Dare #26: the Burb Family
So, here is my inaugural maxis_taste dare.
As a bit of background, I've never played the premade families. At least, not that I can remember. As interesting as it is to watch how others interpret these characters, create stories and utilise the given scenarios, that's just not how I roll. I'll openly admit I have a tendency to approach the premade houses with straight-up contempt, because my tastes and the decor of premade houses does not mesh. Base Game decor, I do not like you. I think that is why this dare appealed so much. I'm all for MMOs - they are interesting, I just can't generally be bothered doing one myself.
Of course, since you could apply it to any family that you generally don't play with, or ignore, I was rather... spoilt for choice. After humming and hawwing, I finally went with Pleasantview. And within Pleasantview, I went with the Burb family.
They moved into 35 Woodland Drive, which took 12,514 from their initial fund of 21,900. I used about 10,000 to turn it into a proper house for them.
The family, and their house:
Oh Maxis.
After I was done ripping into the house:
I actually had to restart twice, because I forgot you couldn't rearrange the windows as extensively as I was. I added a fence for the front yard, and the space to the right is going to be a gardening patch for John, some time after winter.
Putting the family themes together, I came up with a young professional couple who are all about eating healthy and organic, whilst staying on trend with the world. In a house small and narrow like this one, the interior needs lots of light colours so I tried to stick with pale yellows and light blues, with light wood and a bit of white.
I think I like the kitchen the most. (BACC-followers will know how much I like blue/yellow kitchens, lol.)
I really wish I had more multi-coloured tiles at that size and in that style but alas, I do not. I moved the kitchen to be against the back wall, since I think that's a better layout although it makes the actual kitchen smaller. They were given a proper set of chairs and a table to eat at, with room for the occasional guest.
At the opposite end of the house is the master bedroom.
I actually did go through at least three versions of this room before deciding upon this particular combination of colours, and I quite like it. For all that Jennifer wants to be a modern and fashionable person, her husband does come from the country and there are certain aesthetics that come with that. So I think it's a nice blend of the two - modern but homely.
The daughter's room is the only one that isn't all yellow-and-blue.
Instead, it's red-white-brown, largely because of the bedspread. Lucy has an interest in animals and she's a young girl, so I figured it would be fairly natural for her to have a fair interest in horses even if it's unlikely she'll ever get to have or ride one. (Also, I seem to have a total defecit of horse-related paraphenalia in my game. What's that about?)
And then, we have the sims themselves. C:
I didn't change anyone's hair colour, and tried to stick with the themes the game had assigned them.
After spending so much on the reno, they'll both need to get jobs to build up capital for purchasing any kind of business, so while Lucy went to school they spent their day skilling, which has the added bonus of providing a closer look at the parents.
IMO John looks rather generic, but I like how Jennifer turned out. Since then, I found out that Jennifer is related to the Broke Pleasant family? (I'm behind the times, shhh.) Not sure how she and Skip Daniel can turn out so differently but really, I'm not going to strain any muscles over the matter.
Welcome wagon, which triggered an urge to go through and MMO the whole bloody neighbourhood.
When Alex Goth came home with Lucy, I added a slide to the yard for them to play on. It's a tad close to the fence (lol, at least it's a way to brake), but oh well.
I have a personal gameplay rule that once the youngest in a family reaches childhood, there's no more babies. I like my generations to be close together in age, and since Lucy was just 5 days away from becoming a teen, they definitely won't be having any littlies.
Jennifer took this job, since business is in keeping with her LTW (5 top level businesses) and I'm still sort of in BACC mode. John has been looking for a medical job, but hasn't found one yet.
Alex and Lucy became best friends in fairly short order, but I dread having to deal with the soap-opera nature of the Goth family, so that is unlikely to come to anything.
This is where I'm really glad I haven't let Jennifer and John have any more littlies. I know that works for a lot of players and hey, whatever floats your boat. With the exception of second marriages, I just feel odd when I look at a family where they've got two kids and they're 15 years apart in age.
I'm sorry but oh Cassandra, LOL. I forgot how quirky and silly this game is.
Birthday time! And of course, a birthday makeover. Mind you, Lucy is no ugly duckling so I didn't have to work very hard to get something really pretty.
Just a bit of eyeliner and lip. No blush (hate blush), or facemasks, just nice CC and defaults. Lucy became a Family Sim, with an LTW to have 6 grandchildren. I find that to be a pretty dull LTW, but at least it's a fairly easy one to accomplish if the sim lives long enough.
And there ends the spam.
IDK, Maxis decor and base-game stuff still drives me batty, but it's got to be looked at within the context of which it was made. The sight of the other premade sims in desperate need of a makeover might have sparked an urge to MMO the whole of Pleasantview. So I went and tackled the Brokes. Go figure. I did enjoy this, though. :3
And of course, major props and thanks to everyone who's made the wonderful CC that I've used here. Couldn't have done it without you guys. C: