I can happily confirm that the swatch tool worked - my price pic is healthy now, not a gridline in sight.

Now I am going into Waiting for Foundation mode

Oh my gosh! I didn't even realise! I got so sidetracked with that contest and I probably would have stayed and played along with further entries but it was moving so fast for the short time I was in it and I think I just assumed I didn't have time to finish. I should have stuck around.

I *loved* the idea, I just wish I'd had the time to dedicate to such an involved project. (I still have the second go of the factory which had enough space to build in!) Sounds like possibly I would have had time if I'd actually stuck it out, though To be honest the main reason I am still following this one, is that I happened to find the shortcut from the main TS2 discussion board. I am enjoying the fact this is a beginner's contest. The last two that I attempted were probably too advanced for me, especially for my first contests, and I didn't fully appreciate the level of work that goes in from the judges and host. I also found the feedback far, far more difficult than I'd ever anticipated! Definitely a learning curve.

@Phae - I, too, enjoyed your last contest :lovestruc

Round 3 Entry No CC
The Newman's might seem like any other family..but they had it quite hard. Life is now smiling at them so big, it's almost criminal.
Paul met Jin in one of the least attractive place near the city. The SFS. That rings a bell? No..Not Sunflower Seeds. The SimFood & Shelter.
The first time Paul ended up there for a meal and hopefully a place to stay for the night, he discovered that..pets weren't allowed inside. There was no way he'd leave 2 kitten outside alone, so he just waited out..figuring out what his next move would be. Jin saw Paul..and the kitten. She herself tags alone her old dog Yang. Though that dog has no trouble alone..and Jin is used to get in, grab a meal..bring it out.
That evening, Paul met Jin.
They shared some shepherd's pie, 3 and a half coffee and by that I mean, everyone. Night time came, Yang cuddled up with Boule & Bill, the kitten, keeping them comfy and warm under the stars...while Paul & Jin cuddled up inside.

That lasted a few months..enough that, the owner of SFS knew the happy bunch by heart. Then September came...school is back, students leave summer jobs..new people get hired...
Paul & Jin are new people, they are available..nice and they know the place.
They were perfect..and even had an old kittensitter!

It took a few years before a decent house showed its nose..a place they could call home.
Only 25 minutes walk from SFS, there it is...
Today, Paul & Jin bought their first house. All pets are welcomed..birds, hamsters...skunks...pinguins..
Yang gets older everyday, and sweeter too. She adopted a puppy...whom is now almost an adult. Boule & Bill are still crazy and love the pond..or whatever seems to be wiggling in there.
Required object : bone carpet. Seen in Foundation picture, First floor picture, second floor picture, roof picture, backyard dogs picture & whole backyard picture. There is 2 of them carpets.

This lot has actually been done for a surprisingly long time, I was waiting to post until scores so I could maybe make some final touches, but then I couldn't bring myself to look at the scores so I'll post first and go look eventually

Goldenbtrfly-Favorite and most imaginative part of this is the 'pet print' ponds! Love all of it, but this part made me happy!!!

Voeille- WOW!!!

Rosebine-So lovely! Makes me want to live here and adopt a bunch of pets. Almost!!

@Goldenbtrfly I do which is why my comment to you in the score sheet has no note from me asking you to add it.

@ChisanaAoi That is a cute house, and I am looking and not seeing the random object again -please tell me it is there or go add it if you haven't. You lost 5 points last time for not including it.

Phae, thanks for linking those contests, I had so much fun browsing! I reeeally like the concept of your last contest too! It was clearly an advanced, complex project, and it inspired some wonderful creations. I especially drooled over kanzen's builds! What a talent, I'm surprised I have never noticed her before. Such a shame she dropped out. I saw that she entered playalong here too, but posted only one round! @kanzen , I hope you won't mind me asking, but is there a chance we will be able to enjoy more of your stuff? I would love to see more from you! Of course, it is completely understandable if you're not able to continue for whatever reason, but my eyes are selfishly craving for more after seeing what you can do. :lovestruc

Jo, thank you for the play along comments. As always, you are very considerate and gentle. :lovestruc I'm honored you want the house; I'll gladly share it. I'm thinking about uploading, but I have to act fast because my self-criticism is starting to show it's ugly head again, I'm slowly starting do nit pick those lots; there are already a milion things I would change.

It is a little crowded, there are a lot of new submissions, and I don't have time to comment on all the entries posted. Everyone is doing such a great job, and I'm really enjoying the diversity. I just hope we will keep having generous budget, because it really reflects on the quality of the entries.

I must say something to Voeille this time. Voeille, you have such a distinctive building style! You know what I love about your builds most? The fact that I would always recognize them as yours! I have a feeling that I would recognize the lot as your work, even among thousands of others. And that tells you something!

The Newman’s random object is the bone rug isn’t it? I see it under bowls

And thank you @gazania and @koololdster I plan to do something weird for each round, but actually, I’m still in my comfort zone – making gardens with limited budged is much better on desert, then I don’t need to look at that ugly flat grass (my craziness about gardens started with the dislike for the lack of 3D grass covering the whole terrain [the hood too], TS2 couldn’t really handle it as it’s an old game, so I just started covering the grass with plants and trying to not pay attention to the flatness of it in the hood. Yes I’m strange. But I still hope I’ll see 3D grass in a sims game at some point, maybe in TS5?)

Edit: MystAngel thank you too, it’s nice to know I have something specific in my style

Sorry I accidentally hit edit on your post, I hope I fixed it. ~ Jo

// Yes it was fine, I just added missing smiley faces

@Voeille So sorry I keep doing this -clicking on edit instead of reply! I think I managed to undo the wreckage that I did to your post. I was trying to quote you not edit. Yes the random object is the bone rug. I saw that and thought it looked different. I was thinking it was a smooth rug but that is probably just a recolour.

A note on railings on houses since it has been asked about in regards to points taken off or not taken off.

This is one of the judges take on railings:


My view, is that I am a railing person, and I like to see some form of half wall or railing on any deck of 4 clicks. However I am not judging and I will defer to the judges on this.

I hope this clears up the railing question.

Just adding we are not asking for pool fences-which in real life is a must whether you personally have small children or not because people have visitors/neighbours kids could come over. Judges are looking more at the style of home in regards to railings on decks, although all decks up a story do need railings, modern or not, the same way stair balconies do.

@joandsarah I put right above the picture it appeared in O.o it was the bone rug under the food dishes in the entryway and kitchen

Yeah sorry, for some reason I thought it was much larger.

Table updated with scores please check if yours is correct.

About a week ago my mother and I were at a modern Real Life restaurant (well, we could hardly eat at a Sims restaurant! ), that had outside seating on raised decking. The decking ended in a drop of about 60 cm (2 feet) without railings. We did however remark that we thought it was bad design. I suppose it's fair enough to be penalised for bad design in a Sims contest, even if one can find Real Life examples of it.

Which brings me to the Play Along comments. Thanks very much for these Jo; I really appreciate them. It's fair enough comment on my perhaps inappropriate and excessive use of colour in indoor decoration. I can think of Real Life examples, but many of these are where I chose the colour scheme myself! The worst was in the sitting room of the flat I once owned. I decided that a chocolate coloured ceiling would nicely offset the centre rose round the light fitting and edge moulding, which I left white. In a way it did, but it also left the room very dark, and not a pleasant place to sit in the evening after sunset. It also cost me money for electricity for the table lamps and standard lamps I needed to try to make the room brighter. Only by getting it wrong did I realise that most people pain ceilings in light colours in order to reflect the light and make the room brighter. As I recall the carpet, sofa and armchairs were blue, so some shade of blue on the ceiling would have been more harmonious. So maybe it's just as well that I don't have AL, so I can't include ceilings in my Sims' homes!

Many of my Sims live in Maxis houses, and I get bored by the almost universal use of "Paste" paint on their internal walls. So I've been brightening them up by redecorating. Maxis gave us a huge range of wall coverings even in base game, and I sometimes wonder why so many of the houses are so bland. Maybe the answer is that they thus avoided my excessive use of colour. I don't use much build and by CC, but one thing I have downloaded is a set of more colourful wallpapers by kjkjljkjkjkjljkj. Whether the blue wallpaper with pictures of birds in Gloria's house is really an improvement on the old Paste paint is debatable. (I do hope Gloria and Andrew like it!)

In this case I was trying to match the colours to the Sims' likes. So Joe got lots of red in his office and bedroom, Trevor got purple and pink in his room, and the rest of the house is predominantly shades of blue, which they both like. As you noticed Jo, I overdid it, and I'm sure there are even more garish examples in other houses in my Sims universe! I'll see of I can tone down my ideas a bit, but I do seem to have a thing about colour.

I think there may over my lifetime have been a shift to blander décor, and I'm not sure if I like it. 50 years ago I was building houses for a model railway, and looking at the houses around me for inspiration. Then window frames were predominantly made of wood, and were painted in a wide variety of colours (as Maxis windows still are). On a 'bus journey of several miles (kilometres) round the city yesterday I made a point of looking at the window frames on the houses. One house had grey window frames and another near it had blue frames on a bay window. Of all the other windows about 95% were white, and the others were various shades of brown -- either wood stain or meant to look like wood stain. I find this disappearance of colour remarkable. One reason undoubtedly is that many window frames today are made of plastic, but I'm sure the manufacturers could easily enough make coloured plastic if there was any demand for it. Could any of you round the world tell me of this is a purely British phenomenon, or if it's happened everywhere? Anyway I'm building my Round 3 house with white window frames.

I also appreciate MystAngel's comments on my entries and would welcome comments/criticism from anyone. It is after all how we learn to improve.

One nice problem in my current build. With almost all essentials apart from lighting, and wall-coverings in the bedrooms in place, the house costs §35,288. That means that I have to think how to spend over fourteen thousand Simoleons! I wish I had problems like that in Real Life!

I'm a bit north of you (clue in the name ) and the house we live in is a new build with bright red windows. The rest of the house is wood and white harling not sure what that translates to lol.
Around us there are older tenament buildings and they have white windows but if you wander a little futher there are other colours. Usually if they are not white then they are privately owned as our council is very small c conservative when it comes to use of colour.
I wonder if our red windows are because the houses were build from kits imported from Sweden? Not sure if red is big in Sweden. If that explains what I mean. Need more coffee!
Scottiedoag

All kinds of coffee at the fermented juice bar today

I am definitely not a beige and paste lady. Maxis houses are deadly dull because tossing around paste is quick and figuring out colours can take a long time. If you have ever seen the inside of some of my uploads like the Santorini Hotel it has loads of colours and I spent ages on those triangle carpets changing the colours around and matching it to the walls. http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=578280 The massage room is fairly neutril because it's for relaxing. it's more how you use colour. Sometimes the colour is better as a pop from a lamp, a rug and a cushion. Its about what colours you are putting together, do they look good together or is it just a riot that will give you a headache. Some times paste, beige or grey walls are needed but then one feature wall could be something bold like red or orange so no one notices those bland walls but without them your eyes would be burning.


Goodness, I'll be in that. The fact that's it's 10pm? oh well. *bounces off the non paste walls*

@joandsarah77 No worries, you fixed the post fine, I just added missing faces

Just what I need! A very strong black dark roast I think. Strong enough to stand a spoon up in the middle lol. I'll need it I'm off to do battle with EIG in Loch Bevvy
Scottiedoag

YESSSSSS! I got the exact emoticon I was hoping for!!! BEST SCORE EVAR! :lovestruc

I just noticed I don't have a picture for the inside of their "bike" workshop- should I change a picture out for it? It is seen in the overview but not in the details? Thanks.

^
^
And yet I'm a sheep! Many ways to interpret that.
I'm kidding, I know the forum's smiley collection is limited.

I'm glad you appreciate the comments, AndrewGloria. :lovestruc I wish I could comment on everyone's entry, but that is simply not realistic. There are a lot of contestants, and sometimes entries are posted a lot in a short period of time, and one usually can't devote enough attention and time to each one, even though each and every one of the participants contributes to me enjoying this contest so much.

Jo, I wanted to ask you when will the table be updated with this round entries posted so far, so I could see all submissions in case I missed any. But then I felt bad for even thinking of rushing and pressuring you. So I decided to browse the pages myself and look for the entries. And instead of demanding you to make it easy for me, I thought, why don't I help you for a change, considering the amount of work this contest already is to you. So here are the links to the posts of entries posted so far, in case that could help you fill the table:



This post will also help me later when I have enough time to invest to look at each entry properly. I hope I haven't missed any.

I can't press the Love or Helpful buttons hard enough on that. As a previous contest host, I know that keeping that stupid table up to date is SO time consuming, and the HTML for it easily gets messed up. THANK YOU!