I've always wanted to have souvenir shops that sell the vacation hood posters, seashells and colored glass, decorative stuff like the tiny Tiki idols or the Asian artwork. Maybe a fishmonger stand for Three Lakes. The two little tchotchkes from each hood are kind of lackluster compared to the options you get from an OFB lot.

Sims have considerable advantages over us when it comes to building work. In real life my church has had to move out of its building until Easter for major repairs and alterations. But I was able to make substantial changes to the Allertons' house while the family (and a visitor) slept. The work included extending the foundations, demolishing two exterior walls and replacing them with new ones a little further out, plastering and painting the new walls, changing floor coverings, and making substantial changes to the roof -- all done while they slept. I didn't move their beds until they woke up in the morning. The cost of all this work? About 3,500 Simoleons!

Uni was first.

Once the decision to slow the YA lifestage down was made, the only way to play that was to separate out the neighborhood.

The Bon Voyage conifer trees are really carrying my ability to make neighbourhoods and lots feel vaguely Cascadian lol

Right... because I don't already have enough WIPs already, it's always a good idea to start yet another castle...

I have to mentally stop myself from using the same designs over and over. Of course I could choose the green trim over the white tub and it would look great, but I've already used that design elsewhere. Keeping each build unique is hard.

A massive THANK YOU to everyone whose lots I've downloaded over the past umpteen years. I started a BACC and was trying to build starter house and ended up giving up and downloading some instead. I forgot how much I hate/am terrible at building, so kudos to everyone with better skills than me!

The "sim falling in love" sound is extremely loud. Like, I can hear it happening in my mom's game when she is playing on the floor above me. It is the only game sound I can hear from another floor.

For fun, pause the game, use InSim's quick relations to set "mutual love" on several Sims at once, then unpause.

My eyes were already murdered today, I don't think I want to do the same to my ears.

On the Architect level in the architecture career, there is a chance card outcome that says "Sim gets no salary that day", which subtracts 1M simoleans.
I think it's time to make a default replacement...

@Pideli no need! It's already been done
https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=673838

I think I spend an inordinate amount of brainpower thinking about what my sims' favorite music is.

Vidcund Curious's favorite artist is Thomas Dolby and I will hear no arguments to the contrary

Last night I anted to finish a project so bad that the laptop had to run SimPE and Photoshop on bursts of battery power, even through a short town-wide powerout during a thunderstorm. At least the weather seemed to calm down a little bit so I could play the game for a little while, but still.

That powerout came very suddenly while I was doing some SimPE stuff... I saved the file, closed SimPE, yanked out the power cord (just to be on the safe side), went to find some flashlights just in case, and then had to spend probably the better part of half an hour figuring out which file I'd saved and where (I'd saved it in a confusing state, and had several files/editions with similar names). The thing has maybe 3 hours of battery time if I'm lucky, so running anything heavy (game, SimPE, Photoshop, etc.) is usually a no-no when it's not plugged in, since it devours the battery.

But woo! Now I've got a winter scenery for sledging that is pose-friendly (and doesn't even require ingame-winter, with some clever camera work)! Been wondering how to do this ever since 2011 or some such XD

I like the separation of Uni - in the UK where I'm from, it is common for young people to go to university in a different town to the one where they grew up, and though it's common both to have city universities (where the buildings are spread out and interspersed with other businesses and housing in a city) and campus universities, where the university buildings, accommodation (for first years) and facilities are in their own little area, it is still a sort of feeling that you're in a whole new different place and I like that.

I like that the college mod makes both options possible.

Me with 130 elders trying to come up with outfits

Anyone else see themselves growing out of CC? I'm really noticing a new appreciation for the game made stuff, wallpapers and floors, furnitures, clothes... Okay, most of the clothes are terrible, but I'm late 2004 born. But really, with new lighting mods some of the more "realistic stuff" is all too shiny and fancy and sims 2 things are becoming really cosy and feel good for me.

Speaking as someone who remembers when clothing like that was popular (and may or may not have worn them myself), the in-game clothes feel very comforting to me. I have several neighbourhoods that use no clothing CC just because it makes me happy. The hairstyles, however, are a completely different story and I've got most of mine defaulted away.

They're comforting to me too, because I've had sims 2 in my life since the age of 6 and spent my very lonely childhood in it, so I just get nostalgic for the little sim world that no longer exists either. I think for the hair, again the modelling abilities are a product of their time, but if it was made how it deserved to be made, I think it would modernise the graphics hugely and probably attract all the people who now turn to sims 4 because old instalments are too "outdated". It really is a visually pleasant game! And the hair is a n i m a t e d! But sure does it look bad, most of the styles remind me of how I look after showering and trimming my own fringe with kitchen scissors.

I do like the way the Sims 2 hairstyles look, what I think is that there is little variety.

I don't have nearly as many elders as you (because I never let adults age up to elders), but I still have difficulties finding nice clothes for the ones I have. I wonder if I should just enable more of my adult outfits for elders. At 73, I'm definitely an elder myself, but I flatter myself that I still look more like the Maxis adult bodyshape than the elder one. (Regrettably that's the adult male bodyshape with the fat morph , but I'm trying to do something about that!) The maxis Elder bodyshape is really not very flattering, and I fear that few creators feel motivated to make nice clothes for it. (A well-known creator on tumblr has just turned down my request to convert one of her outfits for elders! Maybe I should learn how to do it myself, or just make do with the adult version). Any thoughts?

Not really. My very first Sim came into the world (out of CAS) with a pair of CC swimming trunks in his wardrobe, and wearing CC underpants (a rather crude alpha-layer edit that I did myself) under his Maxis clothes.) Maxis just didn't make the kind of clothes my gay boys like to wear (short shorts and skimpy tops). Well,they made them for girls, but not for boys. And I really couldn't manage without my CC hair, especially male hair. Of the Maxis base game male hairs, there are two that I like: the one that Andrew has (I've posted loads of pictures of him, and he's in my avatar), and the style that Mercutio Monty wears. Most of the others are far too short for my liking. The Mullet is long but (IMAO) unattractive. I prefer my Sims (girls as well as boys) to have hair over their foreheads ("bangs" the Americans seem to call them). But my main reason for using CC hair is that I like all my Sims to look different, even if they're wearing similar clothes. And I tend to use hair -- both style and colour -- to help me recognize individuals (both Sims and Real Life people).

However, having said all that, I've never been a big user of CC Build and Buy mode stuff. I tend to only download such CC when I feel I have a need for it -- like a set of Tudor-style elements to build a dilapidated house for the Newsons to live in in Veronaville -- the Maxis Tudor walls were too clean and neat for their house. And I added a set of wallpapers and a set of bedding to add a bit of variety. Also I find one-tile desks and suchlike useful, as many of my Sims live in small houses. But for the most part the furniture and furnishings in my Sims is Maxis. And mostly from the cheaper end of the catalogue, as few of my Sims have money to waste. Yet I still believe that mine are some of the happiest Sims in the Sims universe. They're better off comparatively poor in my game, than rich in another Simmer's game, where pestilence stalks by night, and "realistic sickness" at noonday!


Here is a quick Sims 2 mock-up of my childhood and teenage bedroom:
I don't think it would work for a Sim at all -- I don’t think they'd even reach the bed! It was good for sleeping in, and for reading in bed, but I don't think I ever entertained a friend there -- it was just too small! Having made this mock-up though, I think I'll try to rearrange the furniture so that a Sim can use it. Then I'll try to build a small house round that room! In real life that room was even more cramped, as it was built in the roof-space with a combed ceiling and a small dormer style window. Latterly I somehow managed to squeeze a small desk-cum-bookcase into it!

Goat's Tumblr has lots of nice elder clothing
https://goatskickin.tumblr.com/tagged/sims-2-clothes

Ha, at the time of writing that I didn't think about the one person on MTS whose neighbourhood would go crazy if they had to wear all that boring Maxis clothing.
I also love longer hair and use to make all my male sims with the longest hairstyles possible. In fact, I'm still sighing at how little non-anime-style long hair CC for males there is. All that shiny stuff looks beautiful but again, it's too beautiful to feel cosy to me. Really admire people who can pull it off in their game aesthetics.

I didn't think about Veronaville for a long time, but now I remembered my key memory of it - the Old Silo Farm. Does anyone else find that lot quite eery? What are your headcannons about that place? As a child I was always fascinated and creeped out by its presence.