It has been a very, very long time since I have last posted on this blog (despite all of my blog posts being deleted…) and even longer since I last played on my “main” town Meadow— It’s been approximately 8 years since I have properly sat down and played!
I don’t wanna get too super deep much into why I took a very long indefinite hiatus, I went through a lot of dark stuff in my personal offline life. I had just turned 18 when I was forcefully made homeless and sleeping in homeless hostels for quite a while which resulted in my main 3DS at the time getting stolen so I had no way of playing Animal Crossing at the time or even just blogging. Alongside that, my mental health was (and still kinda is) the worst it’s ever been in my entire life— however I’m now in recovery following an official diagnosis. Although receiving my mental health diagnosis of EUPD has been both closure for me it has also extremely hurtful and probably the most loneliness period of my life.
Due to the loneliness I was going through, I found myself wanting to replay Animal Crossing: New Leaf again back in September 2024 as Animal Crossing is known to be amazing for those who are isolated due to mental health issues. There was a video that had popped up on my YouTube recommended specifically about Animal Crossing and the positives it had for people who suffer from depression and how it can help them feel somewhat less isolated playing the game; interacting with the villagers that send you daily letters, ask how you are and remind you to take healthy breaks, etc. So, after 8 whole years of not playing in Meadow, I finally picked up my 2DS and booted up my game…
Kabuki was my favourite villager from my childhood when I would play a lot so this pulled my heartstrings so much when I finally booted back into Meadow again.
Marshal was not impressed at all with my indefinite hiatus from mayor duties, I don’t blame him either. I feel awful for Isabelle at the town hall having to cover all of the mayoral duties for that long…
This interaction with Cookie almost made me feel so guilty and pulled my heartstrings too, especially the second screenshot when she asked if I was staying or not..
I had to get rid of that messy hairstyle straight away after saying a quick hello to my villagers, it was too annoying to look at!
Unfortunately I did forget to take a lot of screenshots of what Meadow looked like after not playing for almost 10 years; I was too eager to redecorate the town I had worked so hard on for years and years. I always felt like I wasn’t happy with how Meadow looked and that I didn’t represent how I wanted Meadow to look well so I decided to start redesigning Meadow, it’s concept and what I want it to ideally overall represent.
Meadow’s 2025 Revamp MoodBoard
As shown in the moodboard above, I want Meadow to feel like the season Spring— April specifically. I associate colours like white, shades of blue, red and green with Winter, I want my town to feel the opposite of Winter. Spring is associated with softer and warmer colours such as pink, yellow, white and pastel shades. Those colours will be Meadow’s colour palette that I’ll be using whilst redecorating the town.
I’ve included cosmos as one of the main flowers that’s gonna be used in Meadow’s redecoration as I feel like it looks very similar to a daisy. Daisies here in the UK start to bloom in March with the peak blooming season being in April. Although they are cosmos I like to pretend the white ones are daises. 😀
The cakes featured on the moodboard will be the theme of the trees seen around in Meadow, I know this sounds so weird and confusing… But with the power of mods and vapecord cake GROWS on trees in Meadow! If only this was a thing in real life, sigh……(This is the same method on how I make tree presents in my Winter ACNL town SnowBelle).
My dreamies for Meadow are: Merengue, Molly, Maple, Ellie, Diana, Dobie, Chrissy, Francine, Marcie, Chelsea and Marty . I like their colour palettes and I feel like they’ll match the overall aesthetic and vibe for Meadow. There is more than 10 villagers listed in my dreamie list so I’ll need to figure out which villagers I like best for my final dreamie list.
I also want to use the save editor alongside the vapecord plugin for revamping Meadow into my new aesthetic. The save editor will be used for moving around permanent buildings into new locations that I can’t move around without it alongside tweaking some of the town’s acres for quality of life improvements such as adding a new slope to my secret beach that was originally not accessible without a wetsuit alongside removing an awkwardly placed pond.
The vapecord plugin is mostly used for aesthetically pleasing tweaks such as custom trees and the camera mod that allows me to take photos similar to ACNH’s camera.
The Beginning of Construction of Meadow’s 2025 Revamp
Following my new plan to redo Meadow I decided that first things first, I wanted my old paths to go.
I’ve been using these paths for a very long time (since 2017!) and I felt like they weren’t matching the vibe I was going for. I decided to go back to an alternating 2 tile paths, something similar I did over a decade ago for Valentines day.
The paths I’ll be using for Meadow’s revamp are these two tile patterns! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the creator’s information when finding these paths online so I’m unable to share their social media/blog posts. I found both of them on Pinterest here and here.
As mentioned in my moodboard, I want Meadow to have cherry blossoms set at it’s permeant season. I think the overwhelming look of pink so far is super pretty in the progress photo! The budding azaleas bushes look super cute in addition to the cherry blossoms.
I decided that for my custom trees for Meadow that cake looks the best, I really like how Marcie’s house looks with the flowerbed arrangements and how the cake custom trees looks altogether. 🙂
I think maybe adding some yellow flowers to the flowerbeds outside Molly’s house might blend nicely as her house has a yellow roof.
The pink balloon present flying over Molly’s house was a cute addition to the pink overload.
I tried out the cupcake tree mode by Pearl23 on GameBanana, and it’s super duper cute! It was my first time trying out a mod for AC:NL but it was super straight forward to install and looks great in game! They replace lychees in game and can be placed into baskets outside, they don’t have a sprite or a 3d model though so placing it inside your home will just appear as normal lychees baskets. The mod also comes with the infamous star fragment trees from a Animal Crossing: New Horizons mod.
For the last section of this post I wanted to share the train station’s fountain, I included the main colours for Meadow’s colour palette in the giant flowerbed here. There’s some fairy tail streetlights to illuminate this area it’s one of Meadow’s tourist attractions, the fountain being Meadow’s “wishing well”. Tourists (and residents too!) toss a coin in here whilst making a wish, there’s rumours that a goddess from a nearby kingdom has blessed the waters of this fountain so your wish might come true! This kingdom being Serenity of course. 🙂
Just a little bit south of the fountain are two benches were tourists and residents can rest their feet whilst admiring the sights of the town from this area.
