Announcing Urban Conversion Contest

So, it's been a while since my last post, but I'm still here, I promise. I am pleased to announce that I am hosting a new contest!

Concept
Land is at a premium in the city and many older buildings are being removed for newer ones, but many older ones have history that is worth protecting. Every two weeks Sim City's Conservation Committee is review preservation applications for a different type of building in the city and they will choose to either preserve or demolish your build. While these building are deemed important, it is still required that they generate income and do not fall into disrepair. These buildings will have their original architecture respected and renovated for new use.

Task
Contestants will be tasked with building a lot from an older time period and style. Those approved by the City as worthwhile to save will be tasked with then converting and renovating it to a newer commercial space. The new commercial space will not be revealed until the shells are completed.

Head over to MTS's Sims 2 Contest section of their Community board to check it out!

Join the Campus Contest?

karen lorraine is hosting a new contest! The premise is building a college campus. This fits in quite nicely with one of my own projects, so I am highly considering entering. I've got some reservations about it though. The first round is building a dorm, it's pretty basic and a great place to start. The biggest problem with it though, is how small it is! It's only 2 floors and a tiny footprint at that, my other two dorms are MUCH larger. I've managed to stuff 8 sims into this tiny dorm, but my Dabney dorm could technically house 32, and Calhoun (shown below) would be able to hold 48 if I furnished all the floors. The other big issues is she is requiring that your university be themed either arts, science, or sports. The university I'm working on constructing has a very nice blend of all of those! Based on the buildings she is going to have us make, I've ruled out the sciences. From there though, it looks like we will have choices for the remaining 5 rounds:

• Library (sciency)
  
• One-Stop Shop
• Coffee Shop
• Park* this would be awesome!
• House (dull)
  
• Performing Venue (artsy) ooh this!
  
• Art Gallery (artsy)
  
• Fitness Center* ✓
• Bar* ✓
• Games Room*

I have some pretty big visions for my hood. The idea behind my university is actually having the college classroom buildings, so I'll have a large art college, a music college, a teaching hospital, and *very* big sports complexes. I don't really have some of these tinier spaces included, but I really ought to, as they add character. If the shells for the lots aren't big enough, I won't be able to do the Music Hall or Art College the way I want to.

I'm leaning more toward the sporty and generic stuff right now because I know that's my real weakness in the first place, and I can probably get away with doing those on these smaller lots. Maybe that should be my plan. Purposely pick the weakest link and use this to make it stronger.

The Millers Close the Chapter

The final family for jones' Veronaville Home Makeover for me was the Millers. I had been looking forward to them all contest. I was pretty close the being right with which houses I had guessed throughout the contest and this layout was the one I wanted for them. My intuition was correct. Though, with how jones set up the families, there really wasn't much of a better way to arrange the families per house. The twins from the last house wanted their own bathroom and aside from the double house (which was pretty obviously meant for the Winters) the only house with two upstairs bathrooms was the one most of us picked for it. The Williams went nicely with the first house because they wanted to downsize and it was one of the smaller houses jones gave us. Anyways, this house is awesome because I made the Miller's house a MILL. (clever right? :facepalm:)

I'm most pleased with myself about my movie reference and the way I wove a fairy tale into this family. I'm thinking I'm going to want to continue sneaking in fairy tales into this hood now. I recently read a fantastic little book called The Rumpelstiltskin Problem that probably had a bit to do with this is, and also the TV show Once Upon A Time. See the rest of the house in my post!

This concludes the contest. I'm not going to be anywhere even close to placing, but I'm ok with that. I only ever really lost points for changing the structure; I lost 9 points over the course of the contest for that. If those were not taken into consideration, I'd be in third right now instead of 9th. I don't regret it though. Neither this contest, nor her first cycle, was I actually playing to win. Quite the contrary, in the first cycle I was actively sabotaging myself. I already have the cute little blue ribbon icon, so I don't need another win (yet...)

I had a chance to create some fantastic houses, kickstart my medieval hood and download a ton of fantastic CC to add to my collection. I still have so much of it to sift through and clean and purge, but that's a never ending task. My one regret was that I wasn't able to play these families enough to get them aged up and married and having kids to the point where I could have put them in my pictures. I'll try to remember to make a post later with all of the families in front of their houses when I do get them that far.

Pirates!

For the third round of jones' Veronaville Home Makeover, I've chosen the Johnson family. While this is what everyone else is working with:

Stacie, Brian and the twins, Hannah and Teresa (aged 9) love the beach. They can't afford to move to the shore, so they'd like to bring the beach to their home. BONUS The twins don't mind sharing a room, BUT they would LOVE to have their own bathroom (their parents would love it too.

Because I'm doing this in my Medieval hood, things are a little different.

Stacia, Brian, and the twins, Bethany and Betryse (aged 9) love the ocean. Brian is a Captain of a "fishing" vessel. Their house is safely hidden from the coast so Brian doesn't have to worry that his family might be in danger from his high-seas "activities".

Yup, I made him a pirate. :) The best picture of their house is by far the little stream running through their property. They love pulling fish out of their little stream and are just as comfortable in the water as they are on it. Across the little bridge is a still pool that the family uses for relaxing in. The girls enjoy playing under the waterfall and love pretending to be mermaids. The statue near the falls likely had something to do with their choice of make believe worlds.

I can't choose just one more image to tease you with, there are a bunch that are really really good. Check out my whole post.

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:

Cycle 2 of ‘Renovating the Base Hoods’ Contest

Jones has posted the second cycle of her Home Makeover Contests. This time we are in Veronaville. Unfortunately, for anyone hearing about this for the first time from me (seriously?), I just barely squeaked in and filled the 20th and last spot in the contest. As some of you may be aware, Veronaville is my medieval hood, so instead of following everyone else and creating lovely contemporary houses like I did in the last cycle, I’ll be doing my best to rework them into lovely little Shakespearean cottages. I’m excited and a little nervous about a few things. The main challenge will be of course to satisfy the families’ requirements that are part of the contest. One family in particular enjoys the beach, I’m not quite sure how to translate that into old-timey decor yet. The second challenge is going to be not reusing all the same CC over and over again. I’ll have to do some more hunting for quality items. The quality with the medieval CC I’ve seen is usually hit or miss. It’s either fantastically well made, or the textures look like something ripped out of a poorly scanned-in magazine page from the 80s. The final bit I’m nervous about is what the judges are going to do with my houses. There are rules about things, and I think not having an indoor bathroom might be something they’d dock points for. If anyone has some links to good medieval CC, put the link in a comment please!

Final Two Pleaseantview Contest Entries

Edit: I took SECOND PLACE! :D

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, my part in the Pleasantview Renovation contest comes to a close. I didn't want to make each house it's own post here and clutter up the important WIP stuff, so here are the front views of the last two houses. Links to each one's entry post are included if you would like to see more picture (and you should! These two are really good!)

The third house is for Will and Elise Gibson to try to help them ease past the pain of losing Anne, wife and mother. Will picked up what was left of his family and moved to the seaside. He picked up a nice coastal home and started trying to make a new normal. Check it out here!

And the Wilson's have the final house. When Sarah and Tom added on to their family, suddenly the little one bedroom townhouse wasn't big enough so they packed up and moved. Sarah likes contemporary country, Tom is into sports, and their toddler is a dragon-slayer! See their house here!

Pleasantview Contest

I've tabled my other projects for now but I'm glad there is so much interest in my College Collection project. Once I have the time I will pick that one back up again. I'm also working on the contest entries for jones' contest. I did the business guy for my first house, and I'm doing the flower lady for my second. It seems to be what everyone else is doing, but I'm trying to put my own takes on them both. Steve went for a really retro look and I chose to loose points by opening up his bedroom. Take a tour!

Rose(mary) Gardner just has to be the younger sister to Marigold Gardner, thus making her a plantsim. Building a plantsim friendly house while still having everything the judges are going to want is proving difficult, but fun. My version will be vastly different from the other Rose's houses. Go check out the rest of the house!

Joined a new Contest

So, its been quite some time since my last post. I almost have a good reason for it. I'm job hunting. I've also had a few paid gigs and I've got one really freaking early (by my wake-up-at-10:30 standards) tomorrow. Yay! I also have been working on a side scheme to make money by designing and selling dollhouse kits. There might be more about that later if it pans out.

On the sims side of things (cuz this isn't a personal blog, you guys care about sims) I've joined jones' Pleasantview Reno House Contest. Spots are open until Saturday, so if you want to play, get it in soon!

Update: I've uploaded this house! Get it here!