base hood uni, something like a tutorial

The simplest part of building a base-hood uni is... building it ;) Your base-hood uni can be anywhere, downtown, shopping district, vacation hood, whatever... just not the regular uni hoods. The trickier parts are getting your university to act like a university, and getting your students there.

on the building of a university

The thing about LCU is that it's never finished. I had this grand idea that I would get it all finished up and post this huge all-inclusive tour of the thing, inside and out, every single building. (I know, what was I thinking?) But it wasn't done. And I couldn't get it done - not before this weekend, not definitely not before I burn the hell out on all these building projects! And in just the process of simply working on it, I thought of ten more things I want to do with it. I thought about how Lucy will be starting college in just a year and a half, and she'll want to study dance, and I don't have a dance hall for her. Yet... ;)

Lake City University

*note, because I suspect this will likely turn up in all kinds of Google searches: Lake City University is a *fictional* university campus for my story Lakeside Heights. If you got here searching for a real university, you might want to try again... * ;)

Welcome to Lake City University. We are a full-service university located in the heart of Lake City, just twenty minutes from Lake Michigan. LCU offers a four-year bachelors degree in a wide area of studies, study abroad opportunities with Takemizu Academy in Japan, as well as both masters and doctorate programs.

(base hood uni, kind of a tutorial)

one day, Piper bought Hayden a new t-shirt...

December 1, 2083 - Hayden Phoenix is 34, Piper Wilson is 29.

A tiny little mini-story, about a new shirt:

She bought this shirt for him, a present for his 34th birthday. Space Invaders was his favorite game when he was a kid - he told her this. He told her how he'd play it so late some nights that he'd be too tired to wake up for school in the morning, and he'd fake sick. Then he'd stay home and play it some more, curled up on the couch under a flannel blanket, with a bowl of his mother's famous chicken soup and some warm tea and honey. Who'd want to go to school?

picspam: randomness with Hayden and Piper

This all started because Hayden and Piper wanted to buy a house. They won't be married for another six months still, but I didn't want to do the moving hassle at the same time I'm having to deal with wedding plans, so we did this now.

This is in Hazel Park (and hey, look, train station in the background!). He's still just about a mile away from his mommy, because I figured he'd want to move too far away, lol!

I didn't build this, but remodeled it quite a bit, both inside and out. I changed out all the windows and doors and stairs, and the color scheme. Complete overhaul inside. The second floor was left unfinished, so I finished it.

LH stuff: lots for download

Lots for download, from the poll. All lots are scanned with the Clean Installer and all accompanying CC is already compressed. Minimally necessary CC is included - use the clean installer if you don't want it.

poll: what lot do you want for LH stuff?

So I promised you a lot for download, and your top pick was, the North Park Street Townhomes, with 21 votes and 31%...

The thing is...

trains coming out of my ears!

Welcome to the great train station and bus stop extravaganza! (Now with parking lots too!)

Okay, is that dramatic enough? Because I kind of went a little overboard here. Seriously, if I see another train in the next six months, I might go insane!

I'll go ahead and share these links at the start - Criquette's neighborhood deco building sets, and Sunni's deco cars - both of which were used extensively in this project.

And it all started with this, the LCMTA Rail Map.

testing things, breaking stuff...

Pardon me while I try not to make too much of a mess out of this place.

Testing some new image sizes...

my biggest fan needs a dictionary...

Lyf? I'm afraid that isn't a word, my dear.

LH stuff: not a llama clock, batch 1

It's so hard to find good clocks, isn't it? What I wanted was simple yet stylish - not fancy, not antique. Like the kind of clock you might buy at Target?

So I made some!

And now I'm *totally* about to make five thousand clocks! Or maybe a few dozen, eventually. And for tonight, we'll start with eight ;)

how to materialize a family background in five seconds or less...

Believe it or not, this all started with a building project.

build week #3.5: what not to do with the lot adjuster

Experiments and failures on placing lots "off-grid"

So I had this grand idea that I'd take some houses, and place them along a fake street, to use up some of that pesky middle space in one of my city blocks. So that street in the middle of the picture is completely decorative, and the homes there are placed "off-grid", meaning they're not attached to any actual road.

These houses I used are by Maisie by the way.

And for the most part, it worked. But I did run into a few deal-breaking (in my book, anyway) problems.

build week #3: fun with the lot adjuster

Did anyone ever try this before?

This is my campus pub, a 3x1 lot, overlapping my new campus parking lot, which is a 5x4 lot. Both lots are fully functional where they stand, and don't conflict with the other.

build week #2: it's almost a medical center!

Just a little, tiny, sneak peak ;)

I'm super-excited about my medical center! In fact, even though I downloaded a big hornking hospital for my city, I might not even use it much in the end. Most of the scenes I tend to use for this story are more outpatient kind of situations - like a therapy session, or pregnancy checkup. Those wouldn't likely happen at a hospital at all, but would probably happen in a smaller suburban medical plaza like this! :)