Desert Bloom

Hey, look! It's a lot that I know where all the CC came from! Which means I can upload it! Yay! I'm currently building a desert neighborhood, and I liked the way some of the lots turned out. So, I thought I'd share. So, have one:

This is a small 1Bed/1Bath starter in a Sante Fe kind of style complete with vigas. (Santa Fe is somewhat the style of my own natural habitat; I live on the outskirts of the US Southwest and I'm often in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.) "Out of the box," so to speak, this lot will only accommodate a single Sim or a childless couple. However, there is room for expansion both outward, if you move a tree or two, and upward, if you add a second floor.

The interior is finished with wood and tile floors, as any self-respecting Southwest-style house should be. And of course it has plaster walls for an "adobe" look. The same walls are used on both the interior and the exterior because that's usually how it is in adobe houses, particularly if they're real abode and not adobe-look concrete. The interior is only VERY sparsely furnished/fixtured with 98.3% (ugly) Maxis stuff, so as not to bloat the CC level TOO much. It has only the barest necessities for Sim survival.

Really, this house is meant for Sims who enjoy the outdoors more than the indoors. In fact, the Sim that I built it for is a PlantSim. This is a modified version for human Sims. So the interior is utilitarian and not very exciting. The exterior is totally where it's at. To wit:

1) The ground is fully terrain-painted for a moderately authentic Santa Fe look. The desert is not sandy in our little corner of the world, and there isn't enough moisture for the lawn type of grass unless there are no water restrictions so that you can water obsessively. But there are ALWAYS water restrictions in the Santa Fe area, so...in its natural state, the ground is generally dirt and rock with just a touch of rocky sand here and there. So it is with this lot.

2) The lot is heavily planted all around with hardy/desert plants that need no maintenance. (Yay for xeriscaping!) There's also a small veggie garden plot awaiting fertilizer and seeds, if your Sims want to keep that and have a garden. There's even a little agave garden in back. (Make your own tequila! OK, not really, but wouldn't THAT be a fun mod? I'd download it! ) Note that the front cactus garden CAN be watered, if you want to, but if you don't water it and it "dies," it looks no different because there is no dead state for those "flowers." As far as I can tell after playing a copy of this lot and a few others with the same cacti on it for a few SimWeeks now, it generates no weeds when "dead," either. So essentially, those cacti are water-able plastic. I suppose the Garden Club would notice that they're dead, but I never use the Garden Club, so...

3) There is a wrap-around courtyard kind of thing in the back that's part covered and part semi-covered with a pergola.

4) There is an outdoor staircase that goes up to the stone-floored roof, which is large, flat, open, and begging to become Partyville or just a place to sunbathe or stargaze.

Now, the downsides:

1) If you're one of those who likes to give your Sims cars, know that there is no driveway on this lot. In the neighborhood I built this house for, the residents aren't allowed to own cars yet. However, you could rearrange some of the plantings on the right-hand side fairly easily in order to put in a driveway if you want one.

2) There is quite a lot of CC in this. It's mostly plants. Sorry about that, but Maxis just doesn't give us enough xeriscaping options, darnit!

Note: The outdoor staircase is a recolor that I made of the concrete modular stairs from the University EP. Those stairs were made recolorable by HugeLunatic. I really thought that without HL's override in the game, the recolored stairs would revert to their default ugly-grey-with-black-railings, but I'm happy to report that they don't! I tested this lot in the CC-free user account that I use just for this kind of purpose, and my recolor shows just fine. Glory be!

The Teal Deer Summary:
One double bedroom, one bathroom, small but open living/dining/kitchen
VERY minimal interior furnishings, but the bare necessities for Sim survival, plus a phone and one basic light fixture in each room, are there.
Fairly extensive xeriscaping, but none of it really requires maintenance except the veggie garden, if you choose to use it.
Lots and lots of outdoor living/recreation space, including an accessible roof.
NO DRIVEWAY

Now, since the Custom Content detection thingy in the MTS upload process is currently not working, here are all the CC items included, with links to their creator's MTS profile or site and/or to the item itself.

First, CC created by me:

Dark recolors of parts of HugeLunatic's Southwest column set, listed below.
A plaster wall in Desert Island, from this set of mine.
A cream-with-copper-rails recolor of the concrete modular stairs from Uni.
Smitty's Distressed Floorboard recolor in Madeira, from this set of mine.

CC created by others:

Backless Maxis Tub/Shower by HugeLunatic
Various pieces of the various Independent Expressions Expansion Sets by MaryLou
Sand One Tile from Parsimonious
Modern Vertical Wall Lamp by Tiggy027
Giggly Grasses and Mumbo Jumbo Grass from this set by buggybooz
Many various cacti from the Desert Landscapes set by Macarossi
Flat Rock by nengi65
Pieces of a set of southwest vertical and horizontal columns by HugeLunatic (These don't seem to be on HL's profile, so here's a link that contains a link to the download.
Stone Floor 1 from the Torrox floors by Moune999
Terrain paints by Margierytka

Lot Size: 2x2
Lot Price: 19,601