Confessions of a Sims 3 Addict

 I Love Old People Challenge So I got this idea for a challenge based on things from the Sims 3 Facebook group. Some mentioned getting bored with old people and not knowing what to do with them.  A few said they create retirement homes to put them in, and one person created a funeral home. (If these are you, sorry, I don't remember who said what, but all contributed to this idea.) Create a young adult couple - traits are up to you. Add 5 elders as "housemates" - have a mix of male and female: Elder #1 has the Unstable trait - the rest are up to you. Elder #2 has the Mean-Spirited & Grumpy traits - the rest are up to you. Elder #3 has the Flirty and Party Animal traits - the rest are up to you. Elder #4 has the Insane and Neurotic traits - the rest are up to you.  Elder #5 has the Kleptomaniac trait - the rest are up to you. Build a retirement home that the young adult couple runs: One apartment for young adults with room for possible children. 5 or 6 studio type apart...

 Dana Bennett from my Sims 3 Facebook group is posting weekly challenges for building on a 10X10 lot.  Last week's was 10x10 coastal, and here is my submission.  It's based on a house I worked up for myself as a teenager.  This is a scaled down version due to size. This is for this week:  #TS310x10Shabby  - A shabby shack.  Here is my entry.  I'm pleased with the "clutter" - I usually don't go into much detail because I don't know who is going to live in the houses I build, so I remodel and add things later.  This time I came up with a character for the house, and he play-tested it to make sure it worked.  I might do something similar with this one as a writing project for my high school students.  Post some pictures - maybe put a skeleton on the bed - then tell them to make up a story about who lives here. Write a bio on the person including name, occupation if any, interests, backstory, and what happened to them. After they write ...

 The Witchy Life of Venus Rucker #4 Venus threw another mystery drink party for the kids' age up to teen party. Then she drank the age up potion herself, which messed up her plan to stay young forever.  She aged up to adult. Then she had a midlife crisis wish to move.  I figured it was as good a time as any with the kids all teenagers and being the only witches in town, so the family moved to Moonlight Falls and bought a larger Victorian home - they were getting kind of cramped in their current house in Midnight Hollow. Here are some bios on the quads as teens (all traits were random - except when one got "supernatural sceptic" which didn't make sense for a house full of witches - I had to roll again on that one): William: Loner, Loves the Outdoors, Hopeless Romantic, Mooch.  He seems to be the one most interested in college.  He has taken up painting. In Midnight Hollow, he was abducted by aliens, but nothing came of it. He wasn't looking through telescopes or ...

 I was going to limit my games to 7, but what the heck. Someone on Facebook posted about this town called Kingsbury by AnnetStore on the Sims 3 Exchange, that has a working train and an Elizabethan England vibe, so I had to check it out.  I created a randomized Sim named Mason Fink.  His traits are gatherer, green thumb, loves swimming, can't stand art, and neat.  His lifetime goal was Perfect Gardener, so I figured this was the guy for the farm I have been thinking of creating at some point.  I was going to do it in Deery Meadows or the Be Happy game, but I'll do it here instead. Mason Fink is starting out with very little, so his farm isn't well developed yet.  He has a small garden, a simple house sparsely furnished - no electricity, and an outhouse.  He also has a chicken coop.  Kingsbury is an unpopulated world, so I'm letting Story Progression do the populating.  Once there were about six other households, I thought I'd visit and play e...

 Venus and Nathan's kids and the great "mystery drink" party. Venus and Nathan had four children: two boys and two girls. The boys, William and Alex, are both wizards. One of the girls, Wendy, is a witch, and I guess poor little Mallory is a squib (non magical). Here's Mallory playing in the treehouse with her brother William (at 2 am, which is why it's so dark). It's a busy household, with something always happening. Venus decided to mix up a variety of potions and put them in drinks, creating “mystery drinks.”  She set all this up the night before, then arranged for a party at 5 pm the next day.  I was hoping the guests would either drink the drinks on their own or at least drink them if Venus brought one to them.  I wanted to see if I could make this work.  The drinks create a variety of good and bad effects.  What neither Venus or I realized is that some family members don’t know to leave her stuff alone!    The first victim was daughter W...

 Nine Days in the Life of Darien Spiotto I was playing my Venus Rucker game in Midnight Hollow, but she married Nathan Watts and they had quadruplets. I didn't want to deal with crying babies, so I switched to the guy across the street until the kids enter the child stage. His name is Darien Spiotto, and I don't think he's a standard townie - I think Story Progression created him as he had no back story. I spruced up his house giving it some color and lightening it up a bit. I really love his library! These Victorian houses can be really cute (I leave the outside dark, but I like to pretty up the inside.) I have been battling with Darien about that ridiculous hat he insists on wearing.  I finally managed to get it out of every outfit except his work uniform.  He wanted to be a cop, so I sent him to get the job, but this is the outfit he insists on wearing to work. One of the first things he did during these nine days was going to see a magic act.  He even volunteer...

 This week I was playing my Vampires of the West game.  It's getting laggy and once in awhile it shuts down completely.  I think this is because it's such a large world and Story Progression keeps populating it.  I've tried a few things that I hope will help, like running the homeless out of town and resetting everything in the town. As of yesterday, the population was 34 cats, 2 deer, 26 dogs, 28 horses, 290 humans, and one raccoon.  The breakdown of humans: 64 households, 146 residents, 114 service people, and 31 homeless. I'd like to explore a little more as I've found some pockets of interesting things, but my household is all vampires with exception for the dog, so I'm going to switch to another household for a little bit. One major problem with the large population is the overcrowded school.  Poor Max tries to go to school but can't get into the building until school is half over; then he is apparently considered "skipping" and gets in troubl...