I figured I'd use the testing code and Sim modder to give them badges to make the crafts but this will work also. I agree- the curtains would have looked great in my build, too~Yellow/Gold.

Ah ... it was Karen. Finally sleeping is always a good thing for the brain. Sorry, Karen Lorraine.

I may have to re-submit later because I have a family emergency to attend to and that will probably take all afternoon. Luckily, I do have my house revamped and ready to go ... again. In the long run, it was a good thing because I think my lot is slightly better now. Slightly may not help me much, but every point is a good thing in judging.

It's nice to know that you can use paintings your Sim painted using your photos. I have a section of the house that is screaming for ... something ... and my creative Sim is racking up the levels. He's constantly at the easel in the test house. Maybe that is something for another round, though. Time can be a real pain sometimes.

I cannot find that Mootlida mod anywhere while building in the empty house. One advantage of no CC is that you can look through the catalog much easier. I'll check again; this time in my family's house. It's Misc/Misc, I know. (http://modthesims.info/d/492998) It's definitely in my game folder. So if it doesn't show up, I'm going to have to make do with the lighting I have. I have all EPs and SPs, so it's not that.

Anyway, I do have time to resubmit. At this point, I deleted all my old pictures ... even in the Imgur account and FRAPS photos and someone emptied the Recycle Bin this morning ... so it's pretty much a done deal.

In the meantime, there have been some more fantastic entries here! It is amazing to see the fruits of everyone's imagination and resourcefulness. You are all just amazing!

@gazania you should be able to find it easy though..since Mootilda said :
To use, just choose the object (a blue box with a picture of a lightbulb) from Misc / Misc in the Buy menu and the lights will come on. Once the lights are on, you can delete the object.

Jo I really like how you placed your counter island..I'll try this soon in my builds. Dunno why I haven't think about this.
@MystAngel You'll have to tell me how you do whatchoo do...lol The first picture I clicked on was the price one, as I was sure you busted the budget.
But not at all! Your lot looks like it is a very pricey one, so cool...
Oh and William...that half wall you used along the pool upstairs..with the wavy glass?..Such a brilliant idea. they go rather well together. Your house is very pretty

I know. It should be easy. There aren't that many items in there! (Finding stuff with CC can be a challenge, unless you have it in a collection folder) But it wasn't there this morning. I fired up the game a few times to check. I even did the usual trick of changing the load order.

Perhaps some caffeine and some sleep will clear my brain. I do hope I now find it and feel very silly that I overlooked it all along. It's better than dark pictures!

EDIT ... I managed to fire up the game quickly. I have to leave in an hour, and someone is working on a job resume, so that's all the time I had.

There are 18 items in my Misc/Misc section. Many of those are the buyable aspiration rewards, which I think are legit in this game. I thought I read it was, since these are game items, not CC. At any rate, I haven't used any so far.

I SHOULD be able to pick out that blue box in a group of 18 items. I don't think I'm THAT addle-brained yet. It's not there.

I'll look in the comments and re-read the description. Maybe I missed something. This should have been really, really simple. Someone firing up the game for the very first time should be able to find this!

Maybe not the caffeine, nor sleep. because i got the same thing happened to me yesterday too. The sim blender won't show up in this EA Games folder of mine, I made just for this contest. Can you believe this? It is not like I have no clue where to find it, I could place that item with my eyes closed..Yet, not showing up.
Only thing i can think of, would be that these items needs another mod to work...

Or load order is an issue. Right now, my Mootilda mod is at the end in my Downloads folder. Maybe I'll mix it up. The Sim body shop defaults are showing up fine (those eyes ....) ... just not these light boxes.

I'll also try cleaning my groups.cache. I forgot that I don't have it set to 0 in this game. Leefish has spoiled me.

Honestly, I think I should be able to locate it in a group of 18 thumbnails! It seems my luck with lighting mods is continuing.

To make things worse, FRAPS is picking today to go on strike. I'm getting that error message again. I was prepared to take a picture of this category to show that even with caffeine, I'm not seeing it. I hope FRAPS decides to get back to work later.

Well, I always clear my cache files, I have NO cc in this contest game, so I do not think load order is my problem. Still, no sim blender to be found...

I'll have to check later. Gotta leave. I'll see about load order next.

Don't know if it will help but do you have cep? And more importantly, custom content enabled?

CEP..no!!! Me not have this in that game...but I checked the custom content enable to be sure it was indeed enabled. Oh my..Thank you Gdayars..that might be just my(our) problem.
Edit : It still does not show up. Ok, I am officially weirded out.

Huh do you have the downloads folder spelled like this: Downloads

Perhaps copy over a working Downloads folder from another documents folder, run game once, ensuring it still is checked custom content enabled and that the folder you copied over is indeed working, and then empty it and put in the stuff you want/ need only?

Thank you, @Rosebine .
Here are some of my advice:

- First, learn from your mistakes. Last time I was very clumsy managing the budget. This time the budget was on my mind the whole time.
- Before you do anything, roughly plan your build. Think of the style you're going with, and go through build/buy catalog to see if the prices of things you want are affordable or too high. See if cheap ones can somehow fit in the style you're planning and family you chose.
- Build first, decorate later! That was my problem last time. I was building and decorating simultaneously, and I'm not sure how game calculates bulldozing painted walls, objects with other objects on it and so on. When I make a mistake, I delete layer by layer [first one object, then the other, then paint (by holding CTRL and clicking), then wall etc]. Also, by doing building and landscaping first, I avoided going crazy with furnishings and running out of money too soon.
- I used terrain paint, and as much of complex roofing as I could. Those don't cost much (if anything), but make build structure and landscaping richer. Terrain paint is especially useful and can fairly replace some of the plants (which are expensive).
- I usually make the base of of my building structure smaller than foundation. I mean, you can shape it independently of the foundation's shape. For example, I always have big terraces/porches. You don't have to follow the lines of the foundation while building walls, you just have to not touch the foundation itself. That way, your rooms will be smaller, so it will be less likely they'll look empty and unfurnished. I thought building on multiple floors is the expensive part, but I noticed that people who use one floor often have a surface area as big as mine (in total), and just as much walls for dividing rooms.
- When you start decorating, the required items are the ones you need to pull out first. The rest of the budget can be subjected to compromise, but requirements are not negotiable.
- While decorating, have in mind you can use crafted items, career/aspiration rewards. I have also used a free computer my sims got. So try to adequately deduce which items from catalog you don't need, because you can replace them with craftables (which sometimes fit even better to the overall aesthetics :lovestruc )
- I can't guarantee for future rounds, but this time I tried to use mostly cheap furniture. Like I said, I tried to make the layout fuller and more interesting with more careful use of colors instead.

Juicing are we?

Yes, it is spelled right. I said I had no cc, by that I meant...just the no pause on frame mod, fish without shaders..stuff like that. So my downloads folder works.

I haven't a clue then

Oh that's fine. I appreciate you trying to help me. I just needed the sim blender for something that had nothing to do with this contest anyway.
I don't think I'll be using it for this contest. So all is good.

Originally Posted by @AndrewGloria
(btw What's the difference between verandas, which apparently are allowed, and decking which isn't?)

Sorry that I missed this question. The 'deck' that I am allowing refers to the veranda/deck/porch/patio area of the house. Those words all mean the same thing but I used all the words since people come from different countries and what one calls a 'verandah' another might use the word 'deck'. It simply means an expanse of paved or wood plank area outside the house that you access by a door that you might have a BBQ and outside seating on. That area is simply from the foundation that I supplied.
Not to be confused with the decking tool found under build. You are not allowed to use the decking tool and then attach it to the house in some way. You may use the decking tool to make an unattached gazebo/garden house/pergola.
Coming from another country I am very aware of how words change meanings across oceans so I try and include all of them.

I moved my entry building into my main save and edited it for Ripp Grunt and his fiancée They had 63039 so that was my money limit, but I managed to make it worth 61-something, even with properly dense garden I built an additional room and left it empty because there will be a while before they decide to have a child. I hope it’s fine to post a few pics here.

Voeille is the flower/plants expert. When I grow up, I wanna be good like you.

I was fiddling around a little with my house interior for the Elliotts (removing and adding and getting back to my initial pricing) and found a "photobooth" picture of a male and female Sim, a guy with glasses and a blonde. Purely coincidentally, I had made Dave who wears glasses, and his daughter, Samantha, is blonde, like her mother. Couldn't have been more perfect (without the need for craftables, which I won't be using during this contest).

Photo booth pictures comes under the 'craftable' heading.

But I didn't get Sims to craft it? It was a buyable Maxis framed picture.

OK ... back again. I'm pretty exhausted though. Things seem to rarely work within a hoped-for timeframe, and I just returned from a very long drive. Still, I remind myself that I have time, and can edit and even revise my lot for the next 11 days or so, though I doubt I'd want to do that. Too much chaos in my life lately. I'm inclined to try to get my entry out as soon as possible because I'm at a stage in my life when I can be called away for hours or even days fixing various family matters.

I cleared the groups.cache, renamed the file, tried putting CEP in there. I still don't see the buttons. As far as I see it, my two alternatives are to TRY to get a light mod in there that works (which is a fanciful thought, since me and light mods don't mix. The result is never what I hope for), try taking many of the pictures with the family moved in and the lights on (excluding the cost screen, since the cost seems variable) or live with dark pictures. It seems a few of us are out of ideas. I doubt if it's a mod conflict, since I have no mods in that folder to start with, except the neighborhood camera so I can see the lots in my hood better. I would say to take pictures during the day only, but some of my areas aren't near a window.

Rosebine, is it possible to get Insim in your game? It does many of the same functions as Blender, though not all. Or Sim manipulator?

Oh, like I said, I was trying to use it for completely something else. I am..or was testing a mesh. And I did not want to use my new map hood, create sims I would then have no use for. So I just used my contest game...In short, I do not need sim blender for the contest. But thanks for the tips. And I hope your family is OK.

I actually don’t like pictures of a lot during the day with lights on, for the same reason I don’t like having lamps on during the day in real life (except the one above the sink when I’m using it, because it’s in a very dark corner), because it looks weird to me. In the game I never have lights on during the day and I always take pictures with the daylight only. The exception can be lighting up a candle in a dark part of a room, but most of the time it’s not necessary. Pictures look much more natural with just daylight, at least for me