Blog 17

The great computer ordeal is still going on for me... I am currently running off of a older computer to be able to do anything at all. I am less than delighted with that but it is better than nothing. But the good news is that we will be getting a brand new hard drive eventually. Turns out that the one that burned up was under warrenty. Of course, you have to muddle through a bit of red tape to get the replacement, but it should be one its way eventually. I am a little confused why they would want us to put the fried hard drive in a static free bag... I don't think that it can get anymore fried than what it already is short of setting it on fire. *shrug* Whatever makes them happy, I guess. I am just glad that I did not do what I had threatened when the drive initially died... I was going to use it for target practice.  Imagine the reaction of the company if it arrived with bullet holes all through it. Hmmm... wonder if that is covered under the warrenty as well? ;)

 I have starting working on some little things, but I am not going to be doing too much until our main computer is fixed. But you might see a couple of things pop up for download from me within the next week or so. 

Blog 16

I am still having computer difficulties even though we have replaced the hard drive. It could still be the hard drive itself since a friend of ours handed this one to us... I don't know. But it's acting up and making gameplay impossible. (Or anything else for that matter.) It's looking like we might have to suck it up and buy a new computer soon, and we really do not have the money for such things at this time. It is so frustrating! This computer is NOT that old, it should still have plenty of time before it would need to "be replaced". All of the problems started with a rain storm and a power surge early last year. Yes, when the storm hit I was already heading for the computer to power it off, it just happened too quick. And yes, we had a surge protector. A very expensive surge protector, as a matter of fact. The type that has a battery backup and other bells and whistles. BAH! I should have saved my money and bought a piece of crap at the dollar store. That's what my kids had on their computer. Their computer was just fine. Ours has not been the same since. Oh, it wasn't so bad at first. A few ports didn't work and every once in a blue moon we would have some lag with games. That was about it. But it has been getting steadily worse over time with new problems cropping up every so often. Since my husband is a computer tech he has been keeping it going pretty well with minimal fuss but the recent problems have been leaving him baffled.

 I know, I'm whining. When the computer doesn't work properly I get a little nuts. Probably because I am so isolated up here on this mountian and have only two forms of contact with the outside world, one of them being the computer. The other is the phone, which is ironically  dependent on said computer to work... well, you can see the problam I'm sure.

Oh well. I am sure that this will eventually work itself out one way or another. In the meantime everybody play an hour of the sims for me. :)

Blog 15

Well, we have a new hard drive now, and even as I write this I am installing my sim games back on the computer. It will be awhile before I have anything available for upload but at least I will be able to start working on it all again soon. *sigh*

Blog 14 - BOOM

 Last night, bad things happened with our computer. Very bad things of the screaming and tearing out your hair varity. Our hard drive is now fried and other things damaged as well. This means everything is gone. My games, the projects I was working on (and not just sim stuff) are completely wiped out. We are going to have to get a new hard drive now... that could take a little while since we are currently running a little lean on cash. *sigh* So it could be quite a while before I have anything new out. I am attempting to look at this in a positive light... perhaps this will be a fresh start when it comes to creating. Maybe I can take old ideas and turn them into something better, or have come up with something completely new.

 In the meantime, if anybody has a rather large hardrive that they want to give me that would be great. ;O)

 Have a great week, and happy simming folks!  With luck I will be "seeing" you all again real soon!

Blog 13

 Soon available for upload is a house that I call "The Homeplace". As it mentions in the description, this is based off of the house plans for an actual home that was built in 1900. I am very familiar with this home since I live in it. ;) I thought that I would mention a few things about the home itself that other people might find interesting.

 First off, the basement is a highly prettied up version of reality. I live in Pennsylvania. Almost anybody who lives in this area knows that most of the basements around here leak, especially in older homes. We had people come in and take a look once to see what could be done. They laughed at us. (Not kidding.) So unless we win the mega bucks lottery it's just going to have to leak. It is also full of spiders. I try to keep it clean down there, but they just keep coming back. Yuck.

The basement steps are not put in the way they are IRL. They wouldn't go in that way and function properly.

 I only put in one of the closets that actually exists, only because the sims really has no real need for closets.

 In the backyard area there is an herb garden. Unfortunately the sims have no herbs so I left that out.

 In the bathroom off of the kitchen it actually has two steps to get to the sink and toilet. I really did put in a red carpet runner in there and decorate rather baroque. We call it "The Throne Room" and laugh about it all the time. There has been a discussion on if we should invest in a "gold" toilet.

 Room 1: While this is now where a lot of houseplants reside, this used to be an office in 1900. The original owner was the area's Constable and people would come to see him there during office hours.

 Room 2: This actually used to be two rooms. Sometime during the 1940's somebody knocked down the wall between the two rooms and turned it into one large room.

 Room 3: This used to be a large screened in porch until sometime during the 1960's.

 Room 4: We are not sure what the original purpose for this room was supposed to be, perhaps a parlor. But during the 1930's up to sometime in the 1950's it was a candy store. :)

 Rooms 5 and 6: Those two rooms switched places sometime during the late 1920's. 5 used to be a bathroom, 6 a bedroom.

 Rooms 7 and 8: Those did not even exist until either the 80's or the 90's. We are pretty sure that they were not built by the same people though. The person who put up 7 knew what they were doing. Whoever tacked up 8 was either drunk or mentally deficient. (Possibly both.) We did find evidence that there used to be another structure there at one point, but since there are no actual house plans for the original we do not know what it was. We do have a few pictures of the house when it was first built, but they were not taken from that side of the house and focused on the people, not the house.:) The most that we can see is the front door and a little bit of the house.

 Hopefully you found all of this at least mildly entertaining. :)

Blog 12 - Not Cool.

Well, for the time being there will be no further new CC pictures coming from me. I am having difficulty with the changing the specular channel that is now a requirement, that deals with alphas and layers and all that stuff that I apparently am not very bright about. I know, all the other creators can do it. That would be because every single one of them is way smarter than I when it come to that sort of thing. :)  (That's why I have stuck with paintings.)  And yes, I have tried reading the tutorials on all that repeatedly. *shrug* I must be missing something... ok, more like several somethings. And I seriously doubt it is the fault of the people who took the time to put them together. I'm sure the blame is all on me and my twitchy brain. :(  So until I can figure it all out, no more paintings. (That could be a long time barring some sort of miracle.)

 However, I would like to suggest to the powers that be that perhaps the Painting Tutorial on here should perhaps be updated. :)

 Everyone have a lovely day!

Blog 11

 I know that it has been awhile since I have been active on here, sorry about that. I have discovered that sometimes when you live in an older home every day is full of excitement of a sort. (Isn't there some sort of old curse that says "May you live in interesting times"? Because if there is, somebody cursed me and mine.) I won't bore anyone with the details on the sometimes horrid, often ridiculous things that were happing over the past few months... but it is sufficent to say that when one thing decided to break everything else decided to break as well. Seems to be the way life goes sometimes.

 I will be starting to put new things up for people slowly over time. Ironic that many have been finished, some of them for a few months but I have not had the time to get all the pictures together or in some cases thoughly test some of them. As I am able to do those things I will upload them to the site.

 On another subject: I don't know how many people actually read my blogs, but I have a request for those who make sim clothing. While I love all the evening wear as well as the cute little skirts and crop tops, I would personally like to see some of my female sims in clothing that doesn't make them look like tarts or like they are about to do a photoshoot. I have found some but not very many. So If anybody could do that I would really, really, apperciate it. (And I am sure I am not the only one.) I would do it myself but I have no idea how to mesh properly.

 Have a wonderful day!

Blog #10

 First off, I would just like to say that I hope that everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving. :) I naturally had a good one and ate too much as usual. Now I know that I said in my last blog that there should be another castle/fort up by now, sorry about that. While putting the finishing touches on it I discovered a small problem with it and had to fix it... and then got really mad at it and stopped working on it for awhile. It will eventually make it on here, I promise. Not only is that eventually on its way, but two other houses and a couple of painting packs. I am still also considering putting up a story or two on here but we will just have to see how that goes with Christmas coming up and all. This is my busy season with crafting and this year is going to be a little worse that usual because I usually am about 70% finished by now... but this year I was a little lazy. Ok, I was a whole lot lazy, and I am only about 45% finished with various projects. *hangs head* So I should be completely crazy by the time Christmas hits. But I will make sure to at least get the things that I have been working on out over the next couple of weeks.

Blog #9

 It has been a little while since I have posted anything new but I am working on a few things and they should be out soon... as long as no more emergancys drop on my house. Our furnace decided to quite working and it took us several days to get it running again. While that was going on, our water pump decided to have a fit as well, and that was not very much fun either. Then I managed to hurt myself while cutting wood. Why anybody trusts me with a chainsaw I will never know, it's a wonder that I didn't cut my own head off when I tripped and fell. And naturally while all those crummy things were happening a whole lot of little irritating things came along with it... you know, all those annoying things that normally are not to bad by themselves, but starts to become big in your own mind when coupled with the larger things. *sigh* But things are better now, and I should start to have some extra time again. One of the nice things that I discovered was that I actually won third place in the TSR Halloween screenshot event on Facebook. :) It took me until Nov. 8th to realize it, but it was nice to know. I have not recieved my prize yet, but I am sure that it will eventually happen. (I am sure that people are busy.) It was just nice that somebody actually liked the picture, made my day.

 Here pretty soon I will have another castle/fortress up on the exchange. I was not actually planning to build another one, but my husband saw the first one and insisted that I build him a bigger one with a mini tomb adventure inculded. I was surprised by that request but I never could say no to the man. So within the next few days it should be available for download. (I am not building something that huge and a pain in the butt and not sharing.)  Happy Simming, folks!

Blog #8

 First off, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Halloween!

 I was supposed to have two more Halloween downloads for people by this time, but I am sorry to say that it just did not happen.
 Some of it was my fault since I was running behind on personal projects at home (such as sewing up my costume) but I still should have had time... then Nature decided to dump a bunch of snow on top of us. If we lived in town, it wouldn't have been quite as bad. But we live on a mountian and higher elevation always makes snow more "fun". We had roughly about 10 inches and it knocked down a lot of tree limbs all over the roads and on top of wires causing us to lose power for a couple of days. That ment I could not polish off the things that I was working on, much less upload them. *sigh* But all of our power came back on today I am happy to say, and as soon as I have some time I will finish those things off and put them up. Better late than never, eh?

 Everybody have a wonderful day, and Happy Simming!