The Official EA Forum

I spend some time hanging out at the official EA forum; my User Name there is HappySimmer3. There are some nice people there even if you do have to overlook the occasional trolls and adolescent bullies. ;)  My favorite forum there is the CAW forum where simmers show their world WIP's made with the Create a World tool. I maintain a thread there called World Explorers - just a group of people who love exploring various worlds, both fan-made as well as EA made.  Maybe some day when I have more free time I will try making a world of my own!

There's also a gift-giving forum on www.forum.thesims3.com. Some very nice, kind-hearted people hang out here who get joy from gifting other simmers items they want. They often run contests. The first one I entered was for a 10x10 residential lot. I'd never tried building a house on a lot that small before so I decided to do it for the challenge.

Last month I discovered a contest based around the House Hunters series from Home & Garden Network (HGTV) on cable. (I love this show!) The first challenge was to build a house in Naples Italy; at the time I was busy building for and playing Monte Vista. This meant I spent time researching Italy in general and Tuscany in particular. I created some Showtime lots and a Local Watering Hole that I had the best time building! Shortly after finishing this lot, I found the House Hunters: Naples, Italy thread.

Although I discovered the thread too late to enter the contest, I ended up creating a house based on one of the inspiration photographs that was posted there. I uploaded the house to my Studio on the EA forum; here is a picture of the front exterior:

So this month there was another contest hosted by seascape along with some very friendly and kind and helpful co-sponsors. This one is called House Hunters: The French Quarter. Actually, the house can be in the Garden District, Warehouse District, or anywhere in the vicinity of the French Quarter in New Orleans. These contests are in two parts; you can create the sims who are seeking the house based on the description provided as well as create a house they might consider purchasing, or just do one or the other. I decided to try doing both, just because the whole contest became an inspiration for playing the game!

I've had a lot of fun researching the architecture of NOLA as well as the various sites to see there. Maybe one day I'll get to visit! I also had fun playing my couple. This was the first time where I played the game making an effort to invite the family members over regularly for birthday parties and seasonal holidays. It was very entertaining. :-)

First I'll be posting a backstory about the couple I made, then I will be uploading the house I created for this contest. This contest is really the reason I decided to do this blog. I started my couple as teens and have a ton of pics to share about their life and family.