Fall--and all its holiday themes...

It's officially fall where we live. The high temperatures are in the 80s (we'll get cooler by the end of the month, but summer means 90s and 100s!) and the lows in the 50s, the pumpkin flavored coffees are out, the autumn-themed beers (for which DH is so grateful) are on the shelves, and I have dug my ratty pink fuzzy slippers out of storage. IT'S FALL!

I've seen a few people blog about the new season and I agree with them--with a season comes new inspiration! Smells, sights, sounds ... and feelings. There is a famous Halloween attraction near where we live--a haunted house--that I've never worked my nerve up enough to go see. However, as I listened to the radio the other morning, I heard one of their advertisements and was struck with--you guessed it--inspiration. It's time for Halloween!

Jalee and I have been working on our latest themed lots--mine is set to release on Oct 16, and Jalee's glam gothic mini Victorian (if you haven't heard, we have a series of 10x10 lots that we call our "Home Sweet Home" collection) should release soon after that--I know she's been working hard on it and will submit it soon.

I really do love ALL the seasons, but there is a new excitement when each one starts. For today, I shall celebrate in my awful slippers and a cozy sweatshirt with my pumpkin coffee.

Happy Simming...

Maggie

Oops, forgot to update!

Maggie and I have been working so hard over the weekend to build more lots for our fellow Simmers, I almost forgot to post an update -- I was able to fix Meadowland Court! After 2 revisions, it's finally done! Well, as of September 29th, anyway. Please go see --> HERE!

Now, I can rest easy and help Maggie create some beautiful homes for your beloved Simmies! 

♥Jalee

Revised resort lots, finally!

I'll start by saying, I'm a complete newbie when it comes to submitting my lots here at TSR. I've been so happy to finally be able to share my creations with you all.

Unfortuantely, the CC used in my resorts (and my residential lot) did not export into my pacakge files like they should have. This causing an enormous amount of items being replaced in my lots! I was horrified to find this out and immediately got to work on how I can fix this for you guys. I found out that this had happened due to deleteing my DCBackup files. So, uninstalling/resintalling all of my CC it is! 

I apologies for the mishap, I'm starting to learn more and more about how this stuff works! Please take a minute to check out my new revised resorts!

Monta Villa

Kokomo Coasta

Vista de Palms

I am in the process of trying to fix Meadowland Court as well, due to the same issue. Right now, it's too big to upload here. I guess I need to tone it down on the CC a bit, haha. A tricky task for me! 

Thanks for reading!

Jalee

Errors, errors, everywhere.

Jalee's been having a difficult time uploading a lot that is near and dear to her heart because of how much time and energy she has spent on it. (Yes, this is the one I referenced in an earlier post that is almost an exact replica of her own home.) She has encountered SO many errors and gotten so discouraged that we're doing kind of a daily pep talk where I reassure her that YES, people do want to see this lot, and it is totally worth figuring out the bugs, and I know she agrees with me but just needs to hear it.

This morning I woke up and came to check the site and her lot had mysteriously vanished from the "Approved" list, so I texted her in a panic and asked her to call me when she woke up. I was able to find it and download it myself to test it for her, and to her horror, an enormous amount of the custom items she had searched so hard for had disappeared, leaving blank walls and oddly out-of-place clutter. (Can't tell you how surprised we were by the 9 random containers of wooden kitchen utensils throughout the house in odd places.)

Now quite suspicious about what errors the rest of our lots might have, she downloaded a few of my lots and founds things like shutters not ON the windows but instead out in the air in front of them, or behind them. So, panic mode on my end, too. If I downloaded a house that had all sorts of errors in it, I'd be really annoyed, and I wouldn't blame you if you were too.

We're going through our uploaded and approved lots trying to find and fix any errors we discover. We are very new to this process and are still learning and welcome any tips from people with more experience on this. What's the best way you've found to test your lots?

Also, if you have encountered an error in one of our lots, please do let us know in a private message. We welcome the opportunity to fix it.

I can't say enough, though, how kind and patient the TSR staff has been with us. We appreciate the effort they've made to help us rectify the situations with our current lots, and I would not want anyone reading this to think that we don't recognize that! This is a complicated process and we are just in the beginning stages of understanding how it works and look forward to gaining a better knowledge of that process.

All our best,

Maggie (and Jalee)

No, we're not crazy.

We've had a few of our creations released over the past week or so and have gotten some really lovely feedback from other people here on TSR. I do try (and I know Jalee does too) to thank people for the comments they leave, but sometimes time gets away from us.

Today is Monday--theoretically, it's a day off for me, but what does that really mean? It means my husband wakes me up at the crack of dawn to complain that there's no breakfast, and then leaves the house in a snit (I'm not complaining; he's truly adorable like that). It means I run to the grocery store, clean the house, do laundry, make dinner, and hardly have time to sit down at the computer until a few moments ago, and I decided to send a few thank you comments back to people who have commented on mine.

I click through to someone's page and am startled. Looks like I already thanked them! Hmm...

Next commenter: same story. And the next. And the next.

Am I losing my marbles? Am I so tired at this point that I've forgotten thanking these people for their lovely words?

Needless to say, I just spent a very confusing 10 minutes trying to remember what happened today. I'll spare you the details, but the conclusion is that: Jalee thanked these same people for earlier comments on her resorts.

So no, we're not crazy. If you get more than one "thank you" from us within a day's period, don't worry, it's only because there are two of us, and somehow in the 13 phone calls we average between us per day, we found other things to talk about.

Maggie

It's what's on the inside that counts, right?

So if you've read my last blog, you know Jalee and I are avid lot decorators but new to sharing our stuff with the world. We have been discussing what kind of houses we want to spend time on, and which ones we want to share. I personally have a more traditional decorating style so I naturally gravitate toward dark wood and patterned fabrics, among other things. My boss has a few houses and tends to choose modern designs, and since I spend so much time in his homes I figured I could draw some inspiration from them. My decision to step outside of my comfort zone and try a modern beachhouse yesterday was impulsive, for sure. I placed a lot in town and then just ... stared at it. I've never built and decorated a modern house before! Where do you start?

Okay, okay, I'll start a sweet little cottage and use some of my traditional style just to get the juices flowing. Great!! It went well! I spent a few hours on a 10x10 lot building a two-story house with all the accoutrements I would expect in my own house. "Starter home" not so much, because it turns out I have expensive tastes, haha.

So I finish the interior, decide on a color for the exterior, slap a pretty roof on it, and VOILA! All finished. Time to take screenshots for the submission. *snap* *snap* *snap*

Hmm. I never realized before that I don't spend time on my exteriors ... and looking back on other houses I've done ... sometimes it really shows. How embarrassing. All right, Simmers, it's time for some research. I've got to learn how to put together brick and stucco and stonework and siding to compose a curb appeal masterpiece. Stay tuned...

Maggie

Waiting to export...

Jalee and I have been building and decorating our own lots for ages. I've been forbidden to tell you exactly how long we've been playing, but I can assure you that our Simship (Sims relationship--new word? Someone alert the people at Oxford) is over a decade long. We have also been skulking around The Sims Resource for a significant length of time. Only recently did we start toying with the idea that we could upload our own lots to share with other people.

Cut to a few months ago, when Jalee called me up to tell me that YES, FINALLY, her house was finished. You have to know her to know what this announcement meant. She has extensive experience in interior design and that definitely translated into her game. She has probably been playing with that house for over a year--decorating, re-decorating, scouring the internet for that ONE PERFECT RUG that looks just like the one in her real house. The list goes on and on. For her to tell me that it was done was a monumental moment.

"I wish I could see it!" I said excitedly. "Take pictures! Email them to me! Maybe you could make a video with your phone and send that!" So she did. They were gorgeous! I wanted that house in MY game. I could place it near my Sim's house, move Jalee into it, and we could hang out in the game ALL THE TIME. How could we make that happen? Why, EXPORT IT, of course!

Not so fast. We're hardly tech-savvy. Our husbands handle all the computer-related business in our houses. But even we can manage to click the "share" button, right? WRONG. We've been clicking this button for months for several houses we're particularly proud of, trying to share them on the TS3 exchange. We always get the same message: "Export failed." This is, of course, exceedingly frustrating for those of us with no understanding of WHY we are failing. Surely our games were just broken. The beautiful resorts and houses we built in our games would just have to stay there.

Then, magically, several days ago, Jalee sent me a text message: "OMG!!! I was finally able to share my Monta Villa resort!! I expanded it and it worked." (Please do check out her resorts, they are gorgeous! The first one will be published tomorrow.)

Me: "WHAT. WHAT??? What did you DO?!"

Jalee: "I think maybe it was the patch."

So I drove home and loaded up my game and still--I FAILED.

However, now there was hope! Jalee could do it! I could probably figure it out! So here we are, today, having spent about 5 hours on the phone with each other, trying to figure out why my beach resort won't export. I have done everything I can think of, and done everything the internet told me to, and finally I chose to run my game with no CC, and BAM--it worked. I then had to go in and replace the things that went missing, of course, so it isn't quite what I wanted it to be. Now, I will admit, my resort is not nearly as COOL as it was when it was chock full of the beautiful custom content that I've been downloading from TSR artists for years, but it works.

I want it to work the next time, too--only maybe NEXT time I can keep my CC to share with you all. Does anyone have any hints or tips? I'm sure someone out there has the answer...

Happy Simming,

Maggie