This post is going to lean slightly more in a story direction, especially towards the end of it. This post also covers week 4 and 2 days of week 5. In terms of challenge goals I once again failed the relationship aspect, but completed the other goals. With the arrival of spring Kathy took the dragons out for one last flight before they were released to the wilds where they belonged. Afterwards everyone piled into a taxi for Pamela and Paul's graduation ceremony at city hall. Pamela took a moment to talk to Olivia about music and the job opportunities at the theater. Olivia wasn't sure how she felt about her sister working at the theater with her. While everyone else went home, Paul stuck around city hall. He had high hopes of getting married to Zoe Cromos whom he'd gone to prom with. They had dinner out, and then he invited her back to the house. When he asked her to marry him she told him no, and that she'd already married someone else. In a snit Paul left a note on the counter stating he was joining a zoological association focused on wildlife rehabilitation. Janina missed Paul right away. More specifically everyone missed all of the cleaning he used to do all of the time. John and Janina insisted that Kathy take Paul's old room, instead of staying in the basement. At first Kathy enjoyed having a nicer bed to sleep in, until she learned that Pamela didn't care who she woke up while practicing guitar for work. Life seemed to be going well, and then one morning Olivia found another note in the kitchen. "Finally got assigned to an international investigation team. It's safer for all if you don't know where I am. Love, Janina" No one was overly surprised, Olivia was glad that there was number on the back for leaving messages at. John continued to throw himself into his work. Pamela suspected that John had other reasons for spending so much extra time at work. Pamela's suspicion's proved true when they woke up one day to learn that John had invited Ned to spend the night. Later that day they had a party and invited Janina to attend. During the party Janina smiled and gave John a discrete smile and nod. Olivia was asked to slow dance by Tod Mithrillin, unfortunately she stepped on his toes. He suggested that maybe he would give her a second chance to win him over at prom in a few days time. Olivia was unsure how she felt about his suggestion. She'd already been to prom once and had been nominated prom queen. The next prom conflicted with her work schedule and she was up for a promotion. The next day John invited Ned back over. He had a question to ask. Pamela had an idea of what might be on John's mind, and provided soft romantic background music. John was over the moon and insisted on a going away party before he and Ned moved to their cottage near the community garden. The party ran much later than expected. Shortly after John & Ned left a straggling guest went into labor and had to be rushed to the hospital. Pamela moved out about the same time, no note, just a box addressed to the Mithrillen residence. Kathy, knowing that she would soon be without a reason to stay at the house because Olivia was about to become a young adult and graduate, submitted her short resume online. The only employer to contact her was the local school, she had the skills they looked for in their employees. Olivia had caved to curiosity and went to prom instead of work, only to be stood up by both of the boys who had expressed an interest in her. After hours on the phone with her older siblings, Olivia accepted that she had messed up. Determined not to let her mistake jeopardize her future in music Olivia told Kathy that she wasn't going to celebrate her birthday until after work, and that Kathy should get a good night's sleep before her first day at the new job. Olivia was tired when she left work, but very happy with her choice. She'd shown that she was a good musician and had earned the promotion she'd been promised. Standing outside the theater she celebrated her transition to young adult with a few of the other band members. Afterwards she completed the necessary paperwork to transfer to the regular career branch where she was made a band manager due to her hard work and leadership during her teen years. As she took a cab home she rebelliously wished it was a motorcycle. Climbing into bed she thought about what she'd do with her life now that she could no longer stay at her uncles property. Sliding under the sheets she decided that getting a motorcycle and touring the world while playing music for fun was the way to go. Olivia stared at the mail in shock. Instead of the regular bills and rent request there had been a fat envelope from her uncle. Inside was a letter from him and her parents, who had since passed away in a boating accident during their flight from the authorities. The letter from their parents was a self centered attempt of an apology, which reminded Olivia of Pamela's snobby attitude. Under all of the detailed documents showing how the fees, taxes, and investors had been payed off was the letter from their uncle. He'd been able to take temporary guardianship of the property because it had been considered of no value to those settling her parents debt's. Now that she was a young adult the property was hers as the youngest child. Under his letter was the deed to the property. Olivia took a moment to reflect on what it all meant, and how it could change her plans. After a brief call to Janina. Olivia printed a form, signed it and mailed it off. Feeling good about her choice. Kathy would be surprised, but she'd more than earned the house by staying with the kids and doing her best to raise them all even when Pamela was giving her attitude. Packing a knapsack Olivia grabbed her guitar and headed for Le Champs, with luck she'd earn enough in tips to buy a motorcycle. Touring would be hard but someday she was going to be a rock star. Everyone was moved out using edit town. There were no more surprise game mechanic cash deposits to the family funds. The final overview/walk though of the house. The staff bedroom in the basement is the only room that didn't get the full bedroom treatment. Some of the decor items were received during the two gift giving parties. I'm going to let the pictures (57) do the talking.
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As you saw at the end of the week 2 post, thanks to game mechanics the final outer shell of the house was completed. Finishing touches like interior floors & 1st floor layout need to be finalized along with doors, columns, and the rest of the windows. Along with some trim embellishments. The first addition to happen during the week was the half bath on the first floor, or more to the point the walls for it. Week 3, or the winter season if you will, was a very busy time period for the household. It was much more than work & school which kept everyone busy. There was Snowflake day, and per Janina's request a few friends were invited over to celebrate. In addition to the usual small gifts, there was a new toilet and sink for the half bath, and a guitar for Olivia. After their friends had gone home it was time for Janina and John to celebrate their transition to young adult. When they were done they refiled with their employers for the full time adult job openings. Thanks to her hard work as a teen patrol assistant Janina was immediately promoted to Patrol Officer. John wasn't as lucky, because he'd only been at the lab a few days. Friday the elder twins were asked if they wanted to wait a few days or graduate right away. They chose right away. After the ceremony John swung by the library for a few hours, and Janina jogged around town, after deciding the park was to crowded. Saturday brought another set of birthday transitions as Pamela and Paul reached maturity. Surprisingly Pamela expressed an interest in music and joined the theater, whereas shy Paul discussed getting married and moving out with his high school sweetheart. They'd declared their love at prom the night before. That evening as they celebrated Kathy's transition to mature adult, their uncles work crew showed up unannounced*, and added what were deemed essential finishing touches as the last of winters snow melted away, and the first warm breezes of spring drifted into the valley. Kathy had reached the conclusion that there was far more to life than just living in the lap of luxury, even spoiled Pamela had figured that out and had gotten herself a guitar for her birthday. (* Another game mechanic cash drop.) Janina took note of how many additional supplies were brought in for the houses appearance, and swore that she would learn her uncles source and find their parents. Outside ground changes: stone fence with Celtic design replaced the wooden fence on both sides, plus partially along the front of the property; trash can and mailbox were swapped for their Dragon Valley counterparts, columns were moo'd into place. Structure changes: Windows - 1st floor, basement, and some additional ones for the second floor; Entry doors were replaced, stairs to the first floor were updated along with their rails, a gate was moo'd into place for the porch as additional entry/exit point. Kitchen received one full wall blocking view from the front door, along with a rearrangement of counters. Their is also a dishwasher & trash compactor in the kitchen, along with a food processor to round out appliances. Over on the living room side some additional walling was added formally separating the office from the living room. The bathrooms received stone-tiled flooring, Kitchen and entry also received stone flooring, while the rest of the first and second floor received nice wood flooring. All interior & exterior walls received their final treatments. Remaining work for the renovation: lights, decoration, upgrade the kitchen, upgrade furnishings, finish furnishing the bedrooms. Get as many fixtures upgraded to self cleaning as possible. Unpack the chess set received on snowflake day. Get Pamela to be friends with family and Kathy. Approximately 7 sim days until Olivia's final transition from teen to young adult. This is why Paul is leaving home, he tried hitting on his nanny.
Sorry but no**, especially as he has a high friendship with heart score for one of his classmates who matured right about the same time he did. (** Sometimes it can make for an interesting story, but he had already made a love connection at prom.) Week 2 starts out dark and rainy. It is also Olivia's transition day, her additional trait is friendly. ------- My mental story dialog, says that Kathy feels a little guilty about how much cake the children are eating, but she took the job straight out of high school and hasn't learned much about nutrition herself. Funds are still tight, the crib is sold for a nice bed for Olivia, and Kathy moves her rusty bed frame over to where the main house will eventually be. Since there is no school, all of Kathy's charges are given permission to explore the town. Kathy reviews the letter from the uncle, it would seem his motives in helping were not so pure. The house is become an upscale cottage with walkout basement that blends in with the surrounding community. For this summer the vegetable garden was okay as it fed the children and helped pay the rent, he however has plans for a small ornamental garden. He does give permission for one or two planters, should any of them want so long as they fit the theme of the house. With Olivia now a child Kathy is free to spend more time with the dragon at the community garden. With the money earned the walkout basement is fully roughed out, and ready for when the uncle sends supplies & workmen. Kathy feels a little better about having every one under one roof again. All of the twins have been working hard, Janina even found a paid internship with law enforcement. She's confided in Kathy that she wants to become an international super spy and help track down their parents. Even though it's not the top quality Pamela wants to get right away, they finally have a little extra furniture. Kathy gets the bathroom floor scrubbed extra clean and sends 250 to charity. Janina manages to learn a charisma point from the purple dragon and decides that Paul will benefit from time with it. Kathy catches Pamela trying to skip school by sneaking off the side. A quick exchange of letters and the uncle approves a temporary fence to ensure no more sneaking off in the opposite direction of the school bus. (For some reason, everyone has treated the side of the property as the main entry point.) Kathy and John are glad that fresh vegetables and fruits are so popular. John has already reached level 6 of the gardening career. Even though he's working as a gardener now, he starts to feel that sciences in general are more of his calling, but he's waiting until the deep frost sets in before signing up for the science center job. (The careers mod at nraas industries on wiki space, allows teens to work at more places than ea permits.) The first floor is finally walled in and roofed with the floor boards for the second floor. Kathy moves some of the furniture upstairs. The space echos, but it's a nice spot to talk with Pamela, and help her as needed with the night's homework. Fortunately the deep frost and winter are still a few days off. Kathy and Paul manage to get good harvests from the community garden. The kitchen is finally fleshed out, the uncle is adamant about basics to start and everything can be upgraded later. The chairs surround the new table nicely, and Pamela is thrilled to finally have a computer in the house, even if it is a cheap one. She immediately sets out to work on the writing skill that she needs to improve for school. Kathy finally learns how to cook. Feast day arrives and everyone enjoys a meal together at the table. Olivia is given permission to go trick or treating later if she wants to. Pamela finishes her school work on the computer. The deep frost that preludes the first snows of winter settles into the valley. John finally switched jobs, wishing that she'd gone to college first instead of taking a job as a nanny right off the bat Kathy attempts to write a fiction book, it flops so hard she receives an award for worst book ever. Everyone except Kathy and John receives a holiday bonus. The money is used on furniture, and everyone agrees that not having to walk outside first thing in the morning in the bitter cold will be nice for the bathroom. The next couple of days go by in a blur. Despite her failed first attempt Kathy takes another shot at writing a book, a sci-fi this time, and this time she does much better. As she writes she dreams of joining a sports team. Checking the calendar she notes that it's almost time for Olivia's next transition. Pamela stills grumbles about wanting things to be posher, but everyone agrees that things are much nicer than when they first arrived. Week 3 Day 1 Olivia's birthday arrives at the same time as the construction crew, and the deep cold of winter. Janina is suspicious when the uncle says mystery investors have funded the final construction phase. (Every so often sims who don't have a lot of simoleans will receive random lump sums of money. In this case, they received with minutes two separate installments of 10,000; so a building I went. After all I didn't cheat them the money the game mechanics decided they needed it.) Kathy decides she can wait until some other day to tell her charges that they are only allowed to stay until Olivia reaches her final transition to young adult. Kathy is also glad that the uncle wanted the building completed before he worried about landscaping. House is now shelled out as I want it. Including wall textures. To blend in with Dragon Valley, I popped around to a few empty houses and saved their wall covering coloration's, along with other build features that had been custom colored for the world. I changed the roof to thatched I'll have to have Kathy make another charity donation. Ground Level: Walk out basement along with the two out building are given the stone treatment. Floor is replaced in the shed and the basement. Still need to deal with windows and plumbing for the outside bath along with the basement bath. Main room will probably be a work/athletic room, Servant/Staff bedroom, and a small full bath. Eventually the perimeter fence will get replaced and the pit's will get their final touches and embelishments. First Floor: After careful consideration, the original foundation is replaced with stilt foundation to match the deck. A temporary corner support is placed for the back section, eventually a DV column will be moo'd into position in that corner. A few columns are also needed for the deck space that will also take moo'ing and testing. First floor is going to stick to an open floor plan, kitchen windows still need to get replaced along with the rest of the windows for the first floor to be added on. Currently a half wall defines the kitchen space, they might get replaced with full walls. Dining is right next to the kitchen. The space is divided by the stairs. On the far side of the stairs is living room space along with home office. First floor also still need it's half bath. Second Floor: This is the family's sleeping quarters as well as play space for toddlers and children. There is a master bed and bath in the back corner, with a small baby/toddler room attached. Next is a small child/teen room. a mediumish open space acts as childs play room. There is a second full bath accessible from this hall play space. To the side of that are two larger child/teen bedrooms. This floor has all of it's windows. Roof: I had hoped to add end caps but the only ones that would work were from a non DV set/world, so I went with the dragon & ridges. I'll need to moo two more ridge pieces into place to fill the gaps. Windows for implied attic are as wanted to match the rest of the house/cottages final look. From here out it's furniture, decor, and landscaping. I have two sim weeks until Olivia transitions to young adult. While I have a save set up for the Stones, I decided to give the Newton-Brown's a go instead. Primary reason, I want to test out and learn how to use the career mod's from nraas, especially the homeschool & summers off options. Note on mods pay attention to which order their supposed to be installed in, I managed to install one wrong and glitch the game. Thanks to save cleaner, errortrap, and resetsim * (which resets the entire world) I was able to save the file. As the header says this is week 1 for the household. Their backstory is on SamelaRita's blog, I've placed the lot in Dragon Valley at the edge of town, but not the outskirts. I think the original lot might have had a beautiful vista moodlet attached to it because when I went into game the household started with 5,709. Donated 1,000 to charity, might as well start with a nice moodlet, would have donated more, however I was unaware that there is a limit of once a day for charity donations, so tce'd the rest to $0. I'm also glad that SamelaRita listed the children's ages and twin groupings on her blog or things would have ended up odd. When I got in game their ages were all kinds of wonkified with Janina as the eldest and 4 days to transition, Paul next eldest with 5 days, Pamela at 6 days, and John who is supposed to be Janina's twin at 7 days same as Olivia the toddler. Initially I contemplated having them take summer off or homeschool right off the bat, but then I realized no fridge. Nope, nope, nope ... kids need to go to school for the lunch. I did however give them the day before leisure day as holiday(summer off). Which is accomplished using the story progression career mod. Everyone set about doing their homework. While their Nanny Kathy Hunter, who outside of being nurturing has no skills or skill traits, took care of the youngest Olivia on the lot. Potty training half way done, and talking learned. Once their homework was done, three of the kids went fishing while Pamela went to the library to learn writing and then start writing a fiction book. They ended the day with $8 in funds, one tomato plant planted, and a dinner of roasted fish around the campfire. School is a good thing, hungry simlets get fed lunch. Clearly getting enough money for a fridge is going to have to take priority over building a house with 6 bedrooms. Rainy days are no fun, so Kathy took Olivia to the library, sadly DV's library does not have a kids play area. Kathy read up on gardening, and received some additional seeds in reward. Which got planted. The brambles were sold off and used to put edging fence around part of the garden area. Duplicate seeds got sold and now the household has $18. Talk about getting nowhere fast. The rains filled in two of the three pits on the lot which made me change my design idea to a degree. By day 3 Olivia was done with all 3 toddler skills, and they'd scraped up enough money from somewhere to put up two wall pieces by the bathroom. Summer vacation, no more homework, which turned out to be a mistake on my part, you'll see why in a bit. Two simlets went off to the pool, Pamela & her twin Paul went to the library. Kathy took Olivia with her to the public garden and harvested as much as she could. I was tempted to have Paul grab the dragon eggs but had forgotten that they are coded teens & up. Paul went home on his own because the library was to crowded. Kathy made enough from produce sales to get a counter & table with enough leftover for the cakes which would be needed to get birthdays in the proper order, but not enough for a fridge too. I had her keep a lettuce & grape plant for planting. Leisure day is a big day for the household, it's time for Janina & John to become teens. Kathy was able to get two cakes so everyone is going to have a full belly today, even if it's not the healthiest of food choices. Janina transitions up first and because she didn't have an A at school is assigned her newest trait. Nothing horrid and works well with her existing traits, but doesn't spur any skill desires. While their eating an odd rock is spotted off in the distance, Janina - whose adventurous - runs off to get it, once she gets back it's John's turn to age up, and again not an A student so assigned a trait, he get's green thumb. By days end Janina has found enough collectibles, and Pamela gets another chapter of her book written, all which is enough for the household to get a fridge. After a quick scan of the town no new collectibles so instead Janina goes and gets the three dragon eggs in the libraries basement, while the rest of the household enjoys the holiday from school. At this point with exception of Kathy & Olivia Pamela is on decent terms with her siblings. Her snobby little self is a pain to manage in terms of friendships. I lucked out, not only did the eggs yield one green dragon they yielded two. Kathy gets one and John gets the other one, while I let Janina have the purple dragon. Both Kathy and John utilize their dragons harvest abilities which helps bring in more food & in turn more money. They also summon treasure once apiece. Funds are looking better and it's time to start putting build plans in motion. I also had a bit of a bleeble moment here and used the wrong foundation for the deck, sigh. The end of the day Friday is also where I ran into the freeze glitch, and had to pull the career related mods because I had goofed them. Saturday the last day of week 1, and it's a packed day. I now only have no cd, errortrap, overwatch, and vanilla story progression mod's in the game. The day starts with Pamela & Paul's birthday's. Since there isn't supposed to be a big time gap they have back to back birthdays. Pamela's new auto assigned trait is party animal, eventually I put the purple dragon in her inventory. Paul receives the lucky trait. Kathy takes Olivia with her back to the garden and with the dragons help harvests two times, along with two treasure summons. Then it's off to the store to sell the produce and then back to the lot. Both Paul & Pamela roll wants for part - time jobs. Pamela takes a job at the bookstore, while John gets a job as a specialist at the spa. Janina has no interest in work, although after I put the career mod's back in she'll probably join the police department or military as a teen intern. John however swings by city hall and registers as self employed as a gardener. Kathy is the only one not allowed a paid job per the rules, however next sim week/day Olivia will be becoming a child so Kathy will have school hours to harvest the town garden for as long as the weather permits. Once it get's to cold to garden she'll move on to painting for income. More work on the house is done in terms of correcting the patio foundation, and putting up walls. I've decided that the uncle wants all original building left on the lot. The one with the Nanny's bed will be a misc shed, bathroom will be an outside bathroom, and the kids bunk room will become part of the new house. Once I figure out the routing the two ponds will be fishing/swimming holes, not stocked; and the garden might get moved to the other pit. Getting heights just right is a little tricky, but this will be a two story without using cfe. |
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