Sims Eugenics II, or, The Mouth of Persephone

[Heart Foam]

"Sucked a lemon" is a very good description. I could obviously keep the Whitman branch alive through Kamila and never let her more aesthetically challenged brothers reproduce.

Back at the main house, Giancarlo (son of 100% alien Ahilac and 50% alien Chadwick) was moved in as the excellent husband for Katherine.

However, I switched control to Ahilac and Chadwick...





... (the house had some remodeling - that marble floor got a bit of a recolour because Get Famous added many new marble colours) because I've been feeding Ahilac cloned Age Away serums to keep her young and pretty, and wanted to see how that was going. They also had another child, Marie, a teenager (dog lover, vegetarian) days away from aging up to YA but who had never had any supervision, and so I stayed playing that household desperately trying to earn enough points for a potion of youth to reset Marie to the start of her teen stage and get her through scouting and drama club and as many of the good character values as possible.

The effect of this is that Katherine, who was pregnant, gave birth "off stage" because I was engrossed with Ahilac and Marie and Mr Smith the new pollinator.



(drumroll) (but, yes, that's Giancarlo... and why not? Good for him!)

Twin girls! Not identical. They were named and styled randomly. This is simply how they hatched into children.

Sawyer:


And Kiera:


I can't explain that either. But they're so odd that it seemed worth this small update.

Ahilac worked on her charisma by making videos, and at the very first award ceremony she evidently won gold, silver, and bronze in the video category. A second microphone makes these events go much more smoothly. She released many songs too, but I'm sure every award text said it was for "best video". Shrug. Doesn't matter. Much winning.





Katherine actually had a 3rd child (I forget the name, and I don't have a picture - he /she is still a toddler) with Mr Smith.

[Heart Foam]

I noticed the twins had aged to teens, so I switched back to Windmilles & Wine for some CAS photos. I take no responsibility for the outfits / hair / etc.

First off, Katherine as an adult with crunched up eyes and wide mouth. I haven't got another picture of eccentric gentleman Giancarlo, but the weird genetics is not on his side. So, Katherine:



With the mother in mind (how can you forget?), the daughters:

Kiera:


Not sure how she is that shade of blue. Not even her grandmother Scarlett, or great-grandfather Cornelius was that shade. She's got a nice enough face, aside from the Persephone / Scarlett / Katherine mouth. That feature is rather persistent. Giancarlo's hair colour. Mother's eyes.

Sawyer:


Not really sure how Sawyer is that colour either. Much more angular brow.

And Lacey:


She's the child with the current pollinator man, Mr Smith. She still has the eye shape from Persephone that none of the older twins inherited.

All the girls were born off-stage, so it's just luck or misfortune that we only have girls. I'd have preferred a boy this time and alternate the genders, but there we go. I think the fastest way to breed away weirdness is to alternate. A good example is if you've ever had Nancy Landgraab have daughters. They'll all inherit her chest, and it's just too awful. So Katherine has the weird pot-belly shape, even when she's supposedly thin. And both Kiera and Sawyer are that shape too. To have that not passed down, I'd rather have a son. Gotta take sim breeding seriously. Absolutely.

The girls doing homework. Because we like interior shots of yonder cottage. We like it. And I just love those high-backed chairs.



And now, an exterior picture of Yonder Cottage. I realise I used a plural -- "interior shots" -- and you must feel cruelly let down by a singluar Picture. Basically, that's too bad. (And you'll get over it and be fine. It's what motivational, pick-me-up memes on the internet are for! Moments of disappointment like this!) I'll have to trawl through previous pages here, but I think the chimneys might have changed since I last showed the house. And just looks more realistic with that symmetry in the middle.
 


And one final picture, because I felt those CAS things weren't enough, the upstairs gallery.



Hot Katherine (because she's curry champion) in her red shirt is there in case there's such a dazzling confusion of colours and shapes. Giancarlo is actually there too. She's getting back to archaeology, the favourite hobby of her forefathers. She actually uncovered some gold artifacts that we didn't have in the collection yet. They had been sitting there unexamined for generations.

It's not a save I play religiously, and I'll possibly update at some point if there's another weird generation. Not sure which of the 3 very different girls should be the lucky one to continue the Windmilles line. I thought I'd never go back to this family, or update here, but it's just such a cool house. And the eugenics part is really interesting too. The blue child? Huh? Quite so.

[BallerinaHippo]

Regarding the offspring of Cornelius and the maid-- the boys look a lot like their father, but the daughter...wow!  As for the main family, it's interesting how Katherine's daughters all ended up with different skin tones.  Maybe the game just doesn't know what to do with those genes right now.  Love Katherine's spice festival shirt.  Wear it with pride!  No need to ever take it off (my Sims don't, even when I ask them to).

[Heart Foam]

@BallerinaHippo It's like the only trait Kamila inherited from her father is blueness. When I think of the list of things she could have inherited - brows, eye shape, pupil size, mouth, jaw, hair colour, etc. - she totally hit the jackpot.

I really like getting the festival shirts. I often give a designated pollinator man the romance festival shirt. I particularly like the GeekCon one. And the curry champion shirt.

With the current generation, I think you're right. Those blue and medium brown skins look like they've been chosen at random. I'm really not a fan of that bright blue, it's not an original trait, and I can't cope with the thought of it passing on, so Kiera will not be the heir. And maybe Lacey is too normal. So, it'll probably be Sawyer with the angular brows. Of all the girls, she has the most of the founders' looks.

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On a related side note: the Ahilac family I've saved by itself, but her daughter Marie -- the exact same green as Ahilac -- had a father Winter's baby that's definitely blue. Which makes no sense either.

[Heart Foam]

A small house update.



Katherine and Giancarlo are actually practicing a scene for her upcoming TV show, but the sleeping dog is why I took the picture. While I was away from the house with Ahilac and co, the dogs... became ghost dogs. So we have a new English setter, because we gotta have one. 







I wanted to tie the front and back together, and to that end, the greenhouse has gone. But it never really sat well with me, glued on to the main house awkwardly like it was.





So that's the current state, but I can already see how I want to change the back. The back fountain will probably go. That little section is too visually cluttered.

[Heart Foam]

Behold the Pollution!

So, the doodling has come full circle, and lessons learned from when I copied this across to Dresden House have been applied back here. I don't want to move this house forward on the lot, that feels wrong (it's been planted where it is for generations after all), but I wanted to use more width.

Yes, roses need full sun. Okay. I know. And the cherry trees are just... Sims flair... that would be silly in the real world and create too much shade. But we need something that gives a little bit of height. And that's what I came up with. Thoughts? Feelings? Conscientious Objections?

I know there are terrain tools, but what I really want is a gently sloping lot. Then I'd do super-posh terracing and stuff.


Yes, that's still the original Crisponix Adequate and Yum Cooker. Absolutely.








I've just remembered I should fix the rose bed on the left. Sorry.




--Giancarlo is a stylist and needs to learn photography. That's what's happening here.

[Heart Foam]

A second dog. To match the first dog. Because dogs. This one is Snuggs. She was a stray Goldendoodle, and is now an English Setter because that's how we roll at Windmilles & Wine. But now there are 7 sims. 5 human sims, and 2 dog sims. 



Next up was a visit to the Flints. I noticed rather late that Lacey -- Katherine's 3rd child -- was on the cusp of aging up and hasn't completed Whiz Kid or Social Butterfly. I thought I had more time, but then I wasn't present for most of her childhood, I was with the Ahilac family. Anywho, Lacey was rushed through the potions, age bar bubbling, and then started rushing through the Social Butterfly goals to see how far she would get.



We're visiting the Flints because it's the middle of the night and they have 6 sims in the household, 4 or whom are children. Which is perfect. Children wouldn't spontaneously visit the park.

Lacey greets the last child.



I was actually running out of children as two of the Flints aged up to teens while I was visiting, but one of them she had already befriended. She was so, so close to not completing the aspiration, but she got there. I like raising Ideal Children, and Lacey, having completed all 4 childhood aspirations and scouting within hours of becoming a teen (can you wait! yes!), is pretty close. She's missing a toddler trait for faster skilling, and that's a shame, and has some pretty bad character values as a hangover from when I wasn't dutifully in charge, but with love and attention could get all 5 good traits and some drama trophy. She's not the heir. That'll still be Sawyer.

Returning from visiting the Flints, these are the three girls. From left to right: Kiera, Sawyer, Lacey.



The older twins have Giancarlo's very yellow hair, which I like. Lacey still has her mother's blue eyes and they're from Wolfie Munch.

Immediately upon returning home, Sawyer, the dramatic inspired one, baked her younger sister a chocolate cake.







That's Lacey as a teen. There's more of the founder's looks in her than I thought there would be. That mouth and cheeks are very persistent, but no angular brows.

As is always the case with me, there was some house remodeling. 





The graceful hound!

It's not that I think the neoclassical columns look bad, it's just becoming too... McMansion; too... new-money riff-raff. And this house is not that. In broad strokes it's 17th century. And so the fussy, look-at-me, overstyled avenue had to go.

Many edits later, and it had changed to this:



Yes, those look suspiciously like poles that attach to other poles for outdoor lanterns. And you're right. So most of the time, it'll look like the above. The plan is to put up lights as appropriate for an holiday.

For example, love day:



(and the water in the fountains could even be changed!)

And harvest:



So it's a lot simpler than the Grecian columns and statues and trellis and hedge, but I think rather beautiful anyway.

And here's Katherine really, earnestly, communicating something of great moment to Snuggs, who isn't quite understanding the urgency.

[Heart Foam]

Another day, another minor house edit. And other generic Moments of Domesticity.

The colour balance wasn't quite right, so...



Ahilac invited herself over, and Katherine gave her a set of keys because I'm a fan of Ahilac. And if she invites herself over regularly, we can keep her young with Age Away serums.



I changed the fountains at the back of the house too, and that's the point of the picture. It's an area I'm not completely happy with. Incidentally, Ahilac wafted over to the bonsai and made it into a heart shape. So we know what mood she was in.





After school, one of the girls invited over classmate Leigh Fyres. This is what you get when your pollinator was an alien.



Kiera and Lacey in the kitchen. Such a fan of the kitchen, and the dog. Not such a fan of the ski goggles for a swimming outfit. I presume that's the random magic of the game and not something I chose...



All three teens doing a project together. Kiera and Sawyer are about 2 days from YA.



At about 4am, Lacey goes out to harvest money trees, which would produce more fruit at 5am. She had to take a break from learning lines (they hardly sleep). There's another 4 money trees on the other side of the house. No, the family don't do it for the money, but I routinely get teens to do it to complete the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration and get some points to spend on traits.



Giancarlo has lost his golden hair, and is now an elder. He's still a low level style influencer -- You could guess his career right? Look at the man! He is fashion. Fashion is him. -- and unlikely to max his styling because I was away from this family during much of his adult life.

[Heart Foam]

Ok, so, yeah. Stuff has happened. We'll get to that. Keen-eyed viewers will notice I took down the lantern pole things. Blame it on the upcoming expansion that I have a renewed interest in building.

The day-to-day routine is going to slightly less chaotic with Lacey as a teen. Her childhood was exceptionally rushed. It was tournament levels of planning 5 steps ahead. She's by far going to be the best-raised daughter. And then there was a ridiculous 2 day dash through all the scouting badges for Sawyer. When I rejoined the family, the twins were both a few days into their teen stage. I randomly picked one to be in drama and one to be in scouts. Sawyer was in drama club, and having got an award with her, mere days from aging up, I figured that if she's going to be the heir, she had better get that bonus Gold Super Amazing You Go Girl Scout Trait. And that was another mad few days, mopping up puddles from the summer thunderstorms, getting fit, creating trash just so she can clean it up etc. But she got there.

With that out the way -- oh, Sawyer is an astronaut and Kiera is a critic -- I could actually take Katherine on some gigs.



What a moustache he has! All the style. Not even Cornelius was that stylish*.



So that's Kath as a blonde for her doctor tv show. Ahilac showed up on set and had a chat with the director, which is fine. We like Ahilac. Her son, Giancarlo, is an elder. So she's looking pretty good.

Sawyer's last days as a teen. I liked the scene, the fireplace, the dirty sleeping dog.



And here are the other two girls: Lacey -- in the exciting state of not being fried to crisp -- and Kiera, who is. But Lacey is the sad, emotional teen. Kiera couldn't be happier. Well played Sims.



Katherine lights the fireplace on the set of Dignity & Decorum (look, Mansfield Park and Emma are where it's at). I liked the blurb for the show which says the main family are the Estatenabs, which sounds like the posh, Victorian version of the Landgraabs. I must create an Estatenab family now.



Back at her own estate, Lady Kath looks up dramatically. The scenery had changed by this point, and would change further. I wasn't happy with the front garden. It lacked focus. It lacked polish. I wanted box hedges, but didn't really know how to use them.

I've got "tree in a box" here, but really the regal planter and statement planter would be a better fit. It's really just using an item I hadn't used, and in the fancy orangery at Versailles or similar, there's actually tons of trees in pots and boxes like this. But maybe not right for the entrance.





I love the fountains now. The roses now get full sun. There are many hedges.

Then this happened:



I made sure to get a nice view of the new garden, but that's elder Giancarlo being abducted.

His mother is 100% alien, his father is 50% alien, so it makes sense. But... will he get pregnant? I've had Don Lothario as an elder get pregnant by abduction, so it can happen. (I haven't played far enough to know yet.) The house has 7 sims. It's nearly the end of summer, and I was planning on a Father Winter's baby for Sawyer in about 10 sim days time, but now there won't be room if Giancarlo is pregnant. This picture may or may not represent a plot twist. We'll see.

All my gardening made me think of sorting out the exterior of the house.





That final picture, with added benches, is exactly how it looks right now, paused, as I write this up. I think those benches work really well. There needs to be something at the end of the path.

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*yes he was. This was obviously a joke. I hope you immediately leapt to the defense of graceful, manly, pink-haired Cornelius.

Edited to add: I'm looking at this the next day, and cogs are turning. Should I try moving the money trees to where the cypress trees are? For the year-round golden colour? Then the side of the chateau can be more open...

[Heart Foam]

So that's the money tree update I was mulling over. The seasons have changed now, as you can see that's autumn. But that's the headline. You've seen it. Looks nice. Those mini forests on the side of the house -- now removed -- looked pretty cool to me, but were maybe not right for this particular house, and were really just a way of explaining and justifying the location of the money trees when I couldn't fit them into the front.

Summer was really quite rainy, and I had to wait until the Friday for a clear day to do the building and garden work in the last few posts. It's really the weather that has made me live with the family again instead of just doing the renovations in my head. So thank the in-game rain for Moustache Man and the dogs. And the screenshot from Dignity & Decorum which I really like too. It's okay, it's not just you.



So when the weekend rolled around, I thought of a quick one-day excursion to the jungle to get that aspiration done for Lacey. This family has always been into archaeology, and we like to keep up those traditions.



Giancarlo, who doesn't seem pregnant, was the only adult* accompaniment.

*this is really quite questionable

As many of you know, taking multiple sims on a dig is painful and slows you down. Katherine also had an audition, so I figured she and the twins could stay back at home.



That's Moustache Man, added to the family club. Some social needs were low, and I mean empty, in the red, when Giancarlo and Lacey got home. Kiera needed to socialize. Moving swiftly along...

... to mostly harmless rehearsals for Katherine.



I'm grouping a few house pictures together. Some are still from summer, when the bulk of the rearranging happened. Autumn started while Lacey and her father were in the jungle. There were a few minor fixes made when they got back (mistakes with the paving, and flower beds etc. had to be fixed, and I noticed a mistake in the chimneys that must have been there for who knows how long), and that necessitated re-doing the screenshots that were now out of date. I think the first picture in this post is spectacular.





Two dogwood trees create an arch over that path.



There's not enough space at the back, and a great part of me wishes the formal gardens were at the back. But it is what it is. The fountains changed for the better. The paving makes more sense. The bench has changed. Giancarlo can be seen through the window at the bar. Which is very unusual. Absolutely never happens.



Cherry tree on this side of the house, because colour. Yes, those are piles of clothes next to the rocket. Yes, there was rocket woohoo. The maid will sort that out on Monday.

I had an itch to sort out the front garden, which I did, and then I felt I had to sort out the rest of the exterior of the house too, which is now done. What I'm saying is, I've posted a lot here of late, because this is a fun house and it's come a long way, and I wanted to share that and mayhap inspire someone... but don't anticipate such a ferocity of updating. It's time consuming after all. 

[BallerinaHippo]

Moustache man looks like he can't believe his luck at being invited to join the club.  Shockingly (and I mean, for real), there is an empty bar behind him.

I like what you did with the front fountains and the landscaping around them.  If they were the reason for these updates, all the better.  I also spent some time admiring your roofline, that's one of the hardest parts for me to get right.  I recently learned how to make Mansard roofs and now I am thinking of all the houses in my saves that could look so much better.

[Heart Foam]

I can entirely relate to figuring out roofs! The regret is real! Initially I made some clumsy big houses with a basic hipped roof, and figuring out mansards (which was a roof type in Sims 3, back in the day, and I was frustrated they weren't in Sims 4, but now I understand why) sort of unlocked being able to make this type of house. There are some old saves that I went back to and made a better roof for.

I was actually recently looking at some speedbuilt houses on YouTube -- not something I often do -- but there was a fancy-ish house with nice looking dormer windows in a mansard roof. Maybe something I can incorporate here, or in the future. Unless it's CC. If that's the case, I just can't be asked. For anyone curious who might also read this, the two living floors here are medium height, the tallest walls are actually in the roof. I wanted the nice steeply angled roof and mediums weren't steep enough.

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Edited to add two pics. Windows either side of the door have changed. Arched windows aren't right in a 17th century building. I think the ones I've used are right for the job. And I really like the mono-piary. I've never used any of them, because I never know how. But I like them here, accenting the door. Leading the eye.





That last one is the most up-to-date picture of all, and my desktop background too. Some light snow started falling on a cold autumn night. Sawyer nearly froze to death upgrading the rocket. But didn't! Good times!

[Heart Foam]

Read on. Roland really doesn't die. What a relief.

Giancarlo did die, but in style. Maybe his pants were too tight after all? Is it worth it? But Roland was totally fine at the same time. In case you were worried how it affects Roland.



Katherine aged up to elder, cake has that effect. I am partial to cake, but now I am wary of its consequences. After consideration, I shall still eat cake. Roland did *not* have cake. You love Roland. You don't want him to die.



A big thing I wanted to do was remodel the inside. The interior layout of the house has never been great. And since the greenhouse was removed, there's been an awkward empty space on the right of the dining room. And the upstairs, which should be for bedrooms, had never been fully used, and one of the downstairs bedrooms was a mess of inefficiency.

I love Sulani. I do. But this house? This 64x64 piece of glorious, imposing, majestic, simming? I miss it. Look at those gardens! You can't do this on Sulani. However, my beachfront mansion with those nice red galleries made me think of applying what I learned there to this house. Maybe the layout could be improved. That is Giancarlo walking out the front door, so he hadn't died yet when the revamp was happening.



The red circle is where the kitchen is. I really liked the couch, and fireplace, and that stays. The yellow circles are much improved bathrooms. It's so useful to have them close to the entrance.

Flanking the entrance are glorified passages like I have in my beachfront Sapphire Shores house. On some of the pedestals are golden frogs from trips to the jungle. And those red passages really do look good when the sun shines through the long windows, and... bonus... they're juice bottle shaped for sims who love their juice! The house, after all, is called Windmilles & Wine. To get the everything to fit, some walls adjacent to the big entrance pillars had to be pulled forward, and stuff happens, and... here's the house now:



"But!", I hear you say, "That's cheap wood paneling!" (You're quite right, it is.)

But no! It's not! (Seriously, it really is.) It's a fluted marble column. Fluted. Marble.

Not long after moving the kitchen, I wanted to add more light to it. So I did. Instead of cold stone flags, that's "bowl of Cherrywood' flooring, which is one of my favourite. The Dine Out oven fits now, along with the ever-present Yum Cooker, and it's fun to collect those experimental meals and photos. A house like this should have the facilities to make all the foods, and now it does. Ah, the indoor grill is fine. No worries.



Mr Roland Ramsey. Cringe. He has no history. No skill. No talent. I moved him in -- he's an elder -- and set about making him into an Awful Man. Cringe again. (I did too well in making him creepy.) We needed a pollinator, and now Giancarlo had left the house there was room to move one in. The last one was a blue alien with dark hair, so I wanted a change. Mr Roland was edited in CAS to make him blue-eyed and blonde. And come on, when else can any sim wear that outfit and that hair and moustache? He's a sim I have difficulty liking. By design! Sawyer had been a YA for a while, and it was time we got the next heir. She was chosen, poor girl, because her angry brows and mouth had preserved more from the founders (well, just Persephone) than her sisters.



A lot of light in the kitchen. Sadly this is an autumn and winter chapter, and it's been dull and cloudy most of the time. I really want to see the house and gardens in the spring, which we haven't seen yet. But that kitchen, of a sunny morning, should be delightful.





Like I said, Mr Roland Ramsey didn't die. Almost a pity!



I'll add another chapter tomorrow. I've got the pictures ready to go, but 16 pictures at once is too much to digest as a reader. I'm conscious of you.

Sawyer's baby...

[Heart Foam]

Mr Roland Ramsey continues being not dead in the most unpleasant way. He's taken a re-traiting potion and is now self-absorbed, self-confident, and flirty.



That's Nancy Caliente, who somehow had become an elder without having children. We don't want the Caliente house to become vacant. The magic of CAS can reset a sim to a younger stage, but it won't put them at day 1 of being YA or A. So, for that reason, Roland offered Nancy a cloned age-away serum. (And children.)

The two dogs both became elders, and were put up for adoption to a good home. Even before that, and when there was space in the house, we tried to have puppies but it seemed to be glitching. But with no dogs, there was space. When Teppei was found outside in the cold, and I still had cheats enabled from aging Nancy down, I added him to the household to nurse him back to health. I can't help it. And the family do have that nice home vet clinic.



He's an Abyssinian. Lacey, the most well-raised and youngest of the daughters, is the designated vet. She's a long range conservationist. We haven't yet set foot in Sulani, so how much the islands can be improved by spreading the word (to her family) to save the planet... I guess I'll find out.

Soon, Teppei had a friend.



Honey is a Siberian. She was rescued in the early hours of Winterfest I think, and was in the home clinic being repaired as the rest of the house was decorating the tree and cooking a feast. It would be heartless to see sickly cat pixels and not want to help.

They have different ears and different fur, and I'm thinking kittens, but right now the house is full.



Even found time to build a snow friend. --No Father Winter babies because he's a pear, and if you really want a child to inherit that trait, you sacrifice being picky and shallow about how the father looks. You just have to take what's on offer. And... no. Not this time. But I do like collecting traits, and maybe the next generation father... so with that in mind Sawyer was eating strawberries for a girl. And the girl was born on Winterfest.

More of the new kitchen.



And, brace yourself, here's the new face of Windmilles & Wine... Kaitlynn!







I'm also just getting tired of that brow and mouth. Variety, game! Please! No, she's not angry. That's her neutral face. *Deep sigh.* I feel it's more resilient than Vlad's Nose was. Kaitlynn might rebel against her family name and most identifying features and change 'em as soon as she becomes a teen. She got her father's colours, and her mother's shapes.

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In other news:

1. Roland has a bad reputation. Really? How? Why?



2. Katherine is dead.



3. Roland doesn't care.



4. Cat Friend Honey has a Simstagram account.



5. Cat Friend Honey also ran away the day Katherine died, and Kaitlynn needed a hug.



6. And spring has sprung. Somewhere in there is an emotional, angular toddler.

[Heart Foam]

Well, I've been building again. So you -- both of you -- suffer through some joyless commentary about How To Not Care That Your Palace Has a Yum Cooker.

Firstly, Roland has died.



He wasn't long for the world, and at the time of his happy shuffle off this mortal coil, has fathered 14 children*, with more on the way. When I aged him back to the start of the elder stage with Age Away, he was only 2 days younger than Katherine. There was actually some rushing to get through his... business.

Kiera and Lacey witnessed his end without getting any sad moodlet. Maybe related to his bad reputation?

Sawyer had a whim for a hot tub, and her wish was granted.



(Also, note the cheap wooden paneling fluted marble columns that are also at the back of the house.) That was the hot tub solution, that looks nice enough to my eyes with the Sulani... thing... over it. The colour did change later when I changed the non-slip mats with wooden ones from Spa Day.

Inside, I got tired of the lounge and changed it for no better reason. And I really like those base game cuttlefish sofas. Those are glorious. Softer curves, not stick thin like the Cozofa and Comfultimate Sofa.



Yes, that's a kava bowl on the bar for a kava party that's not yet happened. I'm thinking that the Beach Life aspiration is a far more interesting way to be stress-free than buying the Carefree trait, and something my teen sims will routinely do.



Toddlers need fireplaces. Even in my beachfront house, which never gets cold, there are plenty fireplaces for this reason. It's a reliable way to keep a youthful Kaitlynn happy.

So Honey was going to have kittens...



... but just stood there and didn't. I reset her, and that instantly prompted the dialogue to name a cat, but none was forthcoming. Not being emotionally attached to either Teppei or Honey, and having nursed them to health, I have moved them into the Whitman household across the road.

Dining room:







I don't know who the stranger is or how he got in. (The gaudy golden zebra carpet has since been changed.) I have these short moments of rebellion when the over-the-top-and-hey-its-only-sims feeling comes over me. But it doesn't quite work. I'm also just using some underused furniture for the sake of change. Those are Get Together chairs. There's been a wave of purple through the house of late.

Kait as a child still has the huge mouth, but her brows seem okay? Dare we hope? When she's grown up, she's probably on the cusp of being stunning... but isn't.

Nobuya is a new sim to the household. Another single, male, elder. And being the elder, and not irresponsibly flying backyard-built rockets into space (seriously kids, not okay - do not take life lessons from the Sims), reads to Kait. He's the father figure she needs. Also, Mr Roland Ramsey is dead, and... y'know Sims. He's not going to be quite as available to every female sim as Roland was, because Roland did quite well.



Mum and not-dad and daughter playing chess so she can hurry up and do homework!



Sawyer had a makeover. Given... everything about her... she is looking, dare we say, attractive. That short knitted dress thing does a good job of disguising the pot-belly body shape, but the hairdo and makeup is what I'm most proud of. Her unusual and not-entirely-human skin / hair colour combo is hard to work with.

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A scenic digression. There was a thunderstorm, and I set about trying to get some lightning pictures. In getting these, 114 extra screenshots were taken (and since deleted). Patience is a virtue.









*Roland's final count is 20 children.