George and Bennie Dean

George Dean lives in Riverview (the neighborhood you can download from the Sims 3 EA website after you register your Sims 3 game.) His father lives in the Grandpas retirement home.  George’s home is the OLD Riverview Fire Department.  He’s been working in the law enforcement career (Patrol Officer -4) but now with the Ambitions expansion can now be the fireman he always saw himself to be. 

George Dean is brave, family oriented, good, athletic and friendly.  He is also a special sim as he has a hidden trait that allows him to set things on fire and change normal fruit and veggies into flamefruit which can be a handy simolean making skill.  He has 2 points of logic and two in athletic.  George does make a good fireman and I always switch him to that career now.  Since he is a family sim, I also let him spring his father from the home and move him in with George.  Bennie is a big help while his son is climbing the Firefighter career ladder.  Bennie’s cooking, fishing and gardening skills allow George to concentrate on building his athletic and handiness skills that a fire fighter needs.  Hal Breckenridge is George’s best friend. 

George’s lifetime wish is to be surrounded by family so that calls for some expansion of the firehouse eventually or he will have to move to a larger home.  Fortunately, the fire station is easily expanded like the second floor of the tower makes a nice room for his father and the porch on that floor can also be converted to another room.  The first floor is mostly parking but that space can be used as well and the first floor of the tower easily became a second bathroom by removing the outside door and enclosing the interior.

George Working on the Woo Woo 4000

Once George reaches level 9 in the Firefighter career he can pass his hidden trait on to his children which is pretty cool.  Thus he makes a unique target of a legacy family, if you choose to do that.  With so many of the EA made families as dysfunctional or messed up in some way, George Dean is surprisingly normal in his traits the hidden one is just an extra surprise.  Give him a try!

Sofia Carlton

Twinbrook is the new Neighborhood which came with the Ambitions Expansion for Sims 3. I spotlight some of the familes in the EA neighborhoods in case you might have missed out on them or just wanted to learn more about the neighbors.

Sofia Carlton is a hip young adult with a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath mansion of her own but what will she do with it?  Sofia is a great kisser, dislikes children, a schmoozer, snob and lucky.  Her lifetime wish is to live in the lap of luxury and she has a good start on that if she can keep it. Her only skills are 2 points of charisma.  That’s not much to work with as she has that big house and the pink convertible to support.  Oddly, there is a pink playground in her front lawn that doesn’t make much sense since she doesn’t like children and isn’t childish.  Perhaps to allude that she grew up in the house is the reason?  There is a bookcase, office and bar on the third floor if you miss it on the first look through as I did.  No shortage of mirrors for this lass and she does get lots of use out of them! The kitchen is missing some wallcoverings and flooring so you will want to fix that up straight away and could give architects working in Twinbrook some headaches if working on a renovation at this house. 

Sofia is a friend of Amy Bull’s…no real surprise there as they have similar fashion sense and she has met her neighbor DeAndre Wolf but briefly. Enemies are Dilly and Milly Pidgin.  Sofia’s main problem is she has over 2000 simoleans in bills coming soon and no job.  She does start with a small nest egg though and hopefully that will see her through till she has an income coming in.  Thus first thing to do is get her skilled up and working.  I went the stylist route to try out that profession and see what it was like.  I learned that even though the job doesn’t start till the next day, you can go to the salon and offer makeovers that will make some simoleans and count towards that first promotion, so no need to wait or sit home on days off.  The easiest way might be to find her an ambitious husband to help share the bills or a room-mate as there is a second bedroom as well.  In my neighborhood, she eventually married and lost the dislikes children trait which is one of my least favorites of the sim traits.  Believe it or not..her sense of style improved too!  See what happens for you!  You can see the shock she gets when the first bills come in the mail (Below).

Toned Down Her Style

I Love To Turn On TVs

What was that?  You say your tv just turned on all by itself in the middle of the night?  That is a sure sign of a bored gnome in your house.  Do something more interesting, will you?  *sighs*

Simolean Savers

Twinbrook is the new Neighborhood which came with the Ambitions Expansion for Sims 3.  I spotlight some of the familes in the EA neighborhoods in case you might have missed out on them or just wanted to learn more about the neighbors. 

Note:  Ghosthunters in Twinbrook will want to eliminate that car on the platform before you start work in that town otherwise you stand a very good chance of getting trapped on that platform while doing a job at that household.

But now where were we?  Yes…Yes…Clark Peddler and Penny Pincher are best friends.  They are living together in a white two bedroom house, trimmed in a garnish lime green which is Clark’s favorite color.   Clark’s ex-wife Kat Hunter lives down the street with her much younger boyfriend Buck Green. 

Neither Clark nor Penny have any skills at all and are both working part-time jobs.  She at the Bookstore and he at the Grocery.  I would think by this time in their lives they would have learned something…anything but neither seems very motivated, perhaps that is why?  Clark is an adult and Penny a young adult. Clark Peddler is inappropriate, easily impressed, frugal, kleptomaniac, and evil.  That means he can rummage through trash cans,  steal and might be a good recruit for the crime career?  His Lifetime Want is Possession is 9/10ths of the Law. So expect to do some creeping around at night to fulfill that.  Clark is quite the snappy dresser, don’t you think?  (See Picture Below) Sort of dresses like a used car salesman on a bad day. 

Clark Peddler

Penny Pincher has hitched her wagon to Clark but that might have been a mistake especially if she thought she could sponge off him which seems like it just might be the case.  She is flirty, charismatic, a party animal, schmoozer and a heavy sleeper.  Penny seems to want to spend most of her time dancing to the small stereo that she seems to keep in her purse.  Her wish is to be super popular and she has a long way to go at it, as she is best friends with Clark but has only met DeAndre Wolf in Twinbrook.

When I stayed with them, as soon as Clark’s ex wife Kat broke up with her boyfriend  Kat moved back in with Clark thus leaving the couch to Penny.  Penny then moved in with Buck Green…Kat’s ex boyfriend.  Such complicated lives these sims lead…tsk…tsk. 

Anyway simoleans are tight in this household so some things you can do to fix that.  Their home is directly across the street from the Community Gardens so they can harvest goodies for sale or to eat or some of both.  Clark could ditch his part-time job and go full-time criminal.  His trashcan rummaging, coupon clipping and klepto skills can help make simoleans too.  You could sell the 2 cars or just one or two which will lower their bills and give a cushion of cash. 

Another option would be if Clark starts sharing a bedroom with either Penny or Kat, they could take in a border for the other bedroom.  How that works is you can merge a single sim to their household for a bit while they all work skills then move the single sim back out once they are more skilled and along further in their career.  I’m sure the extra income would be useful.  I also did some painting while Clark and Penny slept to remove some lime green and cleaned up the yard a bit. (Removed the balloons, tires and the silly platform that traps ghosthunters)  You might be in favor of that option too.  See what you can do with these two!

Derrian DuPont

I wanted to share with you another of my gnomish stories, this one of the lad Derrian DuPont.  Quite an interesting lad he is…I met him down by the river one day fishing.  (Actually, he is a CAS sim I made to try out the new Ghosting Hunting Profession and write up a guide for it in the future.) Derrian is the eccentric black sheep of a wealthy family.  He left home one day with only the shirt on his back and a determination to make his own way in the world…more like wandered off aimlessly but it sounded better how he told it. 

Derrian is an unappropriate bookworm who is an eccentric handy genius.  What a personality yet…it works for him..yes…yes it does.  Let me explain, the lad had a hankering to become a ghost hunter after reading a book about it. 

So he moved to Twinbrook and bought a huge lot in the upper class neighborhood, why you ask?  I have no idea, I am just telling you what happened.  Now having few simoleans left after his big land purchase and a irrational fear of meteor strikes, he built a basement with just a wee wooden building on top to keep the rain from flowing down into his underground hole.  In his basement, the conditions were spartan but he could work with that.  After applying and being accepted at the Science Center to be a ghosthunter, his new job would start the next day but what to do till then?  

Derrian planted a small garden and fertilized it with cheap store bought minnows to give it a good start then began to wander the town.  Being an unappropriate lad he rummaged some trash cans and picked up a load of salvage from the junkyard after I suggested that he really could use the extra furniture which the repairman would of course fix up for him.  (See a post in Did You Know to see why I suggested that.)  After selling off all the rubber ducks, bubble bath, keeping the seeds for future use, sent the metals and gems off to be smelted and cut, and keeping all precious found books his nest egg had grown so he could afford some extras. 

Now the ghosthunter profession starts out slow or at least it did for him (In a newly started Twinbrook) only two jobs a night then he could return home to use his telescope he put atop the flat roof of the wooden building.  Eventually, he started overcoming some challenges as with a lifetime award..his unappropriateness no longer bothered other sims.  Thus while ghosthunting, he could repair sinks and clogged toilets after ridding the homes of spirits and have a warm shower or a meal from the fridge while he was there and the folks were so grateful for his help…they paid no mind to his unappropriate actions at all.  Derrian could do no wrong!  He took a class at the Science Center in inventing and eventually could afford a new workbench which he promptly used to make wigets to sell at the consignment store to further suppliment his income.  A real good use of all the scrap he has acquired by rummaging through trash cans as well!

Now Derrian is a Spirit Sweeper (level 4 ghost hunter) and doing quite well for himself having bought into the Science Center as a partner and bought the Bookstore of his dreams.  He even acquired a bride, a pretty young lass who was working as a maid at one of the houses with a particularly interesting trashcan he liked to visit on a regular basis. She had a bag of garbage to put in the trashcan and it was love at first sight..he really admired her trash technique!  She’s now in the cooking career which meshes well with the odd hours Derrian keeps as a ghost hunter. His house is growing…even the above ground story and he’s purchased cars for both he and his wife. He’s still ghosthunting yet now also waking the neighbors at 2AM when he runs his miner in the front lawn.  That is a great way to meet ALL the neighbors as they all woke up to come complain about the noise.  Ooops! 

I’m actually surprised at how well he’s done, this inappropriate black sheep.  (His mix of traits seems to make an ideal ghosthunter/inventor as he has been remarkably successful in a very short period of time.) We might revisit him later to see how he’s doing.  Tootle loo!

Sim Gnome

Dear Sim Gnome,

Now now..calm down, we can make this right yet.  First you will want to learn the recipe for cookies, you can purchase this recipe at the bookstore and read it or by watching the cooking channel on your tv if your tv has that channel available. (More expensive tvs have more channels available on them than the cheaper ones or a Handy sim with enough skill can upgrade your tv to get more channels.) Which recipes you learn from watching the cooking channel on the tv is just chance but you will learn more about cooking while doing so….you can’t loose.

Once you have the recipe read it if you bought it from the bookstore.  Now go to your fridgerator and choose Make Dessert and you should see Cookies as an option.  Once made you will want to carry them to the neighbor that wanted them.   Use the hand to then put the cookies into your inventory, now deliver them.  If the person you need to deliver the cookies to are unavailable, you can store the Cookies group meal in the fridge till you get that chance.  They will spoil if kept in  inventory long term.  Tootle loo!  Happy Cooking!

Sleeping Gnome McMulty

Chase Bayless hauled up this friend for me in Twinbrook.  He goes by the name of McMulty and is quite the snappy dresser in his dapper white suit and hat.  I ought to get me one of those!  He isn’t capable of the gnomish magic of teleportation but he does really look nice while guarding a porch or flower bed.  What do you think?

The Bayless Family

Twinbrook is the new Neighborhood which came with the Ambitions Expansion for Sims 3.  I spotlight some of the familes in the EA neighborhoods in case you might have missed out on them or just wanted to learn more about the neighbors. 

One of the founding families of Twinbrook is the Bayless Family, Skeet’s father Fly owned the largest junkyard in Twinton at one time. They are quite the interesting family especially around the ears if you know what I mean.  *winks*

Skeet is Absent-Minded, Slob, Loves the Outdoors, Family-Oriented and an Angler.  He’s sort of a stay at home Dad with a part -time job at the Graveyard as an Epitaph Writer.  Yet he loves the graveyard for the afterwork fishing for deathfish which is more profitable for him then the actual job and rummaging or bear wrestling in the the catacomb. Mostly bear wrestling it seems.  He’s known to dabble in gardening and inventing as well.  (15 days from Elder) He’s a wiz at collecting salvage from the junkyard and turning it into extra cash.  (See an earlier “Did You Know?” post on just how that works.)

Gwayne is Brave, Loves the Outdoors, Daredevil, Family-Oriented and an Angler.  You can see what she and Skeet have in common.  She works in the Journalist career as a Free-lance writer (3) and has a laptop in her inventory which is pretty swanky and might have cost more than their house. Hehehehee!  Gwayne is known as a minor writer of novels in Twinbrook as well.  Dudley Racket might be the only one that has read her published works but heck she tries really hard.  I think she got into that profession mainly to rummage through the towns folks’ garbage but who knows?  (14 days from Elder)

The Bayless Swamp Shack

Chase is surprise surprise a teen-aged girl although a wee bit of a tom-boy.  She’s a Loner, Loves the Outdoors, Family-Oriented and an Angler much like her parents.  She has an on again off again romantic interest in Jeffrey Castor although she would rather go fishing than spend much time with him. 

Chase’s little brother Tay Loves the Outdoors is Family-Oriented and an Angler too and often seen tagging along after his sister on fishing trips.  The poor lad had ears big enough he might be able to fly if he had a mind to.  Reminds me of a picture I caught once at the Sunset Valley Theater…a movie called Dumbo? Alas, ears tend to run in this family.  (The first night while the family slept I did a little bit of gnomish magic and docked some ears and fixed the “frog mouths” of Gwayne and Chase so they aren’t so bad now…still not beauty queens but quite good looking now by Twinton standards.  I used Twallan’s Super Computer ->Advanced->Edit in CAS to fix them up just a wee bit.)

The shack needs some improvements, well lots of improvements actually.  I sold the garage door in the kitchen for 600 simoleans and replaced it with a window.  Skeet salvaged a dryer from the junkyard and used it to replace the laundry line on the porch that was always leaving puddles behind.  As Skeet said he and Gwanye have plans to raise themselves up at least 5 youngins, you might need to make the upstairs loft into a full second story eventually for the extra space.  There are great fishing spots to the NE and SW of the shack and the kids often bring back jellyfish which although aren’t the best eating, except for maybe Peanut Butter and Jellyfish sandwiches. The jellyfish do make great fertilizer and you can plant a few items in the spot between the front and pack porches pretty easily. Skeet added an inventors workbench after moving the wood stove over a bit on the main floor and I magically recovered the camo cushions in the livingroom rather quickly.  If you do also let him have an inventor’s workbench, I would recommend replacing the downstairs tub with a shower as inventors are known for catching themselves on fire on occasion and that way Skeet can put himself out with the shower if need be.  It could save his life!

The Ghost of Fly Bayless

Skeet the slob is naturally attracted to junk

Eating a clove of garlic gives you a garlic breath moodlet that is negative to social interactions.  Have the sim brush their teeth at a sink to clear it and instead get a Minty Fresh Breath moodlet.

You can find books in the mausoleum that you can’t buy in the store.

An inappropriate sim will pee in the pool.

A teenage sim can only have one Best Friend for Life (BFF).

Sims3 Dashboard Utility Program:  http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=387006