Hair Dump... Again

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, I've been home since Thursday night, I still haven't put my Build and Buy stuff back in my Downloads folder... but I come bearing, um. Twenty-one hairs in yet another hair dump. I SWEAR someday I'll put these up on Garden of Shadows, honest, with pretty in-game pics and everything, but right now? Goddamn I just want to share.



Updated with a header and Sims File Share links as of May 25 2022!

Wanna help me feed my cats?

In case you feel like dropping me a buck or two, should you have a buck or two to spare. Donors get two things at the moment: a) a link to the Super Secret Cat Gallery, full of pictures of the cats you'll be feeding, updated sporadically when the cats do something photogenic and I'm fast enough on the trigger to catch it, and b) a link to the list of content I have done-but-not-screencapped, nearly done, partly done, or in the planning stages, and the option to suggest what ought to be in the next batch of things I focus on.




Ariel
Ulkrshn 22/Xandher's textures recolored by Bedwyr/Pooklet's actions
Teen-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Faithful Lover
Coolsims M70/textures by StakeitUK/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Frolicksome Maid
Newsea Oasis F/textures by StakeitUK/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


His Grace
Jade 05 FtM by Yuxi/textures by Yuxi/Pooklet's actions
YA-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Housewife
Dora Emon Mesh 03/textures by Yuxi/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Huntsman I and II
Huntsman I Ponytail requires Uni or Free Time/Ja's textures/Pooklet's actions
Teen-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share
Huntsman II requires Uni or Free Time/Melodie9's All Ages Ponytail/Ja's textures/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Poet...
Sims 2 Store Wavylong FtM by HIM666/tweaked EAxis textures/Pooklet's actions
YA-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


... Laureate
Sims 2 Store Wavylong tweaked by Hysterical Paroxysm/tweaked EAxis textures/Pooklet's actions
YA-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Leonine
BeosBoxBoy's Tyler Hanson/Beos textures/Pooklet's actions
YA-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Lordling
Talenzz Kitamura mesh/Pooklet's textures/Pooklet's actions
Teen-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Let's, Serf!
SimCribbling #5/Faceplug's textures/Pooklet's actions
Child-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Pinned and Twisted
Adele's Antoinette mesh/CutthroatDollie's textures/Pooklet's actions
Teen-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Plaited Scholar
Sugar and Caffeine's Jake Sully Braid/Ja and Pooklet's textures/Pooklet's actions
Teen-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Puckish
FantasyRogue's Late to the Party/FR's textures/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Sin of Pride
Augustin's Wavy mesh/Nissi's textures/Pooklet's actions
YA-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Sweet Princess
Marko 'Released' Mesh/Xandher's textures recolored by Bedwyr/Pooklet's actions
Teen-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Vain Pixie
Sussi's 1600s Baroque Mesh/Coldfire's textures/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Wayward Son
David (requires Mansion & Garden)/Ja's textures/Pooklet's actions
Teen-Elder (teen required separate packages, I don't even know)
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Wee Sleekit (I was running out of titles.)
Coolsims F74/Morrigun's textures/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share


Winsome Wench
SAU MYOS 15/Nouked by Kale/Pooklet's actions
Toddler-Elder
DOWNLOAD on Mediafire | DOWNLOAD on Sims File Share

Okay, and since there are twenty-two hairs behind the cut, let's put the boilerplate outside the cut.

One Fish: NO BLOODY PAYSITES. These are Pooklet's actions, Pooklet says no. So don't do it.

Two Fish: Binned! Familied! Compressorized! Meshes included except where you need an expansion pack! Swatches included in the download files!

Red Fish: Elders all have gray-- you get Pipe Bomb for Family One, Smoke Bomb (my homebrew) for Family Two, Mail Bomb for Family Three, and Time Bomb for Family Four. It is complete cluttery overkill, but every color has an elder gray attached, and you may count yourself lucky I didn't just do gray streaks or something. Feel free to re-bin and re-upload as you please, it doesn't hurt my feelings. Time Bomb is included as a custom for all (applicable) ages, since you never know when you'll need a white-haired toddler. Or something.

Blue Fish: Right, so, gotta thank Pooklet, Ja, Quaxi, Theo, Kale, Sugar and Caffeine, FantasyRogue, Bedwyr, Xandher, Ulkrshn, StakeitUK, Coolsims, Newsea, Dora Emon, Yuxi, Jade, Melodie9, Hysterical Paroxysm, HIM666, BeosBoxBoy, Talenzz, SimCribbling, Faceplug, Adele, CutthroatDollie, Augustin, Nissi, Marko, Sussi, Coldfire, Morrigun, Sim Artist's Union, and probably Nouk and always Lyn, because Lyn made sure I had Photoshop, and Photoshop is important.

I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: OH PLEASE edit my file and/or folder names to taste; I made them ridiculously long so that they could be snipped down to fit folks' organizational systems. If you subfolder these too deeply, they could fail to show due to the name strings being too long. I mean, even I cut things down a bit. Better a ridiculously long filename you can shorten than going "Goddammit, which frickin' hair is this?" later, right?

Comments

[hat_plays_sims]

Apparently, what happens is you get The Headless Stripper to ferry your Sims off to the hereafter. ... Which is awesome in its own way...

I'm... learning-- I'm still a novice at a lot of stuff, and I have no desire to learn to mesh-- but it's the love of theme that really gets me in trouble. I can see an empty niche for certain things that I do not have the skills to make or patience to really really finish. (And then I make things and forget to share them.) I do, however, mess with every damn thing. I love custom food, but if they come on custom plates I'm liable to dip into my store of photos and make them more period.

I'm using Amaryll's androgynous Servo, so it's mapped pretty similarly to a nude skin-- I finally found something that looks okay on the ankles, although I may slap some kind of decoration there when I really finish. Now I'm trying to make the shoulder seams pretty. I do that, I move on to the head. Scary. (For the record, TeruK's BJD skin uses the AM texture for EM, TM, and... CU. WTF. Little girls do not need cut pecs, yo.)

I do HAVE a dollhouse, but it's the kind that closes in the front like a cabinet. And that's how it's currently being used, as a storage cabinet. I don't even know what's up in there anymore. My dollhouse furniture is on display on shelves, instead. I do make some other things for dollhouse dolls-- hats, tiny stuffed animals, perfume bottles out of glass beads, that kind of thing-- but I'm not a woodworker, so I either buy furniture or buy furniture kits, which are fun, and I don't sculpt, so anything like food or flowers or... whatever, that, I buy. (My rule is, if I can make it, for a lesser or comparable price, without driving myself insane in the process, I'm allowed to buy it.) You could hand-sew pillows, that's a nice straight seam-- it takes a while, but it's a nice straight seam. Course, it's a lot faster to sew a nice straight seam with a sewing machine-- someday I really do intend to learn, so I can make some curtains (to hide some stuff on a bookshelf. Rats make great pets, but I have become a fan of hiding stuff that isn't pretty to look at, and pet supplies count.)

[fantasyrogue]

lol, The Headless Stripper XD Great name. Awesome, yes. Wildly inappropriate for my plans? Also yes XD

Meshing's not so bad. But I never really had a desire to learn it until I ran into things I couldn't do with just retexturing (and my very first finished complete mesh was actually fireman pants with a bare torso for this calender I made once that's on MTS :P Classy, huh?). I'm amazingly stubborn at creating and I sort of crave new challenges in a way. I prefer doing projects that seem difficult (but not impossible, I'm not a masochist :P) over doing something I have done a bunch of times before. Or projects I can just let my creativity let loose on. For example, I'm not that fond of blending skintones even if I did two sets.. but I love doing the supernatural skintones because I get to decorate and paint, I get to combine colours and add little details and that stuff is just *fun*.

You're reminding me of all the seam issues with skintones, bleurgh XD I wish you lots of luck with figuring out the servo. Skintones can be such pains in the butt. Yeah, I noticed that before when I had an alien kid born with a purple recolour of one of TeruK's skintones. He had this very pronounced clavicle and the chest looked like the male skintone. It wasn't a super cut skin, so there was atleast that, but still. Lazy!

So not a display dollhouse either? You could do it up like in the olden days :D Basically like a display cabinet, but for tiny rooms. I remember seeing one or two at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, old ones. *searches around for a bit* Like so http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/images/aria/bk/z/bk-nm-1010.z and http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/images/aria/bk/z/bk-14656.z (I hope those links work). You know that sounds like a lot of fun? Crafting tiny things. And talking of sculpting reminds me that I still have half a pack of super sculpey lying around >.< I am going to finish that figure some time, I swear XD

Mm, I suppose pillows can be hand-sewn yeah. Although moot point now, I managed to find a store that sold cheap pillow cases in just the colour I was looking for. I'm having my curtains professionally sewn atm (my living room windows are very bare right now, we only moved here a few months ago and curtains weren't high on the list.. well except for bedroom curtains) the ceilings are tall and the window large and on top of that it's an older house (1906-1930, thereabouts) and the ceiling is made of straw, so trying to put a curtain rail up there ourselves would probably result in the rail, and the ceiling, falling on our heads XD I figure, I can spend money on nice quality well-sewn curtains now and since they're so big, when I move, I'll just take them with me and reuse them. Making bigger curtains smaller is always possible :P

(you have rats? Rats are awesome. I love most small rodents as pets, I used to have gerbils myself)

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, hey, now you know it can work, theoretically!

I can totally understand the love of supernatural skintones. And the stubbornness-- I WILL get default replacements done for everything that doesn't already have at least one decent Medieval default, oh yes I will. Although the whole new-challenge thing is how I am with sewing-- being able to Pooklet hairs is a great relief because I'm guaranteed consistent results, but when I want to make something with my own hands, hey, let's draft a new pattern!

It's on all of them? Dangit. I have a couple alien recolors of those skins that I love all to bits saved for the alien invasion game (if I ever get it going again), but now I'm considering editing them. Fmeh. Seam issues suck, they really do. And I'm kind of disappointed that this BJD skintone doesn't have half the joints a BJD would need (I owned one for a while, got tired of her, and rehomed her at a very very slight loss).

Actually, my elegant three-story storage cabinet is constructed along similar lines to that first one, it's just also got siding and windows. Most of my furniture is on display on a set of shelves in room groupings, sort of how I plan to do it up when I can reclaim and finish my house. It needs wiring, which I need to learn to do.

Well, hey, it's awesome you found what you were looking for! I tend to get throw pillows at discount places, because it's cheaper than sewing them. And indeed it is always possible to cut things down eventually. Your ceiling is made of straw?

(One aging, ailing rat at the moment. I am expecting to be sad any day now, but she keeps on plugging along. But she's the *counts* ninth rat I've had (in pairs and triples), and dang they are awesome pets. Smart as a dumb dog and infinitely easier to take care of, but I'm considering taking a breather from them once Sunshine passes.)

[fantasyrogue]

Well you're well on the way to getting all those default replacements done, it's very impressive what you've been doing. Sometimes it's nice to do something relaxing (and gotta love those actions for the ease of use) and sometimes it's nice to do something new and exciting.

I think so, don't hold me to that, I don't really use teru-k/ephemera's skintones much these days, I just recall thinking the purple recolour I had, didn't have a very child-like child state. Seams are a pain, I keep UV maps around for the bodies when I do skintones as I always end up having to get rid of some seam somewhere.

Oh that's cool :D Those cabinets are interesting to look at. Wiring?

Well yeah, buying them is not that expensive. I think I paid about 7 euros or so for a pillowcase, all sewn and ready to use and I think a meter or two of fabric is about the same (possibly less if you can find a cheap fabric that's decent quality). So really, buying the finished product is easier. The sewing option was more there for when I really couldn't find anything, I wanted a pillow in a nice and fresh spring green and it seemed all the stores I hit up at first weren't doing green (lot of aqua and purple and such).

Pardon, I said straw (which does exist as a ceiling material) but in this case it's reed. Reed and then this layer gets put on and it's smoothed out. What happens with these is, if you just randomly try to put a hole in it, that the reed doesn't always like that and you can get bigger holes than you were expecting. I had professionals put up our bedroom curtains and they used a special type of plug for putting the rails up (as normal plugs damage the ceiling). It's a pain in the butt really, but well, 100 year old apartment give or take, what can I say.

(aw, poor little rat. Well, as long as she's still happy. Rats always struck me as fun pets but I prefer gerbils. Not as intelligent maybe, but inquisitive, amusing the watch and adorable.. I had two, as you have to keep them atleast in pairs, and they were great. I miss em)

[hat_plays_sims]

Thank you! The defaults are really important to me to get done, because... well, as far as having a Medieval game goes, I'm trying to live the dream-- and I don't think a lot of folk with themed games have realized how much you can default out. (A big project I'm not entirely looking forward to? The deck of cards for the poker table. Because I'm an idiot who wants to use cards as close to period as I can get.)

Yeah, I think I had a kid with one of her skintones, but being in the alien invasion game, all the clothes were kind of neck-high... I'll have a look one of these old days. And UV maps are an absolute GODSEND. I had to use one to figure out what was going wrong with my plantsim skin-- turns out one arm on the original skintone was too far over, so half the deco was cut off abruptly.

For electric lights! Which isn't super-period, but it gets dark in the back of that house. It's pretty deep. (We 'lost' a litter of kittens in there. They were playing, the people went to do something, and a little while later... no kittens. Mysterious! Distressing! We looked under all the furniture and regarded the dogs suspiciously. And then we found them all curled up in a fuzzy little heap in the dollhouse dining room. Harley still likes to think she can fit through the windows.)

You know, it strikes me kind of odd when it's cheaper to buy something than make something-- but I hear you on needing a very specific color. My office (computer room and workroom) is done up in shades of brown from sand to chocolate, and a deep true red. My computer armoire is red, I have one red throw pillow, and some red-heavy artwork... and that's it, because DAMN it is hard to find a red that matches everything. (Someday? CURTAINS.)

That's kind of awesome, though. I'm so used to drywall everywhere...

(Rats are the same way with needing to be social with other rats... but sometimes you end up with one lone old rat who's just too set in her ways to meet new baby cagemates.)

[fantasyrogue]

It's the little things that matter, the finishing touch. The idea that the entire game matches your medieval theme. It's a daunting thing but it's what finishes it and makes it that much more effective.

As I said, I'm not sure it's on all skintones, but I'd double-check anyway because I'm fairly certain they atleast did suffer from the clavicle of doom. And yeah, the uv maps, great. I find a lot of skintones have seams along the sides. And the UV map was especially handy when I was doing a servo skintone full of seams and rivets and such. I don't want to think about doing that without a uv map.

Aah, that makes sense. I kept wondering what kind of wiring you mean. And hey, you can always pretend the lights are... very powerful candles :P (like, actual life sized kittens? Wow. That gives me a whole different idea on the scale.. and also, that sounds totally adorable)

Well, uhm, I suppose fabrics are marked up for a single consumer as opposed to a factory. I mean, I take it a machine pumps out those pillow cases in bulk. Ooh, red and brown. That's a nice combo. I debated about using red as an accent myself, as my living room has brown furniture, white wall but with a light camel accent. But I liked green better, it's a bit more.. cheerful and fresh. Red's nice though, if you get the right shade.

The ceiling is plastered though, just like the walls, not like you can *see* the reed or anything. You can see old cracks in it though, and old seams where there used to be a set of double doors in the middle of the room with storage on either side. Ceiling's kinda ugly really, but I don't spend a lot of time looking at it. Oh old early 1900s apartments, there is some charm to them, but also a lot of headaches.

(yeah, I never got a new gerbil when one of my pair died either, because introducing a new gerbil to an old one, especially as in my case female gerbils, is not an easy task. Not impossible, but it takes a lot of split-cage method and such and with the age of the remaining gerbil it just wasn't worth it).

[hat_plays_sims]

It doesn't match yet, but boy it will. It's one of those things where... where there's just no reason NOT to do it. It's not easy, but only because it's so frickin' big a job. Most of my textures are pretty simple, and I can't help thinking that, really, anybody could do this, for any prop they hate the look of. (Also, thanks for pointing me in the direction of that mesh defaulting tutorial-- I'm still working on making it do what I want it to do, but I know the elder female top works! If I can make the nudes work, swimsuits and underwear should be easy. ... Mostly because I can test with Body Shop.)

Most of 'em are shaped like candles, or like gas lamps. There aren't a whole lot of modern dollhouse... anythings. And yes, life-sized kittens, but they were an accidental litter and were pretty small at the time-- still nursing occasionally.

An industrial machine does the sewing, but there's still a person overseas manning it. It's a thing. My red is this... true cherry, I've always been a big fan of red, and I fell in love with the armoire so everything sort of had to work around that.

*chuckles* I believe it. I'm in California, the Quaker State, and you really have to have the foundation inspected if you think you want to buy a Victorian home around these parts.

(That's where Sunshine is. Also I know I'll neglect her if I get new busy babies-- I am easily distracted by the shiny, and babythings are always the shiny.)

[fantasyrogue]

Well, anyone could do it maybe, but it takes dedication to the cause. Speaking as someone who is lazy, well :P I understand why a lot of people don't do it ;) (you're welcome on the tutorial, I'm glad it helped)

Aah. No, I wouldn't imagine so. Hm, that'd be something though, a contemporary looking dollhouse.. or a dollhouse that's really historical, like, pre-medieval. And aw, kittens <3

Well, of course there's still a person XD But it's the bulk amounts that usually push down the price. That and probably "made in china" or something. I like the deep reds, the darker reds.. to an extent. As an accent colour more than something I want a lot of. I grew up stubbornly disliking red and it wasn't till later years that I conceded that red is a nice colour, given the right shade, and that hell I can even *wear* red (but not all reds)

Oh dear, that bad with the foundations? Foundation isn't a problem for us as it's a third floor apartment. But we do have the one straight under the roof, so there's that (flat roof too). The balcony is in especially bad shape and *needs* to be fixed, in fact a dude from the city council was over earlier in the week and said "that needs to be fixed". Although it's not *as* bad as the one attached to the apartment below us.. that one's actually got bits falling off >.>

(well it's only because baby rodents are cute fuzzy wuzzy little things )

[hat_plays_sims]

Livin' the dream. And the crayola colors make me facepalm, so there's that, too.

Oh, you can get contemporary ones. And there are folk who specialize in things like Ancient Egyptian miniatures. Usually, if you can't find what you want, you can find someone who's willing to make it for you.

I like red. I also like green, blue, brown, purple, sometimes orange... Colors are awesome (says the girl who keeps making her Sims' stuff brown). My bedroom's painted green, despite my mother insisting it'd be too dark for the space. Mom insists that a lot-- she's not afraid of color, but she's intimidated by any color darker than 'sand.'

Well, when the ground tends to wobble, the old houses-- the ones built before 'earthquake safety' was invented-- tend to suffer a bit. And if you've got a house that was built in 1874, as a random example, we've had two major and scores of... I hate to say 'medium sized,' but there are basically three classes of earthquakes, to a Californian: there's the HO SHIT get under a table get in a doorway oh god this is a big one! earthquake, the Whoa that is definitely an earthquake! earthquake (where you go 'cool!' right before going 'man, I hope nothing broke'), and the much more frequent Did you feel that too? little earthquake. And they're all kind of hard on the old, old houses-- and also the older bridges, which is why we spend money on retrofitting things.

(All babythings do that to me, I swear. Rats, kittens, puppies, reptiles (okay, generally I tell baby snakes they're pretty, not adorable), eventually birds... I'm pleasantly surprised that spring came and went and nobody handed me a baby bird to keep alive overnight. Apparently I'm the only one who can do it. Although the memorable one was when my sister's dog-- this was a few years back-- brought in a dove that was almost flighted. Bird was in perfect shape; Sage had just been licking it and loving on it. The avian rescue place looked at it and asked Dad, "This one's fine. Why didn't you just put it back in its tree?" Dad said, "Because my daughter found it under the kitchen table." "... Oh.")

[fantasyrogue]

Well, yeah the colours get in the way, I guess. I kind of like the colourful game at times but it's not period appropriate I suppose (would depend on the era, they could get quite colourful sometimes).

Oh I was thinking even more contemporary, but I'm sure they exist too. Though probably not as much.

I like all those colours, except orange. I have an aversion to orange (and yellow, and pink). Thankfully I look stupid wearing those colours anyway (especially orange, it's the auburn hair). Haha, well nothing wrong with sand. Dark colours in rooms can be very nice, it's just very dependant on what dark colour and the size of the room and how much dark colour.

Oh yeah, I can see how that could be a major problem. Earthquakes are exceptionally rare here and if they do happen it's more like the news saying "there was a small earthquake" and people going "there was?". As far as natural disasters are concerned, we're cushy up here in the Netherlands, no earthquakes, no volcanoes.. we do have to worry about the water constantly and for some old houses water is a serious problem (some very old ones are basically built on poles, which can start rotting after so many hundred years).

(well pretty much all babythings are cute, even snakes in their own way. Aw poor little birdie, but atleast it being in good shape means it had good chances of living a full life after release. I've never rescued any birds, my parents live in an area with enough birds but sadly most that are in trouble die right away because they flew into one of the windows :( The saddest part was when a hawfinch, which you don't see all that much in gardens, flew against a window and died. It was half of a breeding pair that had been scoping my parents backyard. And my parents dog is a doofus and mostly leaves birds alone, this despite him technically being a hunting breed of dog (my parents do not hunt))

[hat_plays_sims]

Sometimes it's the color, or the plastic-ness, or the glass (I just made all the bar tumblers pewter. I'll do the same for the kitchen glasses shortly), or the technocrap...

It depends on what you're looking for, I guess-- whether you mean a house or the stuff to fill one with. Most houses do the Victorian-Colonial-Farmhouse thing, because that consistently sells.

I spent six years working in a Halloween store, so I got used to wearing orange... I actually surprised my pasty, slightly yellow-toned self by looking good in a nice spice or pumpkin orange. My bedroom isn't even that dark, though-- it's... about two shades more saturated than sage green. Yeah, the bedroom is tiny, but it's not like I painted it pthalo green or anything.

Ohhh, too much water, yeah. That's a worry, too. I grew up during a ridiculously long drought we had out here in the 80s-- I'm used to 'worry about the water' meaning 'turn the faucet off when you brush your teeth.'

(Sage was a quarter wolf, which you'd think would mean a high prey drive, but nooooo-- no, she loved tiny little things. Kittens, baby birds, my sister's beanie babies... My sister's friend once brought her baby son over to visit and show off, and Sage just wanted to sit there and lick the baby. First thing that kid learned to say to the dog was "Sage no kisses!" when he was about three. The cats, however, are mighty hunters and always have been... at least since they got out of the 'four of us can fit in one corner of the dollhouse' phase.)

[fantasyrogue]

Or the occasional case of "wtf were they thinking"?

Mm, I was thinking of houses. I was just wondering. I'm not too knowledgeable on the field of dollhouses, never having had one beyond one made of cardboard boxes that I glued together myself as a child (my dad wasn't very handy and wouldn't make me one, so I figured I'd make me one myself.. I was very busy for quite a while glueing boxes together and decorating it with pictures cut out of magazines XD).

Oh wow, that must be something to work at. I'm not sure my pasty face and hair with orange tinges in it would look that great with orange shirts but it's a moot point, I don't like orange anyway :P Atleast not most of the time. I dunno, a dark phtalo green could work.. but not if you painted all 4 walls in that unless it was a *really* big room. As an accent colour though? Sure. Anything's better than the neon green one of the rooms in our apartment is, left by the previous owners. Neon green walls, neon green wall paint on the radiator (which is peeling), crayon blue on the doors :|

I am kinda glad I never had to experience that. If anything we have too much water over here but nothing one would notice. Good engineering keeps it out. But some cities are largely built on poles and the very old buildings still have wooden poles in there (these days they use other materials) so yeah, some houses look a bit like they're falling over.

(Aw, that's adorable though. Although I imagine not everyone is appreciative of that kind of behaviour. My parents dog is a weimaraner, definitely a hunting breed, he's a complete doofus when it comes to actual hunting. Typically spectacularly failing to notice the deer when my mom takes him for walks and such but if he *does* catch a whiff of something it's very hard to stop him. The worst he's done is maybe drag some roadkill with him... and he ate a mouse once, which was sad for the poor little mouse but kind of an amusing when my mom told it to me.. I could just imagine her flailing about trying to tell the dog to let go of the mouse while the dog stared at her, mouse tail hanging out of his mouth, till he triumphantly swallowed the live mouse whole. Poor mousie. I think most cats are good at hunting, I've always wanted a cat but I've so far failed to convince my husband that cats are nice pets to have).

[hat_plays_sims]

I don't get too much of that with the props, but I do occasionally get a dose of "Why is this slaved? WHY?"

I did that, too! I did it for barbies, so I needed BIG boxes, but I think every little girl does that at some point. It sounds like you got more ambitious than I did-- I just stacked boxes into a roughly houselike configuration and stuck my few pieces of furniture in there.

The Halloween store was pretty fun, as far as retail goes. Good grief, neon green? The first thing I would've bought for that place would've been a bucket of primer, followed quickly by a bucket of paint. The radiator has the right idea in trying to shed that stuff.

The only other time I've heard of things being built on poles, my friend Sam was talking about his step-grandmother's vacation home in Galveston, Texas-- apparently they can weather the sometimes-wild Gulf weather better, if they're up on poles like that.

(We had a weimer, once-- she caught a few mice, but we let her have them. We've had cats for way too long to not accept that predators have a prey drive, and that sometimes they will eat the wildlife. The dogs bring stuff in far less often than the cats-- we've had the cats catch mice, rats, birds, once a bat, and once the biggest green grasshopper I have ever seen. (Rats are the worst, because we have zippy little ship rats in the wild out here-- they're bigger than mice and not as fragile as birds, and they tend to fight back... so the cats tend to lose them, and then we have to catch them.) Cats do make pretty awesome pets, though-- we've never been without at least one cat in the household. I recommend cute kitten videos on YouTube. It's always easier to get someone interested in getting a kitten than in getting a cat. Although beware: when you want to cuddle, a kitten will want to play, and when you want to play, a kitten will want to sleep. That's just how they work.)

[fantasyrogue]

Some things are just strange. But well, the Sims is a big game, I don't expect everything to make sense :P

Oh my doll houses were for barbies too. I'd go to the local supermarket and pick up product boxes from there. I'd usually cut a door in one of the boxes too, maybe even draw a door knob on. I'd read hobby books or watch tv programs where people would make stuff out of cardboard. I was a very active child when it came to crafts, although I always seemed to be jumping from craft to craft (I did origami, parchment stuff, quilling, clay, plaster casting, that.. coloured rubber stuff, drawing and painting, knitting, needlework, etc etc). I was always up to something, drawing and painting (and sometimes clay modelling) are the only ones that stuck :P

Well, it's the small side room (and yes, neon green), it's not high priority. Between the poo-brown and baby blue master bedroom with one wall covered in floral wallpaper (which prompty took the plasterwork off when we tried to remove it), the "prison grey" woodwork in the halls and the sort of reddish clay brown (like, trying desperately to be terracotta, but failing) in the living room (which also peeled off the walls) we've had our hands full. The apartment isn't really anywhere done with renovation work, it's liveable though, most of the living room and master bedroom are atleast done.

The pole building here (where they stick really really long poles in the ground for the foundation) is done because cities like Amsterdam don't have a strong soil to build on, if they didn't put poles in so deep that they actually hit solid soil (like, 13 meters down or something) all the houses would start sinking and sagging and falling over (and some still do that, some of the really old ones, because they would use wooden poles in the past)

(ooh, having to catch them yourself, lots of fun. Something to really thank the cats for! I'm afraid my husband is immune to kitten videos. You see he's the sensible sort, the "we'll get cat hair all over the place and the smells" type.)

[hat_plays_sims]

Strange and sad. I really wanted to be able to have the single date flower be a different color than the bouquet. *still sulking*

I don't even remember where the boxes came from. I do remember when I was ten or eleven, we bought a dollhouse kit that was on clearance... My sister and I did a lot of the work ourselves, when we finally started putting it together. Of course, it has since fallen apart, but hey. And oh indeed I know how being a restless Maker of Stuff goes.

... Wow. Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you. Did you use a steamer to remove the wallpaper? I'd hardly know where to start with all that, but my first battle cry would be "To the paint store!"

Ah, that makes sense, then. We're on adobe clay in my area, and then sandstone under that. I know it's very, very rare to find a building with a basement in California-- we all build to what's safest where we are.

(And yet, I've managed it twice. Although the first time, I got lucky-- ratty ran up a floor lamp and suddenly had nowhere to go but into my shoebox. ... And then I sort of adopted him. And pft, there are no smells if you use a good cat food and clean the litter box regularly! Hair, I can't help with. They do shed, but all mammals do.)

[fantasyrogue]

Well, technically it should be possible to un-slave it. But that's somewhat more complex and I wouldn't know how to do it off the top of my head.

There's dollhouse kits? I learn something new every day. I didn't have a sister to build stuff with, instead I had a younger brother. We spent a lot of time in his room building LEGO cities though, he'd make the cars and the train and such and I'd build houses and shops. Man, making stuff's great but I need to learn to finish stuff more often :P

Nah it came off relatively easily without a steamer (my dad removed it without our prompting, actually, not that we wanted to keep it. But yeah, that did peel the underlying paint and plaster off as well.. ). "To the paint store" wouldn't have nearly covered it XD We had to replaster a bedroom wall, bring all the woodwork back down to it's original wood with one of those funky blowdryer things for paint (the paint was 8 colours thick in some places and starting to crack and such). Part of the floor was redone because there was a sizeable lump in it (steel girder was coming up, pushing everything up). Walls in the living room were replastered as well. We tore all the laminate flooring out and had it replaced for newer, higher quality, stuff. Some outlets were redone by my dad (and in one place he found an electrical outlet, under an outlet. It was really strange, there was an outlet built into the wal and then some nitwit built another outlet on the wall on top of the other one. That's just a fire hazard waiting to happen, that kinda thing). New kitchen which we're still working on (which was another hazard as, probably the same nitwit, put all the major appliances on the same outlet...).

Now you've got me wondering if any houses in Amsterdam and such have basements... hm...

(I know that, but I can't convince my husband of it. Didn't help that when we moved into this place it was rather smelly from cats and covered with cat and dog fur)