Wow, that foundation makes me wanna... I don't know what, but it's a definite challenge! Ho, yes, I'm done! Yay, now to just upload those pics!

Thanks to all who commented on my lot (mostly on the contest thread)

The barn doors are just walls BGatot but I really can't take credit for them, I 'borrowed' the idea from a house I saw in downloads yonks ago.

Talking of taking credit, I need to thank Kwuz for pointing me in the right direction, without whom I would probably never have discovered the fog emitter and thanks for trying to teach me about gifs but think I'm too much of a noob to get it

Was it you who said you lived in Norwich? How weird, I based my character on my real life best friend Claire (She doesn't actually own a pub but she uses them a lot ) She grew up in the village right next to Otley, Burley in Warfedale. The scenery behind the lot just reminded me of the time I visited her parents house that's why I named it after that but I didn't expect anyone else to have heard of it. Come to think of it, she went to Leeds Uni and when we met we were both living down the road from Norwich in King's Lynn....what a small world

PG Tips, er...I mean Yogi Tea, thanks for that, will have to look it up when I put the game back on (I'm taking a break,...I need it! ). I'm so annoyed that I didn't just ask around now 'cause it would've come in really handy but I'll know in the future now where to find it.

Kaospilot get off the bloody computer, you're on holiday!!! We had thunderstorms and flood warnings the other day which surprised me since I wasn't expecting it in the desert. Really, I mean, I'm from Scotland and I've never seen rain that heavy Oh well, hope you're enjoying your holiday. When you come back through Victoria have a krispy kreme on me (mmmmnomnomnom)

All, I was gonna go though and catch up with my comments but there's just so much that I've missed, I'd be here all day so am just gonna cop out with a well done to all and good luck for the final round. It's great to see how much people have improved since the first round (me included ) and I know I for one will start putting more effort into landscaping my future uploads now that I know that creating a path and a few shrubs is not actually an impossible feat

One last thing...I want to keep my entries links in my sig block for another week or two (advertising for when I upload them ) but also want to link to a tutorial that I'm hopefully gonna finish but my sig block is full. How do I shorten the link so it just has the name like a lot of you have? I tried just writing over the top but the link breaks when I do it.

missroxor, you can use Tiny URL. It will create shorter links out of your links, so you can add more. Here's a link to it:

http://tiny.cc/

Thanks both of you. I tried the tiny one first. I like that you can track how many times your link was clicked on but didn't like the fact that you have to have the http://tiny thing before your text and can't have spaces so tried Kaos' method. You do get the options under edit sig.

Well, I've learned something today, thanks

You're welcome, at least you've got it fixed, no matter which way you chose.

It's time to say that this was a great experience Thanks a lot to HP and all the judges and contestants ^^ You're all awesome builders and all the entries have had a really high level. Good luck to everyone!!

Since it was first suggested here (BGatot I think) thought I'd let you all know that I've done a tutorial for making aquariums with the fog emitter. Currently it's still in the editting phase (every time I read it I find a new typo or badly worded sentence ). It's at the link below but hopefully once I'm finished with it it will get approved and moved to the tutorials section.

So, in the mean time, if anybody fancies proof reading and/or testing it out please have a look and let me know if any changes need to be made

http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=416500

Thanks to Fyendiar and Fragglerocks who've already had a peek. Since I'm already off topic... I think it was Craggles who posted a link to CAW group on here, I'm hoping to get started on my first lot in the next week, I've already been in touch with toyou1214 and lanawinst about it so thanks

EDIT: Yay! It's been approved already, didn't realise it would happen so quickly. Oh well, I think you can still comments etc in the tutorials forum if you need to

Watch you for those gnomes! Little rascals! They sent the repo man who collected some of my statues while I was doing the photo shoot!

Haha I fully had the same gnome issue lol I think I deleted them if I found them.

I'm slightly tempted to try building on Yogi-Tea's foundation.

I followed the tutorial for the aquarium last night. I have no idea what to do with it, but the little fishes are so darn cute. It's not as good as the one missroxor made for the contest, but I have a couple of pics here if anyone wants to see it.

I was tempted last night but I quit fairly quickly. I'm just not all that creative, I guess. ^_^

I think it's wonderful how life-like the aquarium looks, considering that it doesn't even have water in it.

Oh, I can't wait to find out who won. I have a few guesses, but some people were fairly close together in terms of points for the previous rounds.

I hope another contest starts up soon! I keep logging in here and its so weird to see 'no new posts' in the Sims 3 Contest section. It feels like somethings missing!
After the excitement and build up and tenseness of the past month it all feels rather flat now!
I can't wait to see who's won either. I can narrow it down to one of three I think. I'm looking forward to seeing the scores for everyone tho.

I think we are all waiting in silence, not seen this section as quiet as it is now since the contest started.

Fantastic! I love the semi buried skeleton...might have to steal that idea later

Can't believe how quiet it is on here now, think I'm having withdrawal symotoms Does anyone remember where that link was to help you fix chat if it doesn't work for you? I didn't do it straight away and now I can't even remember what thread it was on.

EDIT: Um...ok, while I'm typing about how quiet it is you all come on and make look like a liar!

So how long do we think it will be before scores go up? Another few days?

Yeah, it was so quiet, nobody was replying at all, but now it seems that people are checking back in a little more.

It does feel so weird now, not to have a house to build on a deadline or something like that. I've been trying to build now that I don't have a deadline and it just doesn't feel the same, not as exciting.

I've been thinking of a contest idea, at least for building, but I wouldn't even know how to begin, and I'm not even entirely sure that just anyone can post a contest or not.

Who knows how long it'll take for judges to come up with the round's scores. I imagine that by now they're pretty tired of having to look through all of these houses and make such difficult choices.

Lifeslover, not just anybody can post a contest, there's criteria you have to meet. You have to either have judged a contest or participated in one...so we all meet the criteria Yay! Check out the rules, I think Beeps/boolpropped wrote a sticky in the contest forum. I think that might have been one of the reasons they decided to host a staff run contest because there were never any TS3 contests because there was hardly anybody qualified to hold one...not anyone that was still interested in contests anyway.

EDIT: I agree about the judges. I judged a couple of rounds of a contest once as an emergency judge and it was really hard going even with only about 16 contestants. Having to come up with something constructive to say about each one was particularly gruelling

Well, again, it was just merely an idea of mine, not that I'd ever actually host a contest. It'd depend on if anyone actually wanted it, and if I actually didn't feel too lazy. So I haven't done any actual checking on whether or not I could host a contest, or if anyone else could, for that matter, or even what hoops I'd have to go through in order to host a contest.

I know I am not qualified to hold or judge a contest for sure, I am way too absent minded for that to turn out well.

Mostly working on 10x10 houses now to see what I can do with such little space, quite a challenge all by itself tbh.

It's also a matter of would I be able to judge well enough? I'm not exactly all of that great a builder myself, so would I be able to judge fairly and with an expert eye on technique, style, etc. etc.

Im selfish ..I admit it..I don't want to host a contest because that means I can't enter it .. I know thats bad..but I'm being honest. I keep trying to start building something new but I've lost my inspiration it seems.

Well, apparently, from what I've read, you have to have a minimum of three judges, so it can't just be the host judging.

And there's a whole lot of other rules, too, even if you do qualify.

My daughter and I used to enter alot of Sims 2 contests on Insim. But they were more storytelling contests than actual building contests. I loved them tho, as much as Ive loved doing this building one. Plus there are the usual sim makeover's which are always good fun. Take a random townie and give them a makeover - thats always popular.

BTW Hows the weather now in Norway, Kaospilot? Still storming?

Well its 12.20am and Im sitting here in a tshirt with my patio doors wide open...so yeah...its still warm!

Well Im in the south east and its still warm...not as hot as it was thank god..at least its cool enough to sleep comfortably..(for those who sleep!)..