Lot tour: Jade's Exclusive Villas

I'll warn you now that there is a spoiler for the last update included in this tour. So you might want to go and read that now, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Anyway, I did this lot fairly quickly over a few days (that's quick for me, for anything that's not a house!). Shannon asked in a comment if there was a Takemizu Village lot I wanted to make over. Yes, all of them! I think the EA vacation lots are so dire and they pretty much all need a makeover. But Takemizu Village is the weakest of the destinations, in my opinion, so I was never particularly inspired to work on any of those lots. Shannon's comment gave me a little prod though and I got to work!

A picture of the original lot is here. I had taken my own before pics but in my longstanding tradition of completely failing at before pics, I accidentally deleted them. Oops! So that one will have to do.

This is what the lot looked like after I was done with it. The first thing to go was that hideous green picket fence. 

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Liebster Award - Laura's questions

If anyone is confused as to what the Liebster Award is, I explain it in my first post here. You can also click the "liebster award" tag to find my answers to other people's questions. 

Shortly after I put up my first round of questions from Maisie, Emma and Shannon, I was nominated by Laura. At the time, I told her I'd put up my end of round updates and then do her questions. That was in May. Um...sorry? But here they are now! 

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Sail to the moon

Round 36: January 2043 (Summer)

last update/next update

Novak-Sitko 1 household profile

Connor Novak and Lila Sitko are 30.
(Josh is 29 and Oliver is 27)

Narrated by Connor Novak

I'm Oliver’s superior at work now, which is incredibly pleasing to me.

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I haven't abandoned the blog!

Just a quick apology for my absence lately. I haven't even loaded my game in a few weeks, because I simply haven't had the time. Then this week, when I did have the time, I got sick and didn't feel like playing.

But I think I'm on the mend now and I hope to play this Sunday. I have some notes written already - not a ton but it should be enough for me to expand on over the next couple of days. The next household is Connor and Lila and I'm really looking forward to visiting them and getting back to my game in general!

Lot tour: Sullivan High School, Version 3.0

So here it is - Sullivan High School, Version 3.0! Or maybe it should be Version 2.1, seeing Version 2.0 never really got finished (due to my hood going kaput) and this is based on what I had done so far and what I had planned if I'd been able to continue. 

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The world at large

Round 36: January 2043 (Summer)

last update/next update

Clarke 2 household profile

Calvin and Aaron Clarke are 40, Amy is 8, Natalie is 6 and Curtis is 4. 
(James is 68, Madelyn is 63, Maia is 41, Ethan is 37, Willlow is 8, River is 6, Alex is 4 and Wren is 3)

Narrated by Aaron Clarke

Amy’s birthday is right after the new year, so we had a party for her here at home, with some of her school friends.

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Assigning hobbies to sims

Ever since I found out how sims get their One True Hobby, I've hated it. The way it's done basically means that all of your sims of one particular hobby will have similar personalities. That makes sense for some hobbies - sims who are into Fitness or Sports should probably also be active, for instance. But why, for example, do Arts & Crafts sims have to be nice? Why do Nature sims have to be playful? A lot of the criteria EA came up with just seems really arbitrary to me.

So I started randomising my sims' OTHs at birth. I was satisfied with that for a while, but after I had been using Starr's careers criteria for a while (which is partly based on interests), I thought I might try tying interests and hobbies together. This was a good while ago now but it's only recently that I decided to fine tune my system.

I'm going to start by showing which interests I assign to which hobbies. Then I'll show you a couple of examples of exactly what I do with that information to decide on hobbies for my sims, using a couple of Sullivan babies as guinea pigs. Babies are sort of blank slates anyway and I'm not yet wedded to the idea of any one particular hobby for them.

Anyway, so on with the interests!

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Lot tour: Emma, Jessica and Lauren's place

This lot serves two purposes - a contribution to the N99 challenge for May/June, which is decorating with moodboards and, more importantly, a place for these girls to live now that they're out on their own. I used a Coastal Bohemian moodboard for inspiration. Very loosely interpreted in places, as is always the case when I use any sort of theme in my decorating.

The girls live in this apartment block, built by Starr. Emma's sister Sophie lives in the same block, though that will change once she marries Oliver.

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You say it's your birthday, January 2043

It's time for another new round here in Sullivan, so of course, we are starting off with January birthdays!

First up is Alex Moretti...

...and Curtis Clarke. Both boys will turn 4 this year and are beginning pre-school. 

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Round 35 Summary

Whew, yet another round down! Here's the run-down:

Births: 6 (Gemma Ashton, Matias Miguel, Zoe Benton, Elisa Hamilton, Mason Novak, Eliza Benton)

Deaths: 1 (Adam Gottlieb)

Engagements: 3 (Oliver Gentry and Sophie Gottlieb, Sam and Julia Whitney, Noah Gottlieb and Brigit Hewitt)

Marriages: 4 (Nathan and Rebecca Collins, Edward and Lucy Lachance, Amar and Adrienne Hamilton, Sam and Julia Whitney)

Break-ups: 4 (Eddie Gentry and Lauren Carmody, Brendan Lachance and Georgina Nott, Matthew Lane and Aurora Moretti, Xavier Moretti and Ashlee Baena)

Graduations: Mitchell Carmody, Eddie Gentry, Tim Lane, Emma Gottlieb, Jessica Royce-Nihill, Louisa Gentry

New residents: Daniel Halmi, Brigit Hewitt

Total population: 71 male, 76 female

Babies: 4
Toddlers: 4
Children: 24
Teens: 12
Adults: 79
Elders: 23

Notes:

• The gender ratio is way more out of whack if you break it down by age group, as poor Ruby is more than aware of. ;)
• Hopefully, Brigit's profile will be up by the time this post is but if not, I've just been lazy/busy - it's not broken!