Road to Selvadorada VIII
Previously: It's been a minute... But let's see if any of this rings a bell. The family spent their final days in Selvadorada relaxing, enjoying each other's company, and sharing a memorable Harvestfest meal. When they returned to Brindleton Bay, Gideon discovered a monster under his bed, Shawn busied himself with uncovering and authenticating his many jungle treasures, and Aisha finally reached the limit of her fondness for feline companionship.
I apologize if my captioning skills seem a little rusty. I disappeared for a while (as I usually do), which means I'm even more far-removed from everything going on in these photos than before. But I'm hoping posting again will get me back into playing the game, as I've been in a bit of a lull. Maybe reminding myself of how I got to where I am now will help me figure out where to go next. Anyway...
Let's ease back into things with a nice and simple photo of a boy playing with his dog.
It's a good thing Dakota has Gideon for company these days because Shawn, who, if you remember, rescued her from a dusty and forlorn fate as a Selvadoradian stray, is too busy getting his archaeology on to spend much time with her. Not even a bitter Brindleton Bay winter can stop him.
Meanwhile, Aisha is trying to get back into the swing of her old life by returning to one of her earliest loves (excluding cats, of course, but her feelings about them have become a bit more conflicted recently): baking!
She's also trying to be a good mom to make up for missing out on nearly all of her son's toddler years, which in this case means motivating Gideon to finish his homework with the promise of a delightful sample of her latest dessert concoction afterward.
The two of them finally manage to coax Shawn away from his archaeology table long enough for him to join them in some outdoors family fun. Even though it was a major shock transitioning from such a warm climate to an especially cold winter, it isn't long before they're won over by the various opportunities for fun the snow provides.
That can only lead to one thing: time for a family snowpal-building competition!
After completing her snowpal, Aisha helps Gideon put the finishing touches on his to ensure it beats his dad's.
Shawn: Hey, that's an unfair advantage! Are you really teaching our son to cheat right now?
Aisha: Oh, you're one to talk about cheating, Mr. I-Don't-Have-an-Original-Bone-in-My-Body-and-Decided-to-Copy-My-Wife's-Genius-Design!
Gideon: *is scandalized by witnessing his parents fight for the first time*
Even though Aisha has become increasingly annoyed with the amount of strays who invite themselves into her house on the daily, she sees one while stomping huffily back home from the Great Snowman Spar and can't help but stop to give it some love.
Aisha: Well, now, it just won't do for an innocent, defenseless creature like yourself to be caught out in a raging snowstorm, will it? I guess there's no other option but for you to follow me home...
So close but so far. It always cracks me up when Sims bite it in icy conditions, even though it looks like it hurts like hell.
Don't worry, both human and cat made it safely to the porch, where apparently Aisha couldn't wait one more second to whip out her handy pocket laser pointer in the warm comfort of the indoors instead. Anyway, this precious baby's name is Abby, and you know Aisha is about to adopt the heck out of her.
Of course, Abby immediately decided she had the run of the house to invite all of her sick stray friends over for a vomit-and-urinate-all-over-the-place party.
Gideon: Aw, come on, Mom, they're kind of cute! Can't we just adopt them all?
Gideon is such a well-behaved child! Look at him shoveling snow of his own volition so that his father has a clean space to do his archaeology! Now he's totally about to do something to make me eat my words, isn't he?
Aisha: Young man, you are not about to eat that stale piece of cake you scrounged up from the back of the refrigerator and spoil your appetite for this brand new birthday cake I spent all morning laboring over!
Aisha: Goddamn it, not you too! Tell me how is it that you see a beautiful cake with candles on it right in front of your face and immediately reach for the leftovers instead?
Aisha: You will blow out these candles, and you will eat an entire piece afterward, and you will enjoy every single bite, or it's straight to bed for you!
Gideon: But, Mooooom, I'm already so full!
Aisha: You made your bed, son, and now you have to lie in it. Now, make a wish!
I bet this is the first time in history a kid has wished to never eat another piece of cake in his life.
After licking his plate clean of every last crumb under the watchful eye of his mother, Gideon has entered his adolescence dangerously close to crashing from an unparalleled sugar high. (Also, the father/son resemblance is truly uncanny.)
Meanwhile, Nadia decides to arrive fashionably late (better than her mother, I suppose, who never even deigned to show up). Naturally, she makes a beeline straight for the leftover desserts in the refrigerator.
Elliot: Good choice, kid.
Aisha: Well, I for one thought the cake was lovely.
Since no one seems to care one way or another, she spends far less time on Shawn's cake, and he ends up with some flat, cardboard-looking, brown... thing... that looks more like a frisbee than an edible food product.
Shawn is as equally displeased with his newfound pudgy grayness as he is with his shitty cake. He'll get over it.
Aisha is kind enough to shake off her annoyance at everyone disrespecting her desserts and pull Shawn aside for a reassuring embrace. He'll always be the most handsome man in the world in her eyes.
DAKOTA, NOOOOOOOOO! I feel like you only just arrived! It can't be your time already!
The Grim Reaper has to go and ruin the seriousness of the moment by getting frightened by the specter of the stray he picked up last time. Dude, how can you be afraid of ghosts when it's literally your job to create them?
NO, YOU DO NOT GET TO HAVE AN ADORABLE MOMENT WITH OUR CAT WHEN YOU JUST KILLED OUR DOG! GET OUT OF HERE ALREADY!!!
This is a pretty jarring transition, but at this point I finally got fed up enough with all the strays (not to mention realized that Aisha and Shawn were hella loaded from all their Selvadoradian discoveries) to move them into a new house. Naturally, I chose the biggest, most expensive house in Brindleton Bay just because I could, which meant I spent literal weeks decorating it. Therefore, here are a bunch of screenshots immortalizing my hard work.
I wasn't kidding. They live in a freaking mansion on the coast now. We have truly graduated to the lap of Sims luxury.
It has a massive kitchen, which Aisha obviously couldn't wait to break in with a marathon round of baking.
Here's the breakfast nook. I tried to incorporate Selvadoradian influences throughout the entire house, as well as bring over some pieces from the old house.
As if a breakfast nook for six isn't luxurious enough, there's also a full dining room, complete with bar.
Because every room in this place is massive, there's also space in the dining room for a cute little gaming corner. I'll take this opportunity to announce, too, that Nadia is officially moving back in, for many reasons. First of all, she needs to get out of her parents' house. Second of all, I'm lazy and want as few separate households to juggle as possible. Third, did I mention this place is freaking huge?!?
This is Nadia's room, decorated with appropriately space-themed art to fulfill all her science nerd desires.
Adding a further homey touch are Nadia's cute carvings scattered all over the place.
Finally, there's a punching bag in the corner for her to safely take out her short temper on.
Aisha and Shawn's room is the one I kept most similar to their old house, since I really liked the furniture and colors it already had. Plus, Aisha can't live without a private space for her morning yoga routine.
There are a few upgrades to make it look a bit more sophisticated and upscale, though.
Gideon is glad to have a new room that's more suited to his teenage self now that he's all grown up.
His dad got him a guitar for his birthday, and he's hard at work learning chords. I hope those walls are soundproof for the sake of everyone else's ears.
Finally, even Abby gets her own dedicated space in the living room, and she's already in love.
The non-cat portion of the living room, for your viewing pleasure.
The upstairs... rec room? Foyer? I'm not really sure what to call this area, but I like how it looks a lot.
However, this might be my favorite room in the whole house. It already had the plants when they moved in, and in thinking about what I could do with the space to make them make sense there, I realized it would be the perfect place for Shawn to keep his various Selvadoradian relics. It's like his own personal museum, and the greenery almost makes him feel like he's back in the jungle!
What a perfect environment for him to work in! I sure hope they like this house enough to spend many happy years here because I've sunk way too much time into it to give it up any time soon.
I apologize if my captioning skills seem a little rusty. I disappeared for a while (as I usually do), which means I'm even more far-removed from everything going on in these photos than before. But I'm hoping posting again will get me back into playing the game, as I've been in a bit of a lull. Maybe reminding myself of how I got to where I am now will help me figure out where to go next. Anyway...
Let's ease back into things with a nice and simple photo of a boy playing with his dog.
It's a good thing Dakota has Gideon for company these days because Shawn, who, if you remember, rescued her from a dusty and forlorn fate as a Selvadoradian stray, is too busy getting his archaeology on to spend much time with her. Not even a bitter Brindleton Bay winter can stop him.
Meanwhile, Aisha is trying to get back into the swing of her old life by returning to one of her earliest loves (excluding cats, of course, but her feelings about them have become a bit more conflicted recently): baking!
She's also trying to be a good mom to make up for missing out on nearly all of her son's toddler years, which in this case means motivating Gideon to finish his homework with the promise of a delightful sample of her latest dessert concoction afterward.
The two of them finally manage to coax Shawn away from his archaeology table long enough for him to join them in some outdoors family fun. Even though it was a major shock transitioning from such a warm climate to an especially cold winter, it isn't long before they're won over by the various opportunities for fun the snow provides.
That can only lead to one thing: time for a family snowpal-building competition!
After completing her snowpal, Aisha helps Gideon put the finishing touches on his to ensure it beats his dad's.
Shawn: Hey, that's an unfair advantage! Are you really teaching our son to cheat right now?
Aisha: Oh, you're one to talk about cheating, Mr. I-Don't-Have-an-Original-Bone-in-My-Body-and-Decided-to-Copy-My-Wife's-Genius-Design!
Gideon: *is scandalized by witnessing his parents fight for the first time*
Even though Aisha has become increasingly annoyed with the amount of strays who invite themselves into her house on the daily, she sees one while stomping huffily back home from the Great Snowman Spar and can't help but stop to give it some love.
Aisha: Well, now, it just won't do for an innocent, defenseless creature like yourself to be caught out in a raging snowstorm, will it? I guess there's no other option but for you to follow me home...
So close but so far. It always cracks me up when Sims bite it in icy conditions, even though it looks like it hurts like hell.
Don't worry, both human and cat made it safely to the porch, where apparently Aisha couldn't wait one more second to whip out her handy pocket laser pointer in the warm comfort of the indoors instead. Anyway, this precious baby's name is Abby, and you know Aisha is about to adopt the heck out of her.
Of course, Abby immediately decided she had the run of the house to invite all of her sick stray friends over for a vomit-and-urinate-all-over-the-place party.
Gideon: Aw, come on, Mom, they're kind of cute! Can't we just adopt them all?
Gideon is such a well-behaved child! Look at him shoveling snow of his own volition so that his father has a clean space to do his archaeology! Now he's totally about to do something to make me eat my words, isn't he?
Aisha: Young man, you are not about to eat that stale piece of cake you scrounged up from the back of the refrigerator and spoil your appetite for this brand new birthday cake I spent all morning laboring over!
Aisha: Goddamn it, not you too! Tell me how is it that you see a beautiful cake with candles on it right in front of your face and immediately reach for the leftovers instead?
Aisha: You will blow out these candles, and you will eat an entire piece afterward, and you will enjoy every single bite, or it's straight to bed for you!
Gideon: But, Mooooom, I'm already so full!
Aisha: You made your bed, son, and now you have to lie in it. Now, make a wish!
I bet this is the first time in history a kid has wished to never eat another piece of cake in his life.
After licking his plate clean of every last crumb under the watchful eye of his mother, Gideon has entered his adolescence dangerously close to crashing from an unparalleled sugar high. (Also, the father/son resemblance is truly uncanny.)
Meanwhile, Nadia decides to arrive fashionably late (better than her mother, I suppose, who never even deigned to show up). Naturally, she makes a beeline straight for the leftover desserts in the refrigerator.
Elliot: Good choice, kid.
Aisha: Well, I for one thought the cake was lovely.
Since no one seems to care one way or another, she spends far less time on Shawn's cake, and he ends up with some flat, cardboard-looking, brown... thing... that looks more like a frisbee than an edible food product.
Shawn is as equally displeased with his newfound pudgy grayness as he is with his shitty cake. He'll get over it.
Aisha is kind enough to shake off her annoyance at everyone disrespecting her desserts and pull Shawn aside for a reassuring embrace. He'll always be the most handsome man in the world in her eyes.
DAKOTA, NOOOOOOOOO! I feel like you only just arrived! It can't be your time already!
The Grim Reaper has to go and ruin the seriousness of the moment by getting frightened by the specter of the stray he picked up last time. Dude, how can you be afraid of ghosts when it's literally your job to create them?
NO, YOU DO NOT GET TO HAVE AN ADORABLE MOMENT WITH OUR CAT WHEN YOU JUST KILLED OUR DOG! GET OUT OF HERE ALREADY!!!
This is a pretty jarring transition, but at this point I finally got fed up enough with all the strays (not to mention realized that Aisha and Shawn were hella loaded from all their Selvadoradian discoveries) to move them into a new house. Naturally, I chose the biggest, most expensive house in Brindleton Bay just because I could, which meant I spent literal weeks decorating it. Therefore, here are a bunch of screenshots immortalizing my hard work.
I wasn't kidding. They live in a freaking mansion on the coast now. We have truly graduated to the lap of Sims luxury.
It has a massive kitchen, which Aisha obviously couldn't wait to break in with a marathon round of baking.
Here's the breakfast nook. I tried to incorporate Selvadoradian influences throughout the entire house, as well as bring over some pieces from the old house.
As if a breakfast nook for six isn't luxurious enough, there's also a full dining room, complete with bar.
Because every room in this place is massive, there's also space in the dining room for a cute little gaming corner. I'll take this opportunity to announce, too, that Nadia is officially moving back in, for many reasons. First of all, she needs to get out of her parents' house. Second of all, I'm lazy and want as few separate households to juggle as possible. Third, did I mention this place is freaking huge?!?
This is Nadia's room, decorated with appropriately space-themed art to fulfill all her science nerd desires.
Adding a further homey touch are Nadia's cute carvings scattered all over the place.
Finally, there's a punching bag in the corner for her to safely take out her short temper on.
Aisha and Shawn's room is the one I kept most similar to their old house, since I really liked the furniture and colors it already had. Plus, Aisha can't live without a private space for her morning yoga routine.
There are a few upgrades to make it look a bit more sophisticated and upscale, though.
Gideon is glad to have a new room that's more suited to his teenage self now that he's all grown up.
His dad got him a guitar for his birthday, and he's hard at work learning chords. I hope those walls are soundproof for the sake of everyone else's ears.
Finally, even Abby gets her own dedicated space in the living room, and she's already in love.
The non-cat portion of the living room, for your viewing pleasure.
The upstairs... rec room? Foyer? I'm not really sure what to call this area, but I like how it looks a lot.
However, this might be my favorite room in the whole house. It already had the plants when they moved in, and in thinking about what I could do with the space to make them make sense there, I realized it would be the perfect place for Shawn to keep his various Selvadoradian relics. It's like his own personal museum, and the greenery almost makes him feel like he's back in the jungle!
What a perfect environment for him to work in! I sure hope they like this house enough to spend many happy years here because I've sunk way too much time into it to give it up any time soon.