I started this WordPress Blog back in 2012. At the beginning, I assure you, I had no idea what I was starting. I posted a few things… but it wasn’t for several years that my blogging really took off. I dabbled in a few Sims 3 stories (which are still accessible on this site – just check my retired & completed simlit section). By August 2016, however, I was well and truly hooked on blogging, although at that point, I was still waffling between Sims 3 and 4. The waffling didn’t take too much more time, though, before I was thoroughly addicted to Sims 4. Once I hit this point, I’ve never gone back. I still had (and have) periods of writer’s block and inactivity, but I always come back.
Sometime in 2023, this blog really tripled in traffic. And it did so on a very consistent basis. Which made me really start seriously considering the thoughts and ideas for it that I’d had in the back of my head for YEARS. The host I was on prior to this one, wordpress.com .. was great. It was cheap, it was reliable, and it was easy to use. However, the amount of customization and control I had over the website design and add-ons was, well.. very very low. And even if I doubled the cost of the plan I was on, it was going to remain virtually the same…. which is exactly the opposite of what this growing blog needed. With my challenges gaining in popularity, and my livestreaming, I really wanted to be able to upgrade the graphics, layout, and things that the website offered… By October, it was clear my blog was getting 25,000 to 30,000 hits per month on a very stable basis – so when I noticed that my two year subscription to wrodpress.com was ready to renew on the 26th, I decided, spur-of-the-moment, that there wasn’t going to be a better time to upgrade. So I immediately started looking for a way to pay for a new webhost, and researching where I wanted to go, as well as finding out exactly what upgrades I wanted and needed for the site. Originally, I was going to do a fund-raising stream for the money, but a very lovely friend of mine kindly donated the full amount I needed to pay for the next THREE YEARS of hosting. When that’s almost up, I will certainly be looking for ways to raise the money for the next web-hosting fee, but that’s a problem for future me. (If you’re interested in helping to support this site and my streaming, check out my Support Me page. 100% of donations will go to the website and my streaming.)
All that being said, I do try to be pretty transparent on the effort that goes into this website – the background work, the time for upgrading, the work involved in moving the site, as well as what it takes to keep my challenges updated. I’m also in a long process of adding a knowledge database to this website to share the Sims 4 knowledge I’ve accrued over the years (expect that to start happening by January 2024 – I do have a few other major things on my list before I start devoting a ton of time into the toolsnlinks section, but it’s coming.) This transparency led to the need to have a page devoted to collecting the posts about website news and information…. so that’s where this page comes in. Obviously, there’s no real reason to go back to the news I was posting at the very beginning of the website, but it’s there buried in the archives if you’re ever curious!
Updated Last: 2/10/2017
Before I do anything else, I figure I ought to introduce myself. I’m currently 39, and a married mother of one. I had 9 years as a single mother before finding the right dad and partner for my daughter, and I don’t regret a minute of it. I tend to have a rather odd sense of humor, as anyone who knows me would attest to – probably rather vigorously. I come by it mostly honestly – my dad’s family has a wacky brand of humor that is well-known and lamented throughout the family. The last major family reunion I attended, one of my cousins decided to set up a “talent show” that seemed to rather quickly devolve into silly blonde jokes – most of which were only laughed at by the “born” family members – not the in-laws. It’s quickly become a family joke about the “Family humor” – at reunions, the family tends to gravitate together in usually-laughing groups, while in-laws congregate in another area. My mom’s family humor was of a more dry, sarcastic bent.. so my sense of humor became rather warped between the two. 🙂
As I already mentioned, I have one daughter – who is now 17 years old, and I love her dearly. She’s as silly and opinionated and geeky as me, and proud of it. She likes horses and pirates and vampires and gaming and reading and art.. much like me. She’s into all sorts of things… Art is a really big part of her life, and something she plans to stick with. She’s also very much a gamer like me and my hubby. Being a gaming-type family, we have Xbox360, Playstation4 (and 3 and 2.. and 1), PSP, PSPVita, Nintendo DS, GameCube – heck I even have an old Intellivision game console – that works (not plugged in tho) around here somewhere. So there’s always plenty of games to choose from.
Let’s see .. life history. As I mentioned on the home page for this blog, I spent a good portion of my youth writing – and had some rather extensive training into it. I at one point (ok, probably more like many points) wanted to be a writer for a life career – and that may still come about one day… but I always got pulled back towards my first love – horses. I started riding at the age of three and a half and rode on a mostly daily basis from then until the time I was 19.. (at which point, life choices sent me far from home into the wilds of attempting to grow up – and couldn’t afford horses then.) I got back into them a few years later, buying a wonderful horse for myself, and a pony for my daughter (really, miniature horse, she was four .. hehe). I have since sold the horse – the prices to keep them simply skyrocketed in this area and I couldn’t afford her anymore. There was also a secondary – probably more primary – issue of the fact that she was simply more horse than I was able to comfortably handle – and fear was becoming an issue. To allow us to become better partners, I needed to be able to put more money into some professional training/help for the two of us, and I simply couldn’t afford it. I always planned to get another, calmer, horse, but it simply hasn’t happened. Not long after selling her, I ended up meeting my husband, and I became far too busy with family life to even have the time to work with horses .. but eventually.. it would be nice to get back into them… I just don’t see it happening any time soon.
Our current family pet is a Beagle/Terrier mix named Cassie that we got from a local no-kill shelter. We’ve had her since the middle of fall after our last dog, Balto, died from cancer. He’s missed terribly, even though we have another cute pooch. Cassie is usually pretty chilled out, and very quiet.. but she loves dinner and playtime (although I think dinner holds the top position in her life). Also recently, our cat Missy crossed the rainbow bridge as well (also due to cancer, unfortunately).
Well, enough babbling. I may eventually think of more about me to post .. but this will do as an introduction. *chuckle* .. probably more than most people want to know already!Continue reading →
So.. I’m just trying to get this blog started. Having never really blogged before, this should be a complete adventure. I think I will also copy/link all blog posts I put on the Sims3 site, most especially since currently they’re sorta hidden. They don’t even notify they’ve been posted to the wall, which seems silly, in my opinion…. there’s so many things EA should have done on their new social system that they didn’t – hopefully with time, they’ll fix that.
Being that I haven’t really “stretched” my creative muscles for a rather long time (beyond the normal, everyday randomness of my cluttered mind) .. this should be an interesting venture. I used to actually write, and draw, and such.. but as I aged, I got out of the habit. More out of a lack of time than anything else. I still do other creative sorts of things, like crafting, knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, other random crafty sorts of projects (which don’t always get finished – I tend to have a LOT of great ideas but end up re-thinking or getting bored of them.) But – it’s long past time to start writing back up. I’ve put a lot of thought into actually attempting to publish a book or two, but before I even do more than think about it, I have a whole lot of practice time and skill-building I’ll need to do – so this is a first step in that direction. I’ve needed a creative outlet for a while, and I finally decided (after reading other people’s Sim challenge stories) that it’s long past time I attempted it myself. I spent a rather long time procrastinating actually setting up a blog, then more time researching different blog engines (I tend to be picky, being a former web designer and web master myself), then more time procrastinating.. you get the idea. hehe. 😉
Soooo… enough rambling. Here goes nothing! Welcome to my blog!
So, I finally locate tracking information for my “preorder” from Origin – and it states that “estimated delivery date” is the 9th! … How is that fair…. at this point, I’m starting to think I’ll not be pre-ordering from Origin anymore without huge incentive offered if they can’t even get the item here within a day of release. Here’s hoping it’ll actually show up today, but.. *sigh* It’s not like I only ordered it in the last day or two, either… they had plenty of time to process the order, in my opinion. There are plenty of other places I could have pre-ordered a physical copy of the game and gotten a release-date delivery.. the least the actual publishing company could do is offer like services.
So.. enough ranting, I suppose. I came up with a project to occupy myself for the day(S) until it shows up.. I started up a new save file in Sunset Valley 2 (exchange download) – a blank town with lots of flat area for building – and am using it to test out the houses/lots/families I have downloaded that I’ve been procrastinating on testing. Will also allow me to weed out any icky CC that shows up and won’t let me uninstall. Additionally, I’m going to do a build on all the commercial lots for a small rural-style town, and post to the exchange on the off chance anyone else can use them. They’ll be mostly on the smallest lot possible for ease of placement in smaller town settings, and themed for a rural/farming community. So far I’ve done a military/city hall/police building and a Criminal building. The criminal building was great fun to put together, and I have to say it looks great. The load photo simply doesn’t do justice to the chaos of the junky-looking abandoned-farm building “backyard”. 🙂 In a small rural community, I figure, the Criminal building would have to be VERY well disguised to have any long-lasting use. 😉
Anyway. I’m off to build and test. And try NOT to be annoyed. .. hehe.
How is it that there are 24 hours in a day.. and somehow I don’t even get one to play Sims! It doesn’t quite seem fair. Between me and my hair-brained ideas I have to explore, family time, and insomnia/sleep catch-up.. I just never have time.
What little time I HAVE gotten to play, I haven’t even gotten to play the game I really wanted to work on (my Nothing for Free challenge).. because this silly update posted, and I haven’t wanted to install the mods to allow for the more than eight sims that are on that lot. I’m giving time for the patch testing to go into effect, and will probably be better off waiting until after it’s ready for Showtime too.. because with any luck, I’ll have that on March 6th.. *crossing fingers* .. I did pre-order it through Origin, but since this is the first time I’ve ordered anything thru them.. I wasn’t even remotely sure how their shipping times work… So.. I have been busy working on achieves. The last town I got (and haven’t gotten to play) was Barnacle Bay.. I was too busy checking out Lunar Lakes… so I picked a large family in Barnacle Bay and started working on achieves… of course.. then I ended up building and editing lots… *roll eyes* sometimes I wonder if I don’t play the game more to build than play.. (I know for sure it was that way with Sims 1 and 2… For sims 1 most of the actual playtime I accrued was after the star pack, unleashed pack, and magic town pack. The Sims 1 Magic Town is still the thing I miss the MOST from Sims 1… as for Sims 2.. I spent a lot of time in the College Towns.. and building.. building.. building.)
On the hair-brained topics bit… I’ve had two Sim-related thoughts lately… sorta related. The first was building themed lots for the exchange based largely off of time periods from real life history and / or sets from the Sims Store. The second was to build some lots for the EA towns to match the town for the expansion pack’s commercial lots they’re missing… i.e. .. most towns are missing Ambitions lots, Pets lots (obviously) and Late Night lots. … Which, of course brought me to the conclusion I need to study the commercial architecture in each town and try to match it… or at least make lists of what each town HAS and DOESNT have…. *chuckles* .. which evolved into a lengthy all-day project in Open Office / spreadsheets programs figuring out how to make a table to handle the date.. which.. somehow segued into building a “web” page with a full table of commercial lot types versus EA towns. I pulled as much data / pictures of venues and rabbit holes as I could off of the Sims Wiki page.. I’m almost done with the stuff I can find on the wiki.. probably another hour or two work (conservative estimate I’m sure).. then I’ll have to go into the game and start taking my own pictures to fill in the gaps. Through this process… it occurred to me that this might be a piece of knowledge other people could use…. and sine it’ll already be in web page format.. I’m hoping I could find a place to just quick upload it to…. I’m planning on setting up a page on wordpress’ free blog site.. and I think they allow you to create pages as well.. so I’ll see if it works.. post if you’d be interested in it. .. just for curiosity’s sake.
Beyond that… It’s March.. and my hometown yet again showed it’s colors.. it’s snowing… quite hard… and we’ve got at least a couple inches on the ground… *chuckles* My husky is happy!.. who knows how long it’ll last once the sun comes back out. I swear, this happens every spring.. you’d think I’d be used to it by now! 🙂 hehe… Happy simming all!
P.S. .. random rant.. I like the flexibility of the new social features from the patch.. but I HATE the lack of searching and filtering available for the wall. at the very least you should be able to search for posts people made directly to you or your posts.. and replies to things you posted or commented on. .. They need to re-check their facebook account and see how it works on there.. at this point, most people have WAY too many posts to be able to check them well… I don’t have many friends (yet) … and I still have trouble sorting through stuff.. eeks.. come on EA, fix it.. soon!!!!!! *BEG*
I am a 47 year old American wife, mother, and gamer. I’ve lived in the Midwest most of my life, and enjoy it for the changing seasons. My favorite movie is Labyrinth, my favorite game is Sims 4, and I have tattoos related to both. My favorite colors are purple, red, and green. When I’m not playing games (which is rare) I also enjoy reading and crafting. I’m also an animal lover, and have had many types of pets over the years. Currently, I have a dog named Cassie who is a Jack Russel / Beagle mix and five young fancy rats (all of whom are rescues). I run this Sims 4 Blog where I post screenshots and stories about the different challenges I play. Also here are the Sims 4 challenges I've written, and a place for me to store all the Sims 4 knowledge I've gotten over the years. I am also a Sims 4/variety streamer on Twitch for my mental health, fun, and to meet new people. I am also in the EA Creator Network and an Ubisoft Partner, which is a dream come true! I look forward to meeting you!
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BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!
Chapter One – Starting Anew
November 2025 Dev Diary
Welcome to my new webhost!!
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