FarmVille Lunar New Year Trees: Chinese Lantern & Money Tree

Earlier this evening, FarmVille users started reporting that they were receiving Chinese Lantern trees as Mystery Seedlings on their farms. If you haven't been so lucky, however, you can now purchase said Chinese Lantern Tree, and an accompanying Money Tree for your farm from the game's store.

Both of these trees are part of the Lunar New Year limited edition item theme, with the Chinese Lantern tree being available for 10 Farm Cash, and the Money Tree being available for 5 Farm Cash. When placing a Money Tree into your Orchard, you'll have the ability to spawn these Chinese Lantern trees, so feel free to skip purchasing the latter from the store, if you're confident in your luck at producing Mystery Seedlings.

Both of these trees will be available in the game for the next two weeks, and while that does give you plenty of time to do a bit of shopping, if you're like me, you'll want to purchase these trees as soon as possible, simply due to their cool appearance. What do you think?

FarmVille Lunar New Year Decorations: Magpie, Red Lantern, Beckoning Cat and more

While the Lunar / Chinese New Year may have already come and gone in the real world, that doesn't stop Zynga from continuing the celebration virtually in FarmVille. Tonight's FarmVille update saw the release of not only a new duo of trees in this theme, but also four new decorative items that can now be purchased from the store. Some of these items are re-releases, so make sure to dig through your Storage to make sure you don't already have these items in an effort not to duplicate.

One such re-released item is the Beckoning Cat, an animated item that sits on your farm and waves its paw up and down. Last year, you could purchase the cat for 2010 coins, and would gain 20 XP in the process. This year that's no different, but it seems to me that it would make much more sense with a price of 2011 coins, to correspond to the year. I guess we'll give Zynga the benefit of the doubt on this oversight however.

The other returning item is the Red Lantern. It too retains its pricing from last year - being available for just 700 coins, and rewarding you with just 7 experience points for purchasing.

The other two decorations released this evening are entirely new to the game, and come in the form of a Master Gnome, and a Magpie. The Master Gnome will make gnome collectors screech with excitement from his cute appearance and tiny fighting stick, but the price might turn some as the Master Gnome is only available for 15 Farm Cash. You'll receive 1500 XP for purchasing the Master Gnome.

As for the Magpie, this is an entirely decorative set of two birds that sit upon a branch. You'll be able to purchase these feathered friends for 120,000 coins, but again, they are only decorative, so you won't actually make any return on that investment unless you decide to sell the item altogether. You will receive some experience points for your purchase however - 1200 XP to be exact.

All four of these items will be available in the game for the next two weeks, taking the Chinese / Lunar New Year holiday to new lengths in the game. Hopefully by then you'll have had time to decide whether to purchase these items, the equally new Valentine's Day items, or both.