Holiday House Exchange 2018 (HHE18) Official Announcement Thread

Good news decorators! The HHE is returning for 2018!

What it is :

The Holiday House Exchange (or HHE) is a house swap that encompasses Erollisi Day, Bristlebane Day, and Brew Day.

When it is :

The swap will officially begin on February 1st and will run until April 30th. Sign ups will begin today (December 14th, 2017) and I will accept entries all the way up to January 25th.

Where it is :
The Maj'Dul, Skyfire, Halls of Fate, Antonia Bayle, and Thurgadin servers. Due to lack of interest on previous swaps, I will not be opening sign-ups for Test, Fallen Gate, or Isle of Refuge.

Who can participate :

Anyone and everyone!

Why such a long event?

In order to include all three of the above holidays, We like for everyone to be able to acquire any new or existing items we may get for them, so for instance if a home is being decorated exclusively for Bristlebane Day, the decorator *should* have plenty of time to craft or purchase the items they need.

What else you need to know :

This house swap is all about choice.
The Homeowner may choose which particular holiday they'd like their home to be decorated in the style of, or if they so desire, may also leave it entirely up to the Decorator to decide and be surprised!


HOW TO SIGN UP :


Anyone wishing to sign up should email the following information to
shanettesnow2004@yahoo.com :

• Server Name(s) :
• Homeowner Name(s) :
• Home Type and Location (if prestige) :
• Home City and Address (if not prestige) :
• Holiday Requested : (can put Decorator's Choice or Surprise Me!)
• House Size Preference : (if no preference, please put ANY.)
• Name of Server(s) you will be decorating on :
• Name of Character(s) you will be decorating with :

If you are only able or willing to do a smaller home, or will only be able to decorate a room or two, please include this information in your email. We don't want anyone feeling overwhelmed but please keep in mind that sometimes I am not able to accommodate this particular need to everyone's satisfaction.


If you would like to decorate multiple homes, You may do so. Just be sure to let me know in the email with your sign-up information.


Beginning with this swap, and going forward, I ask that homeowners please keep the following guidelines in mind :

• Please do not submit homes that are partially decorated, unless you are fine with things being changed or torn down, because for some decorators it can be really frustrating to enter your assigned home and not have freedom to be as creative as you may like.
• We ask that Homeowners be courteous to give the same size home, to the best of their ability, as the size of the one they are requesting. Please don't submit a massive home to be decorated and then request a small one.

What you need to do after signing up :

Place a book in the home for your Decorator, with all of the following information included:

• Homeowner Name :
• Home Type and Location (if prestige) :
• Home City and Address (if not prestige) :
• Homeowner Class, Race, Gender :
• Holiday Requested : (can put Decorator's Choice or Surprise Me! if you'd like to leave it up to the decorator)
• Any Additional Requests or things you would like your Decorator to know :

Rename your home to HHE18.
Make sure to give trustee access to SHANETTE AND WIZZAM. (Wizette for the AB server.)
Set public access to NONE.

Optional things you can to do to accommodate your Decorator :

• Place a guild hall door in the home.
• Place portal pads in the home, if you'd like to give your Decorator the option of breaking out or blocking rooms off.
• Use 1 or both expanders on the home, so that your Decorator has maximum item count to work with.
• Place a house actor customized as your character in the home, so that your Decorator may build the home to scale to your toon and / or include you in their theme, if they so choose.
• If using a non-prestige home, make sure rent is paid for the maximum amount allowed, or place 4 treasure hoards in the home, to get rid of coin rent.
• If there are any particular items you'd like used in the theme you have chosen, place them in the home, with a request in the book for your Decorator.

DO NOT enter your home between February 1st and April 30th.
(If, and only if, everyone participating on a server finishes early, I will announce that the swap for that server is complete, and you may then exchange homes and publish, if you plan to do so!)

I will edit this post with anything else that I've forgotten or details that may change between now and the end of the sign-up period.

I will send out confirmation emails and update this thread as we get closer to the end of the sign-ups. I will not, however be assigning homes any earlier than January 25th, when the sign-up period ends.

Anyone wishing to sign up, or having questions about the HHE18, Can email me at shanettesnow2004@yahoo.com . I also encourage any and all questions in this thread.


Helpers : As with other swaps, if you feel you will not be able to submit and decorate a home yourself, but would still like to participate, please email me and let me know that you would like to offer your services as a Helper, and on which server(s) you'd like to volunteer your time and resources. I will then post a list of Helpers for each server.


Very jazzed about all the holiday fun and fabulous finished results of the second annual HHE!

~Shanette

Sounds great!
Can I also only provide a home or am I "forced" to decorate one?
Would prepare everything at home and sent you an email than if I do not have to use my detrimental decoration skills on anyones house ;-)

No freeloaders! Lol it's an exchange so............

Aw, Feb, you'll scare them away... ;->

Not to worry, Steve; if you decorate your own place(s) beyond my usual of "Throw everything in the door, slam it behind you, and hope it closes," you're ahead of the game. One thing I might suggest for you to request of the person you'd be decorating for, is to have them place stuff they already have, that they would want you to use for the house (as per Shanette's suggestion above), in a Moving Crate. There are times I get inspired just by seeing a pile of stuff and figuring out what all I can do with it. I can't remember who did an event I'm thinking of, but it was in an Everfrost house, and three decorators had the exact same pile of stuff to work with, house item-wise (types and numbers: only 5 Black Pawns or whatever, for example). We all came up with three extremely different ideas, and the only real issue with it at all was that if people used the Layout Editors, sometimes our items would get "snatched" by the program (someone might suddenly have only 4 Black Pawns and someone else had 6, for example). ;->

At least you'd have it easy: no one but you working on it until the end!

Uwk

Lesson learned from the recent swaps: not to put up either my Gorowyn 2-rooms or my New Halas 2-rooms for "keep out 'til we say!" swaps...they are way too useful as fast travel locations, and late at night/early in the morning, one forgets... X-P

I think if I participate in this (I'm feeling a wee bit ragged atm ;->), I'll either pony up some other accessible place (thank goodness for Guild Hall housing portals! But what do I do if my decorator's from another alignment than the house city and doesn't have a guild and isn't 128th level or whatever...) or put down a 4-room place in either of those delightful cities (definitely Gorowyn, since that's the only "Evil" city that anyone can get into). ;->

But that might mean I'd have to deco 4 rooms myself... :-/

Uwk
pondering...2-room places in Kelethin, 4-room places in Gorowyn?

P.S./EDIT: Also pondering about doing one on Antonia Bayle or Skyfire, but my main Carpies there are only level 49 and 33, respectively. I'd need a lot of help with higher level folks making items I wouldn't have access to yet (one reason why I usually volunteer for Test, Halls of Fate, and Thurgadin, where my Carpies are all level 100 there). :-/

On the other hand, my Maj'Dul main Carpy finally dinged 100, so maybe there...except he doesn't have all the juicy Faction stuff yet, just the Essentials and Advanced. On the other other hand, it's a holiday swap, and even my toons on AB and Skyfire could do that (must check if they have all the books updated)... ;->

Come to think, Steve, I've got a Provisioner doing a Santa Glug swap, getting help from his Carpy buddy and the Broker and Marketplace. If he can do it, anyone can. ;->

Okay, sigh, consider my arm twisted. ;->

You Have Mail, Shan.

Uwk

YES YES YES . . . but probably only one server this time!

(NOT Thurgadin. . . . sorry)

Yes, as Feb said, with these house swaps the idea is to "exchange" homes randomly. If one person were to receive a home but not decorate one, we would have uneven numbers. And then poor Wizzam would have to decorate 2.

Not that she couldn't, very capably, but folks in the past have used swaps and contests and so forth (mostly swaps) to get their feet wet in decorating for the first time. More often than not, once they get their first taste of it, there's no stopping them afterwards, and they've frequently been brilliant.

Uwk

Sent mine in!

A couple of slight changes to the OP. Changes are in RED.

Hmm! Looking at the second bullet in the new bullet points, I will say that I had a good time decorating "only 2 rooms" (no more! especially at that point in time ;->) in a 6-room southern Qeynos place for a Santug swap one year. She also already had some rooms partially decorated, but would've been willing to let me tear down/up/etc. whatever I wanted or needed to. As it was, I only really wanted to mess about with the bathroom from scratch and the topmost "floor" on the roof of such places. Great fun up there!

Uwk
who'd be willing to let someone decorate only two rooms out of my 4-room place, if Shan runs out of 2-room places on my server and there are still folks who're gun-shy about doing any more than that (and now if you'll excuse me, I gotta give Shanette and Wizzam Trustee access... :-/)

Also ETA information about Helpers. Helper section is at the bottom of the OP in BLUE .

sadly, I won't be doing house swaps next year due to school and RL stuff going on and will know the new year might be a crazy year for me. but will check them out when everybody's done with their houses. good luck everyone!!!!

Sad to hear this but totally understand. You will be missed.

email sent I will be unavailable in march for a few days but I can steal sharisnarrs computer while he's at work while iam visiting him

I'll send in my email later to offer help on HOF.

Okay, got Shan and Wizz access; don't mind the others, they're just my alts on AB. They'll stay out, too.

Uwk

I resubmitted mine. . . (as per the new rules)

If anyone joins on Thurgadin (which I doubt because there are only 4 people here who are on Thurgadin that join) I will offer to be a helper. . . (if they need one).

Yay! I loved the homes from this event last time, still don't know which characters house to chose.