Adjusting to a New Schedule

For anyone unaware, I started a new job a few weeks back. I'm still trying to get into the swing of things; waking up early, going to bed early, packing a lunch the night before, wearing professional clothes, commuting, and only having 2 or 3 hours of free time in the evening.

Because of this shocking lack of time in the evening, I've been late with both of the last two rounds of the housing contest I'm competing in. I'm trying to juggle my schedule around and might have a solution. My lunch hour is a mandatory 1 hour and I usually only use 15 mins to eat my sandwich. On days I pack my lunch, I can bring my lappy in with a copy of my Medieval hood and sim on my lunch hour. I like this idea a lot, sim-withdrawal is harsh!

For the second round, I, like many other contestants, chose the family with the live-in mother. This house is well suited for the family because it's actually one of the double houses in Veronaville. When I was setting up my hood months ago the last time I was playing, I'd actually converted all of those lots to apartments. Apparently, I'd also made some structural changes as well to my copy, so I just used jones' and deleted my original. I'm very pleased with the result, take a look!

Vacation Inspiration

In our Veronaville makeover contest, lipe2k has built a gorgeous beach house for the beachy family. I'm seriously in love with his style and now I want to create a nice South Carolina / East Coast beach vacation spot. In my last vacation post I mentioned not knowing what kind of beach vacation hood to create and now I've got it. Not sure how I managed to forget one of the only 2 types of beach places I've been to. Weird. Anyways, here's his entry in full and his fantastic backyard.

First Round House and Some Rather Morbid Mods

I've finally got my first round house up! I had asked jones for an extension because I recently got a job and moved back to Cinci. This happened during the same week that the house was due. I'm very committed to my sims, but after job searching for over 9 months, I do have my priorities straight.

As part of the contest, jones gave us bios for 4 families, and we are free to pick whichever family we want for each house, but the catch is that we don't know what kind of house will be next and we can't reuse the families. After some figuring, I decided that all 4 families could be related and proceeded to make them in game. I started a generation back so that the future adults will be able to have good skills and such, but it put me a bit behind. At the time of having to turn in my house, I haven't yet gotten the families all aged up and appropriately matched.

The Williams family (empty next of 5 kids) is the main family. Hugh is the oldest, and he has already moved out and settled into the Application house with his bride-to-be, a romance lady who may or may not be having extramarital affairs, and who will die in her third childbirth. (See below about this morbid issue.) The next oldest is Stacie, who is still a teen and just starting her relationship with Brian Johnson. According to jone's bios, they will be having twin girls. After her is a son named Richard, who was added to bring the count up to jone's required 5. I decided he needed to be a boy and in the middle to help explain the age differences between Stacie and the other two moms-to-be. After him is Johanna, and her betrothed is Lowrie. (I really dislike the name Larry, Lowrie isn't much better, but it is better imho.) Johanna just recently grew up to a child, and the toddler of the house is Lora.

I've got a lot to do to get them all grown and fixed up with their partners, who are also at the same ages in their own households. Little Lora and Joshua are going to be my Round 2 house, and they are the furthest from adulthood! I need to step on it. I think this weekend I'm going to start work on the house and get it a fair amount done first just in case I run into trouble meeting the deadline again. I really prefer taking my pictures with the families in the house and in the shots, but I only have so many hours to play now that I have a job. Anyways, here's the house: