustav followed with a wonderful live gig. 

For the after-party we took over DJ Polpetas Stream and she not only prepared a good set of classical music but also brought along an orchestra. The evening flew by.

The month in key figures

This month was much quieter than the last. There are three reasons for this. First, we had fewer events, and at the end of the month we cancelled the last one and instead had a family party at our private Moonlight Pier. Then we had some problems with a few guests in between, who didn't follow our theme, but didn't want to realize that we didn't want them to participate in the contest, nor did we want them at all at the event. And this guys took this theme in the group before we could banned them. And of course December is also the month when many people go on vacation or are invited to parties in the RL. 

And of course there are also many events in SL that compete with ours.

So the numbers in this month read a bit sober compared to many months before. We had more than 650 visitors (655) at the 12 public events. A total of L$ 18,250 was distributed to 392 guests via the jackpot. We again had a high jackpot this month and there were on average more than 50 visitors at each event. So even though the comparison to the previous months might look bad, December is also successful, and makes the Sunshine Realm one of the hotspots in SecondLife.

And also the number of group members fluctuated over the month. We had already reached the 1,000 in November during our "Erntedankfest". 

Unfortunately we lost members again very quickly and started with 990 in December. We fluctuated around this number and just before Christmas we even dropped to 987. It seems that 990 is a sound barrier around which our number fluctuates. We then posted in the Secondlife event calendar again and were able to gain new members again last week. So we ended December with 999 members. 

We have again just missed the 1,000, and we are waiting to have 1,000 or more members in our Sunshine Rocker Group in 2020.

I will write a yearly review in the next days with the key figures of the year. But we only just missed the 8,000 visitors.