Portals, private gardens and a bridge to a whole new island?

So in the gallery post last time I kept mentioning the portal a fair bit and thought I should explain how it came about. When I was exploring my second set of caves deep in the heart of the underground of my mountain base, I came across a shit load of obsidian, but had no diamond at all to mine it. I went out side, over a nearby mountain and did a proper diamond hunt in a new underground area I dug down to, making proper diamond shaft tunnels. I only found 5 diamonds unfortunately, but it was enough for a pick-axe and a sword (Both of which I've lost since in lava in the Nether.) Before all this I had created a big "0" cobblestone icon on top of my mountain, which I was going to light up using lava. Due to the way lava falls however, i realized you wouldn't really see the shape. I thought about re-doing it in logs and setting it alight, which is when I realized I could fit a portal inside. I had to make it a bit wider to fit the portal but that's when I decided to diamond hunt to get the obsidian to make the portal.


One big change has been that old interior fort I could never think of what to do with:

Before, I was just growing trees in there, the problem being there was a lot of overhanging mountain that was very high up - making the room very shaded. As I play Minecraft so much, I end up having quite a few Minecraft dreams. It was just after waking up I got this idea for a private garden! So I went for it, Climbed the trees and took them all down from the top (As all the leaves had to be removed, then did the same and took out the over-hanging mountain overhead that was making the room so shaded. It took absolutely ages to take the trees down and three times as long to square off the over-hanging mountain from underneath. I had a very clear idea about a gravel path going round , some sort of bench, the odd tree, flowers, maybe a bit of water and finaly came up with this:

It's a bit flowerless at the moment, but I will go flower picking at some point to brighten it up. I aslo got an idea to landscape and fence off around the rear viewing room at back of the mountain near the top, so that there's now a bit of a garden veranda:

As well as that I was looking at someone's Minecraft pictures and saw they're "stove" (Stone around 4 furnaces) and kind of nabbed the idea and did a smaller version resulting in the new look on-suite kitchen in the bedroom:

As the room is so near the top, (4 - 5 blocks up) I built a shaft to the top behind those two pains of glass allowing a stream of light to fall through. I had to add glass to the surface (Top of the shaft) straight away as just after I had dug it out an exploding creeper snuck down and scare the **** out of me. I managed to back up and not having weapons on me manage to to take much damage when he exploded or let him do much damage. (He only took out two - four panes of glass in the outer wall. I'm rally happy with the new kitchen.

Lastly I decided to build a massive bridge to the large island opposite the rear of the mountain base:

I had this idea for a long while but resisted because I am two minds about building across on this island. For one, I like where I am, but two, I am starting to run low on ideas now. I do want to stay where I am but ideas are getting more scarce know. I'm always going outside looking at the outside of the mountain trying to make the exterior one material not mixed of 3 (How I found it) looking it at night seeing if there's anywhere that needs lighting better or at all, trying to make it look good from all angles etc.

Bonus pictures: