Happy Sunday all!

It's a beeeeautiful day in the neighborhood here in SW Ontario, Canada. Plus 1 degrees outside and the sun is shining! I already had my adorable puppy Reubidy Doo ( Reuben) out for a long hour long romp in the park near my house- gleefully climbing snowmounds together and running amuck with leash off! Now i am sittin on my rump here at my PC as i have GOT TO get some creations done. Like I have written probably a gazillion times by now ( and i am proably annoying people with this) but because of my husbands back condition I am very busy - and it hasnt gotten any better lately. The bitter cold ( and his physiotherapy - which the sessions cause him to be in MORE pain afterwards) has put him in bad shape and basically left me to have to do MORE than I was ALREADY doing! I am only getting time late at night now to create and so i have been doing LOTS ( houses). I made some bedding last night - about 20 of them and i am going to make some matching curtains as well. I never did get around to figuring out SIMPE and CC meshes yet. geesh - that weekend I ended up busy and never got around to it! My kids really need to help out more - as I am feeling slightly burned out this week and am very bitchy LOL. Creating is my de-stressor so when I cant create i am unable to "decompress" so to speak! I am also investigating whether to start my own free site- for a couple of different reasons.. and so I may not upload Custom content recolors here at TSR but SAVE them for my own site. Another reason is my teenage son wants to link off my site for his gaming purposes.. its complicated to explain but he plays Tibia and does reviews of games etc and wants to open his own gaming server blah blah blah.He is very intelligent and an artist ( this is James I am talking about - the 16 yr old) and he would like to learn 3D object meshing and so do I - to make my own furniture meshes.And when I do I will only be uploading them to my own site.

Anyways I wanted to let you all know that i also bought a used version of university and my newest four lots need Uni.. but I am still making Base Game Compatible lots as well . I know which stuff comes from Uni and Base Game so its easy enough to use the things I want just for base game houses.

Also i have had Pms in the past month or two about some of my lots ... custom content not working. As it turns out it wasnt my fault.. or the lots fault.. but the downloaders didnt have certain things they needed. I appreciate all my downloaders- you rock - BUT please make sure you have these things in order: ( I am listing these as these were some of the various problems that got solved)

1. A " Downloads" folder named as such in your EA Games folder. Without it the game will not be able to "read" anything you have downloaded.

2. CEP- Color Enabler Package. This package is a MUST in order for the recolored objects to show up in game. It can be found on the Mod the Sims website. Here is the link:

http://www.modthesims2.com/download.php?t=92541

3. WinZip or WinRAR program to unzip and extract files. Without this you cannot open files that are not packaged in a Sims2pack file. CNET.com offers FREE WinRAR archiver/extracter for downloading.

4. Sims2CleanPackinstaller. If you are using this to install my lots .. please note: after I build and save the lot .. I go back in and do a revision on the file- meaning i go in and clean up the file using the cleanpack installer. I take out straggler files that are not in the actual lot but were hanging on anyways and so the file you are downloading when you get the finished product uploaded to TSR is totally cleaned up of unnecessary files. So DO NOT uncheck anything in the clean installer dialog box that comes up when installing. If you do ..it wont be installed and will show up flashing blue or not at all in the game.

EXCEPTION: All my older lots PRIOR to November 2008 ARE NOT cleaned up via Clean installer - so in that case by all means if you are installing using clean installer make sure you are ONLY unchecking things that say "Object recolor" beside them. These are the things that arent in the original lot and are just straggler files. I apologize for this but I hadnt learned to clean up my lots before then. Remember : I am also new at this ! LOL and I am unable to go BACK and fix all the files as they are already published and there are around a hundred lots!!

***NOTE:!!!!*** All windows and doors etc in my lots come with MESH included so there is no reason why they would not show up in the game unless one of the 4 things above arent in place.

I figured I had better Blog this info .. I havent had a tonne of Pms or anything but a few and well i empathasize with new downloaders - as all this stuff can be overwhelming at first to learn.. however as much as I want to help out - it can be very time consuming writing a long pm response trying to ask those 4 questions - and trying to figure out what the downloader is doing wrong. I am so incredibly overly busy I just dont have the time folks- i apologize but i dont.

I have personally tested my lots - remember I blogged a while back at chirstmas that i lost all my files at christmas time. Well I had to re-downlaod and re-install all my own lots so I could have them in MY game - and each and every one worked in my game- as the mesh files for windows , doors etc WERE installed on my pc when i downloaded them. So i know for a FACT that it isnt my lots.

So i hope this info helps people who have experienced any problems. Like I said i want to help out as I want people to be able to PLAY and ENJOY my stuff- that is the point of why I decided to share my stuff with others! As well there have been 2 people that recently made comments on my lots to me re: this problem with some windows on two different new lots in the past couple of weeks and I tried to click on their Username to link to their page and Pm them and I couldnt. So i am unable to respond as they didnt actually PM me :( I hope you end up reading this blog !!

Thats about it for my update for now peeps- I am off to continue creating some new stuff for your enjoyment. ( and MINE too!lol) yesterday i cleaned the crap out of my hosue and got all the house laundry done etc so that i could sit down today and get some stuff done on here!Caio for now!