Member Blogs

My Wedding

I will be getting married on 28th April (i.e. next Saturday - I can't believe how quickly it's come around!) followed by an Italian Honeymoon. To celebrate, I have created a Honeymoon Collection for your female Sims comprising six essential Honeymoon items: a sexy red and black lace camisole and panties, comfy faded denim shorts and a cotton top (both with heart motif) for sightseeing, a glamorous tropical print bikini for sunbathing, a stylish strapless dress with matching heels ideal for a night on the town, and a sheer black lace-trimmed chemise.



All the items can be worn by adults and young adults and use standard Maxis meshes except for the dress which requires a mesh by Crechebaby available from www.simplystyling.de (please see the installation instructions I've provided with the dress).

I won't be around for a few weeks now. When I return I shall be Mrs Bunny!

Wish me luck! :-)

Beth

Time to Stock Up on Meshes

It's time to prepare for the recolors that are coming. If you go to the Sims2Luxe site at http://www.sims2luxe.com/ and get everything that says Mundy or Calypso, you'll have what you need for my recolors that are coming. Just a warning - going into this site maximizes your browser. I'm hoping a lot of you already have the Calypso and Mundy sets and won't need to go get them, since they have been around a really long time. But for those that do, they are under Objects, New Meshes, Living Room, Dining Room, Study and Bedroom. Of course the sets will have more explicit instructions, but I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you wanted to be prepared.

Aside from these sets, you can look forward to some more Shoukeir recolors, more Arizona recolors, at least one more set of Salsa recolors, lots of rugs and I'm working on some other ideas, but they haven't worked out right yet. And eventually, I'll have to get rid of some of these wall sets that are piling up. If you have anything you'd like to see, just PM or do a guestbook entry.

To Furnish or Not to Furnish Survey

Thank you to all who voted on this survey. The results were that about 50% wanted furnish and 40% were for unfurnished, with 10% wanting partial furnished lots. I'll see what I can do to make everyone happy! Thank you again!

'Bad to the Bone' Boarding House

I must admit that the inspiration for this lot did come from George Thorogood's song "Bad to the Bone', lol! Every time I hear it, it makes me smile ... I'm not sure I really like it ... but it's such an odd song. This lot contains much concrete, chipped paint, cracked and moldy walls. And I am sure you are thinking, "How lovely", lol! But maybe there are one or two of you out there that really needs this for your game ... okay maybe only one person ... so this trashed house is just for you! The house is best played to the side ... those blasted gates in front are necessary for the 'look', but makes Sims' activities difficult to see ... *hangs head*, so sorry.

Someone read my Blog & Lived!

No... i didnt believe it either but its true! On another note my SPIRAL T Shirts are up for release from Sunday 22nd April onwards!!!

April 22nd, Victorian Pram

Finally! The Victorian Inspired Pram collection is set for publication on April 22nd. The collection includes an animated pram mesh, and 6 recolors.
The bedding inside the pram is linked to Maxis' crib bedding, so all your favorite bedding recolors are available for the pram. The pram is also usable by the nanny, and only requires the base game, Sims 2. So, take your child out for a stroll in the park and show off your new pram. Happy Simming!

Better

I am better now and have been designing new swimsuits that soon I will be puting on here. I have also been working on those matching formals. I have two done so far but its going really slow with those. Lots of details to put in.

Soon though my business will slow me down in creating. I have end of month paperwork to do. Bah-humbug. Hopefully I can get that done in no time to get back to creating.

I hope you all are enjoying my creations as much as I enjoy making them for the community.

HAPPY SIMMING!!!!

Poll Results

My mini-site has been getting a little bit more traffic lately; and as a result, my poll has been getting a few more votes. Currently, more visitors would like to see a kitchen project more than any other did.

Therefore, I am doing the research and following the necessary tutorials that I will need to complete such a project. Since I am very pleased with the Sheffield theme, I plan to continue this design into the Kitchen.

Unfortunately, kitchens are a little more challenging than I had hoped. Therefore, this project is taking a little longer than expected. Nevertheless, if all goes well, I will be uploading my first kitchen before the end of the weekend. Wish me luck.

Current projecs

Currently I am working on a Winnie the Pooh bedroom, which is made as a tribute to poohbear7882, who I thanked for comments on something she haden't downloaded,her name fooled me :), and I hope she will like this room - maybe I should thank her for something again ;) .

In addition to the kids bedroom, i am working on a bunch of rugs, wallpapers and some paintings.

Eden Village - Country House

I'm tempted to whoop for joy at having finally finished this lot! It's available for download on Sunday 22nd. There's an unfurnished version which will probably suit most people best. The furnished version is very heavily furnished and will need a substantial computer to run it without lag. Of course, you can always download the furnished version and delete the stuff you don't want or need!

There are a few pics of this lot further down the page, so I won't post the same ones again.

Here's a detail of the little outbuilding on the lot - perfect for a home business or for use as a separate residence:



A wider view of the front of the house (the outbuilding is off to the left):




And the rear garden:



And finally, the view across the front lawn from the greenhouse - full of thriving plants when packaged!:



The lot is a 4x4 - which I think I've incorrectly labelled as "medium" - I'll check - I think it's a "large" lot. I'll change that when it's published.

Finally, I played this lot myself and packaged it when my neighbourhood was in its third season. You may find that the first season any Sims experience in this lot will be the season that's listed third in your neighbourhood. So if you neighbourhood runs Winter-Spring-Summer-Autumn, you Sims may start off in Summer, rather than Winter.

Back with a few interior pics soon!
Tiger :)

Sadness

Time has come to a halt for me this week. I am an alumnus of Virginia Tech and it is a place that has always been in my heart. I grew up near there and countless friends and family members have attended there. I have officially stopped watching the news reports after last night when the footage of the killer started being played on television. It angers and disgusts me. My prayers are going out to those families, I cannot imagine their pain.

What is cosmo?

Long time ago this sim was in my current project, but I decided not to upload her, so just to know what is cosmo right now....you can watch her here in my blog

No internet...

I just want to apologise for disappearing down a black hole the last few days. My cable modem packed up over the weekend and the cable company made a right balls-up of getting it sorted. It's all been rather frustrating I tell ya!

Anyway, I'm back now *touches wood* and will be responding to all the comments and messages left in my absence over the course of the evening. I also want to say a big thank you to everyone for making Brightview Urban Villa such a success - I was quite gobsmacked to see it had achieved over 300 downloads on the first day of release!

I see quite a few of you are already enjoying my Graduate Starter which was released today. I'd like to say a big thank you to Tigerblue and Strawbz for choosing it as the winning entry in the Graduate Starter Competition over on the forums. If you liked my submission, please do have a look at the other fantastic entries. :)

Updated Seasons Lots

Okay, so apparently I had a massive brain fart and forgot to post a note in my blog last week about my Holland Acres lot I'd updated to be Seasons-ready. :P Anyway, it's been available for nearly the last week now but I'm telling you anyway, just in case you've missed it. This new version is in fact prepped for the following EPs: NL, OFB & Seasons.

As you can see in the second preview pic, I've swapped out the flower farm for two spaceous greenhouses ready for planting; I've also deepened the small irrigation pond, should you wish to fish. The shop has also been updated to contain fresh produce and fish and I went through the whole house and redid the walls and floors in the nicer Seasons designs as well as used the nice Seasons country fixtures.

I also felt it was high time I updated my Farmer's Market community lot to be OFB & Seasons-ready. I've made a few cosmetic changes to the lot but nothing much - mostly removed a lot of bushes so that the price was more reasonable for purchasing (just under �50 000, BTW). Also, this lot is completely free of custom content (with the sole exception of the llame shrub by Maxis) so will be free to everyone and is perfect for those wishing to avoid CC or have slower machines. The biggest change is the addition of Seasons-grown fresh fruit, vegetables and fresh-caught fish. All of the produce is of the highest quality (mouthwatering) and the fish includes both jumbo and regular sizes to choose from and even includes a rare golden trout.

TIP! If you simply install and place this lot into your neighbourhood without having a Sim purchase it, you will be able to send any Sim down to purchase all types of fruit, veggies and fish at any time and the game will automatically restock the purchased items without need for you to have a gardening and fishing Sim. ;)

Moving on up

well, not really up, but more to the left. Haha. I won't be able to submit for a while, as I'm moving across country :P Well almost. Over half way there! Ontario bound I shall be. I will be working on stuff on my spare time, but once I'm on the airplane internet usage will be to a minimal with me. You can expect lots of stuff when I get back from my voyage.

Next Please...

Well, it looks like O-Ring is doing well, so now I introduce Ornamental! With it's softly flowing waves and teardrop design, this is sure to bring on the '70's flashbacks (hopefully, in a good way). Ornamental in Iced Rose: and Ornamental in Mint: As always, have an AMAZING day!

Sintesi Bedroom

I've been away for a while, but I hope you'll find the result worth the waiting. My new project is a bedroom; not a common bedroom, but the bedroom I actually sleep in every night (or at least most of the objects you'll find here come from there). It gave me some problems, but I wanted it to look exactly like my real one. I made both single and double bed, bedside table with a glass shelf and some books on it, a dresser with a similar glass shelf and some jewel boxes, a wall mirror with a small bracket and perfumes on it, table and floor lamps. I completed the set with the bedding and matching wallpaper and a neutral wood floor. There are some minor fixes I want to make and some more testing, but I think I'll be able to submit it in a couple of days.

New lots

Hi everyone, Things have been a bit hectic on my side for the past few weeks but its finally settling down and I can get back to building again :-) Here is a preview of the next two lots I will be uploading as soon as I finish testing them to make sure there are no problems. Till then I hope you are all keeping well. Happy simming :-)

April 19th, Victorian Nursery Collection Folder

A collection folder for my Victorian Inspired Nursery set, will be published on April 19th. Happy Simming!

This Goes With That - Curtains & Rug Sets

While laying out my sets lately - people have been asking about the fixtures in the rooms I have used, which were sometimes not from TSR. So to give you more bang for your TSR buck - I have recoloured Padre333 beautiful curtains and Echo's rug. You can download the curtains from Padre333 here. I would also (if I were you) take the time to download all versions of the curtains as my one file will colour all three: single, double and triple size curtains. I also recoloured Echo's rug. This has got to be the most recoloured rug on the net so I thought I would throw my lot into the mix! You can download the original mesh here. hugs Nancy xx

nVidia DDS utilities updated =)

DDS Utilities version 8.31.0225.1745 released - please update your software

Note: If you are looking for texture compression tools, please take a look at nVidia's new GPU-Accelerated Texture Tools, which provide a 10x performance boost if you have a GeForce 8 Series GPU.

This installer includes four separate utilities:
* nvDXT - convenient command-line access to nvDXTlib functionality and more
* detach - extracts MIP levels from a .DDS file
* stitch - recombines MIP levels into a single .DDS file
* readDXT - reads compressed images and writes .TGA files
* nvDXTlib - library for working with .DDS files

The latest release includes several improvements:
* Support for Visual Studio 2005 and 2003 libraries
* Texture sizes up to 8k by 4K are now supported (previously 2k x 2k was the limit)
* Support for DXT5_NM (compressed normal maps)
* The "Fastest" quality mode has been significantly improved
* Internal calculations are now performed using floating point arithmetic, resulting in higher quality textures.

Download link: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_utilities.html

Help me decide....

My latest poll has to do with the color scheme for my mini-site. There are so many great colors to choose from, I just can't make up my mind.

So thats where all of you come in. I am letting all of you that visit my mini-site decide what color I should use.

I have already had a few votes on this, but I hope for some more. I am planning on keeping up for a least a month, so let you voice be heard and vote.

The only thing i am going to do, is when I check it the leading color will become my color for now. So when you see it change you know I have a lot of votes for that color.

I hope more of you will vote on this and help me make up my mind. This may be my mini-site, but in truth it also belongs to all of you that come to look and download my creations.

So again, LET YOU VOICE BE HEARD! Vote in my poll

Modern Apartment Living

Now for a complete change of pace and era, modern apartment living this will be a whole set of rooms and build objects all interchangeable when finished

The Real Life Thomas and Jessica

The recent story that I submitted was based (somewhat) on my experiences during and after the time that my long time boyfriend was deployed overseas to the war in Iraq. We're not actually married yet, (we've been together for several years) and I didn't have a baby with him, but a lot of the experiences I wrote about were things that we've been going through since he got home. Anyway, I thought you all might like to meet the "real life" Jessica and Thomas......which is actually me (Robin) and my boyfriend Dan. My Sim "Thomas" looks so much like my boyfriend, that it's uncanny! I didn't do so well on making Jessica look like me. (she's much prettier!) This first picture is one that we took right before he was deployed. We were able to spend several days at the beach before he left. This is the "real" me. This is the "real" Thomas. And this is Dan when he finally came home. And this is a picture I had a friend of mine take of me while he was in Iraq and I sent it to him.

Retro Recolours of Stacked Washer-Dryer

I'd have to say that Shannanigan's "Retro Kitchen" set contains what are pretty much my favorite appliances to use, to the point that earlier today I even made the effort of figuring out how to add Season's functionality to the fridge so I could resume using it regularly. I sometimes like putting my stacked Washer-Dryer dresser in kitchens in order to have a discrete dresser somewhere near the back door, and it's always bugged me that I didn't have recoluurs of it that were a good match for her kitchen. So today I also finally sat down, grabbed the RGB values of the colours she's used for her kitchen set, and did a set of recolours for the Great Portholio to match her gorgeous appliances.

Floor mirror

Many people ask me about the floor I use. This floor is actually a transparant mirror that can be placed on top of any other floor. You can find this floormirror here: http://www.muranomobilia.com/products/others/millenium/millenium.html

A little warning: your game can slowdown if you use a lot of these floormirrors. I myself have an older (5 year) computer (P4, 1.9 Ghz with 768 MB memory), but I have a medium/high end graphics card (Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS) and I can have a lot of these mirrors on the floor and still have all graphics high without any lags. If you have an integrated graphics chip or a low end graphics card, you can expect your game to lag if you use this floor.

You're All Invited to Tea!

That's right, you are all invited to tea! Stop in and visit my TSR forum, "Cashcraft's Victorian Tea Room," for a cup of tea, a chat, and to catch a sneak peek of my current "work in progress." Just click the link on my mini-site, under my profile picture and you are there!

You can also visit by clicking here,
Cashcraft�s Victorian Tea Room.

Ill again - sorry :(

I'm so sorry - I've had another bout of illness and have been away from TSR for over a week.

I'm fine now and will get back to correspondence, replies etc!

Coulee Swamp Houses - Update

I have updated the link for the 'Eponymous Garden' by Kate at Parsimonious on each house in this series, that have her fantastic plants in them. If you already have the house ... but the plants are missing, you can download her garden at this link: http://www.parsimonious.org/furniture2/plants/k8-Eponymous_Garden.shtml
A special 'thank you' to Kate for letting me know! I sure missed those plants of hers .... what a difference they make in landscaping!!!!

Pretty in Pleats!

Hi everyone - just uploaded another set of clothing for you; a collection of eight pretty pleated skirts with tops to match. (Actually, they are the summer dresses from the base game made to look like a skirt and top). I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them! Anyway, here's the pic: Until next time - Happy Simming!

Thank You

I just want to send a very very big Thank You! out there to all of you who have left absolutely lovely comments on my creations. Your positive feedback really does inspire me and makes me strive to give you all some worthwhile creations. So once again, Thanks!

Hello

This is my first post.
Thanks to the community of TSR to have allowed this and to all those who voted the mine small creations. :-)

Anniversary

Well, it's been 2 years since I began recoloring for Sims2. In February, it was 1 year that I was given a mini-site. Now, here we are almost 4 million downloads & 100,000 thank you's later. My heartfelt thanks to all who have downloaded my recolors. Your comments, downloads & thanks are really appreciated. Keep On Simmin'! Enjoy!

Returning in May!

I do have some good news- I managed to get my computer fixed! The bad news- I won't be creating again until May. I'll still be around the site though when I can, but I've been so busy, and I will remain busy until the middle of May, then I can begin to create again.

So, until I return next month...

Happy simming!
~simmyfan2852~

Victorian Bedroom

Just a little something I'm working on

Challenges

I've just spent the past few days testing not one, but two challenges for you. The Double Trouble Challenges are two challenges played from one lot. Can you guide both brothers through their different paths in life, while keeping them close?

Sorry it's taken so long!

I've been experimenting with meshing and had alot of real life issues to deal with so I didn't have time to update part 4 of the story. Don't worry though, it should be up soon and as a gift for the wait, I've uploaded a Maxis Match set of ponytails which should be available in the next few days.

Artists Loft Series Preview :D

Click Image To Enlarge Part One Armoire (Wardrobe) Bed-side night stand Coffee table Dresser (Chest of Drawers) End table Side-bar (3-tile) Side table (2-tile) Wall without wainscoting Wall with wainscoting Floor Part Two counters refrigerator (regular size) refrigerator (University/Wilde Campus-Jahre small size) low window table book-case table light wall light stacks of frames (d�cor) stacks of blank canvases (d�cor) roll of canvas cloth (d�cor) box of the tools for making frames and canvases Part Three a hot tub bench towel rack robe on a hook towels as rugs wall art more lights Part Four a bed (God willing & SimPE co-operating) sofa chair chaise-lounge desk room-divider/screen (d�cor) table clutter (d�cor) Part Five fence/railing half-wall with canvas inserts single-floor windows double-floor windows single doors double doors curtains roll-blind sun-shade ADDITIONAL PREVIEWS OF PART ONE Click Image To Enlarge Click Image To Enlarge Click Image To Enlarge

The People have spoken.

About a month ago I put up a poll about SA's and FA's. I am surprised that only 59 people took the poll, but I guess this was a heated topic.

According to the folks that took my poll, The majority of you believe that the SA's we have should be. The results:



30 agree that all SA's should be. (50.85%)

25 agree that not all SA's should be. (42.37%)



Now the FA's are completely different. The results are:



26 agree all FA's should be. (44.07%)

32 agree that not all FA's should be. (54.24%)



Now I followed this poll every day because I was very curious about the outcome. It seems with the SA's it was a back and forth battle. Not always the same answer. But the Fa's, where the percentage changed, was always the same answer.

I asked this question not to start a war, but to see if the feelings I have others agreed with. I believe there are SA's and FA's that shouldn't be. I will never name names, because that wouldn't be right.


But there you have it. The people have spoken!

More Broke Items...

...Flat Broke set items, that is. After a recent online conversation I was inspired to do a stained cardbord recolour of my "Flat Broke" box bed and a moose-crossing sign version of the table top for my "Road Sign Table". I also threw in a brown version of my green bottle candle lamp for good measure. Enjoy!