HTML Headache!!!!!!!!

Okay .. i here and now commend the staff here at TSR for the amount of time and effort they put into Version 7! I say this because i just spent 4 hours trying to deal with my crappy looking website..LOL. Whatever it looks like now WILL NOT be the end result. But since I have no HTML experience i am getting furstrated. What a pain! Its okay .. it doesnt have to be built in a day! Nor will it be! Sigh. Patience Jackie.

Its alot of learning that I must do in order to get this thing up and running. I say April 1st is a good start date... but who knows it may be sooner. i am pretty dogged determined. Besides the web tools and resources ( articles etc) that my hoster provides.. I also have been reading WebSites for Dummies...lol. ( meaning ..me!) In the end I will have learned alot and in maintaining it I will learn more.. and like I said previously.. I will know whether or not I want to do it as a career.

Well enough for tonight.. LOL.. my brain hurts! I have a Valetnines curtian set I still need to upload so i am off to do that before I hit the hay! Nite!

400,000 downloads!

i just want to say WOW and THANK YOU! I have reached 400 thousand downloads today! I was at 300 thousand just 3 short weeks ago! Geesh.. you all are makin me blush ..LOL.

Its official!

Happy monday! its gorgeous out today where I live .. spring is just around the corner! Finally! And funny .. as nature is being refreshed .. I too feel the same way. Along with the sunshine cmae a fresh new hope and new zeal that i have been lacking throughout this long cold winter!

So.. in my last blog i wrote of the website taking shape and form. And it is official. I registered and paid for web hosting and my domain name for my Sims site. So here is the URL.... www.mfgsims.com !! You can go check it out .. LOL.. but there is nothing there yet! Now I must put all the HTML coding together to get it up and running! I am sooooo excited! It will be alot of work but thats okay - i wanted to learn HTML anyways and my hoster has lots of free web tools and resources and tutorials to help get started! After doing my own site I will then know for sure whether i want to pursue web design and webamstering for a living! I am incredibly thankful for my husband Paul who is so supportive of me in all that i do! He realizes how much i love creating for you all ( and I also create for myself - but mostly for the public) My experience with Sims2 and TSR has brought out dormant creativity in me that i never really knew that I had. And for that i am thankful.. and I am thankful for all of you who are so faithful to download my things and leave such encouraging comments. You really have no idea how it affects me..not only does it make me smile but also pushes me to learn more , try harder, become more meticulous... all good things trust me.

I have no idea when my web site will open to the public... I am pushing for march 1 st but I am a novice so please all of you PRAY that my understnading is opened and that I will be quick to catch on!

Also whats new and exciting is that I found some terrific clothing sites and I am going to start trying to make some clothing. I have always wanted to but didnt feel very confident about it. But in the past couple of months I have begun to get better at re-coloring so I need to now try and branch out more.. custom content meshes and clothing. And then as I have mentioned before several times .. I will attempt to learn creating my own meshes.

The wonderful thing about creating is that i never run out of ideas for long.. every house I drive by gives me an idea for a lot.. ads and the Ikea flyer that comes in the mail cause me to desire to learn how to make that myself!LOL. I have sooo many ideas!And sometimes I am frustrated by my own skill limitations so theres that inner push to learn how to do more. Of course i have been over worked and stressed out and too tired to learn new things .. but I decided last night that I am going to take the imte necessary to learn.. I have to if I want to progress ahead.

So you can expect to see me grow and flourish in the next few months.. i know I can do it if I put my mind to it. I am a very determined person! And you all will be pleasantly surprised to see what I create!

As for upcoming stuff ... some new wall sets are coming out . ( i have been practicing) I have some Valentines themed beddings and curtains coming out too! As well as some other beddings with matching curtains. And two new lots.

Thats all for now folks.... have a great day!

Hurray! The dream is materializing!

What the heck is she talking about? you are probably asking yourself. What dream?

The "dream " of having my own website! Thanks to a very special select artists blog today I discovered a great web hosting site.. its not free but it IS affordable ( to the point of convincing my hubby to pull out our weary credit card for yet another expenditure!)Ha HA! I am bubbling with glee! Woo Hoo! I can start out with free hosting but i wouldnt be able to access alot of the web tools and widgets they offer.. so i am willing to pay a monthly fee. ALSO it has a free BLOG I can sign up to ! Woooo Hoooo again! I really enjoy blogging but i am feeling just slightly stifled here at my beloved TSR as I would like to be able to do MORE with my blog. It seems I cannot post photos at the new version and well .. that makes it a little dull. Because.... my other dream ( which has been a lifelong one too) is too write. Wow.... my three favourite things .. alll in one. Creating for Sims2, writing AND showing off my photography cuz I just loooooove taking pics ( and would really like to take some courses on photography ). Now i ma sooo incredibly excite dot do daily blogging .. in color and with pictures ! Yippee!!!!!

So.. you all know what this means right? it means that my uploads to TSR are going to slow down considerably. 1.) because I will be working on my website and 2.) I will definately be wanting to use some of my creations for my own site instead of uploading everything here. This also means that i neeeed to get my butt into gear and learn recoloring of CC meshes..LOL...and also learn how to make clothing. Like I have mentioned before.. i am usually so tired at night from my day job that i just stick to the easy stuff ( stuff I already know how to do) and I dont end up learning anything new ... ( it's difficult to learn new stuff at my age as it is .. let alone when i am dog tired!)

Okay my peeps.. so i will keep everyone posted on my little websites progress. It will most likely be MFGSims2stuff OR plain ole MFGsims. ( the latter being easy to remember AND type!!) I will make sure to blog the web address on here AND put it in plainview in the ABOUT ME section of my TSR minipage

Now .. my hubby really needs to get home ( he is at the dog park) Hurry up already Pauly! LOL

Oh .. and by the way.. if any of you enjoy the style of my writing .. could you maybe send me a pm or sign my GB .. and let me know? I write the way I talk .. haha .. fast and furious ! ( except on here you cant see my animated eyebrows and hands) :)

3 new curtain sets coming out tomorrow -sunday!

So glad its Saturday today! I am supposed to go clean a house today - as I was so busy I couldnt fit it in this week ( its a once a month job) Its 4 single guys and they are horrible horrible slobs ( example - 45 minutes JUST to clean the shower alone) I am dreading going quite frankly!  But ..sigh.. money is money and I am in serious need of the money! Wish i were rich! My days of cleaning peoples dirty toilets would be OVER! LOL I would just hire people to do it for me and run my business!

Okay on to a new topic cuz the work topic bums me out! LOL

I had a bunch of beddings come out today and so far it has been terrific in way of downloads! So for anyone who has downloaded some of them I want you to know that the matching curtains for the majority of them come out tommorrow. I was quite happy with the way they all turned out and they all look great in the game!

So happy Simming and i will write more later!

New lot- 14 Valentine Street

TGIF! Although its Friday - i still need to go to work today ..LOL  Two houses and its already 11 am. Yes I am dragging my butt this morning.. I woke up with a cold and a massive headache after a long night on my cement bed..lol..it felt like i was sleeping on cement anyways!

Yesterday was a particularly rough day -work wise. Had a new house that seemed to drag on FOREVER....i just didnt have the energy. I really need to get a new career! LOL

Last night I made some more beddings.. and more walls. I have 3 new bathroom tile wall and floor set coming out tomorrow i think- no it isnt the one i was working on before christmas. Also an exterior brick wall set.

Coming up is my contribution to the love festivities on Feb14th- presenting 14 Valentine Street. its cute.. I made the exterior walls myslef as well as all the walls inside and the stone floors. Its base game compatible and really it can be played anytime of year.

Thats all for now!

APOLOGIZING for a few of my walls

Hi everybody... Although I have NOT recieved any complaints...I am here to apologize for a few of my recent walls. One is the Cloud wall, another is two spiderman walls. I made them and normally i test in game before I upload and well I was pretty tired the night I made them and i didnt bother to check whether or not they were "seamless" .I assumed they were. As it turns out they are nOT and look horrible! I am very very sorry my dear downloaders!!! My guarnateed promise from this day forward is that absolutely NONE of my walls will be uploaded until i have made sure in my own game they are "seamless" .. k? That is what I get for doing things when I am too tired to be thorough.

Again my sincerest apologies!

Jackie :)

PS I have a bunch of new walls coming out in the next week.. all tested in game and seamless! Hurray!

SIMS 3 UPDATE

Hey I just wanted to let you all in on a tidbit of info that came my way recently. When i was buying my used university Expansion last week the girl at the store Electronics Boutique told me that the release date for Sims 3 was pushed back from Feb 17th 2009 to August 2009. That is what has been told to her store from EA games. DANG - i was looking forwrad to playing it as I have in on pre-order! On the bright side i have many more months to practice my recoloring skills before tackling Sims3 stuff! Peace out!

Important note to downloaders of my LOTS

Happy Sunday all!

It's a beeeeautiful day in the neighborhood here in SW Ontario, Canada. Plus 1 degrees outside and the sun is shining! I already had my adorable puppy Reubidy Doo ( Reuben) out for a long hour long romp in the park near my house- gleefully climbing snowmounds together and running amuck with leash off! Now i am sittin on my rump here at my PC as i have GOT TO get some creations done. Like I have written probably a gazillion times by now ( and i am proably annoying people with this) but because of my husbands back condition I am very busy - and it hasnt gotten any better lately. The bitter cold ( and his physiotherapy - which the sessions cause him to be in MORE pain afterwards) has put him in bad shape and basically left me to have to do MORE than I was ALREADY doing! I am only getting time late at night now to create and so i have been doing LOTS ( houses). I made some bedding last night - about 20 of them and i am going to make some matching curtains as well. I never did get around to figuring out SIMPE and CC meshes yet. geesh - that weekend I ended up busy and never got around to it! My kids really need to help out more - as I am feeling slightly burned out this week and am very bitchy LOL. Creating is my de-stressor so when I cant create i am unable to "decompress" so to speak! I am also investigating whether to start my own free site- for a couple of different reasons.. and so I may not upload Custom content recolors here at TSR but SAVE them for my own site. Another reason is my teenage son wants to link off my site for his gaming purposes.. its complicated to explain but he plays Tibia and does reviews of games etc and wants to open his own gaming server blah blah blah.He is very intelligent and an artist ( this is James I am talking about - the 16 yr old) and he would like to learn 3D object meshing and so do I - to make my own furniture meshes.And when I do I will only be uploading them to my own site.

Anyways I wanted to let you all know that i also bought a used version of university and my newest four lots need Uni.. but I am still making Base Game Compatible lots as well . I know which stuff comes from Uni and Base Game so its easy enough to use the things I want just for base game houses.

Also i have had Pms in the past month or two about some of my lots ... custom content not working. As it turns out it wasnt my fault.. or the lots fault.. but the downloaders didnt have certain things they needed. I appreciate all my downloaders- you rock - BUT please make sure you have these things in order: ( I am listing these as these were some of the various problems that got solved)

1. A " Downloads" folder named as such in your EA Games folder. Without it the game will not be able to "read" anything you have downloaded.

2. CEP- Color Enabler Package. This package is a MUST in order for the recolored objects to show up in game. It can be found on the Mod the Sims website. Here is the link:

http://www.modthesims2.com/download.php?t=92541

3. WinZip or WinRAR program to unzip and extract files. Without this you cannot open files that are not packaged in a Sims2pack file. CNET.com offers FREE WinRAR archiver/extracter for downloading.

4. Sims2CleanPackinstaller. If you are using this to install my lots .. please note: after I build and save the lot .. I go back in and do a revision on the file- meaning i go in and clean up the file using the cleanpack installer. I take out straggler files that are not in the actual lot but were hanging on anyways and so the file you are downloading when you get the finished product uploaded to TSR is totally cleaned up of unnecessary files. So DO NOT uncheck anything in the clean installer dialog box that comes up when installing. If you do ..it wont be installed and will show up flashing blue or not at all in the game.

EXCEPTION: All my older lots PRIOR to November 2008 ARE NOT cleaned up via Clean installer - so in that case by all means if you are installing using clean installer make sure you are ONLY unchecking things that say "Object recolor" beside them. These are the things that arent in the original lot and are just straggler files. I apologize for this but I hadnt learned to clean up my lots before then. Remember : I am also new at this ! LOL and I am unable to go BACK and fix all the files as they are already published and there are around a hundred lots!!

***NOTE:!!!!*** All windows and doors etc in my lots come with MESH included so there is no reason why they would not show up in the game unless one of the 4 things above arent in place.

I figured I had better Blog this info .. I havent had a tonne of Pms or anything but a few and well i empathasize with new downloaders - as all this stuff can be overwhelming at first to learn.. however as much as I want to help out - it can be very time consuming writing a long pm response trying to ask those 4 questions - and trying to figure out what the downloader is doing wrong. I am so incredibly overly busy I just dont have the time folks- i apologize but i dont.

I have personally tested my lots - remember I blogged a while back at chirstmas that i lost all my files at christmas time. Well I had to re-downlaod and re-install all my own lots so I could have them in MY game - and each and every one worked in my game- as the mesh files for windows , doors etc WERE installed on my pc when i downloaded them. So i know for a FACT that it isnt my lots.

So i hope this info helps people who have experienced any problems. Like I said i want to help out as I want people to be able to PLAY and ENJOY my stuff- that is the point of why I decided to share my stuff with others! As well there have been 2 people that recently made comments on my lots to me re: this problem with some windows on two different new lots in the past couple of weeks and I tried to click on their Username to link to their page and Pm them and I couldnt. So i am unable to respond as they didnt actually PM me :( I hope you end up reading this blog !!

Thats about it for my update for now peeps- I am off to continue creating some new stuff for your enjoyment. ( and MINE too!lol) yesterday i cleaned the crap out of my hosue and got all the house laundry done etc so that i could sit down today and get some stuff done on here!Caio for now!

Building frenzy

Happy Wednesday everyone- ugh! Here in SW ontario its dreary, snowing and damp @ 8:59 am today. I am in my robe and slippers drinking my morning coffee- yelling at the kids to either GET UP ( You 're LATE!) or Get GOING! Nobody wants to get up today LOL... either did I .. i am usually up by now!  ( Got two houses today - ugh again) I can hear my teens getting coffees together ( they are off as it is exam week and they are finished) Another day of messenger and hangin around ..oh the life!lol

Last night I was up til 1 am ( my bad) building lots. All week thats what i have been doing.. lots. Cant tell you why.. just got a hankerin for building lots. So I guess you could say I am on a building frenzy LOL ( hence the title of this blog) I hope everyone ends  up liking the new houses. I built some regular contempory ones... and some "modern-looking " ones. I am trying to figure out how some of these builders make their lots the way they do. One of my favourites is kissme87. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that i dont have ANY expansions. And I have been contemplating getting some more again.. just for the build stuff. But I have noticed in the past that when I had Nightlife & Celebration Stuff ( aka Double Deluxe) i didnt get near as many downloads as when I build with Base Game. So that is the main reason i have stuck with Base game only and just relied on Custom Content to add to the lots. ( And also the fact that with expansions I cannot use all the custom content) What do u all think? Should Iget expansions? Let me know please- i am hear for the downloaders.. for YOU.

I also really like Newtlco's houses.. and last week i downloaded two of his as i really wanted the CC he had used in them. They crashed my game!!!! I was soo mad. That happened before with his houses and I sent him a message cuz i am not the only one who has had that happen. And it shouldnt happen as i had a Dual Core QUAD processor with 6 GB DDR2 memory ( RAM memory) and 750 GB hard drive memroy - yes its a titanic!And fast as lightning!! I had to go and strip down my entire downloads folder and re-install everything. Pissed me right off and took an entire night! Never again will i download his stuff even though he has some incredibly nice lots. He really needs to fix that problem.. its just not fair to downloaders.. As a builder myself my goal is that people can ENJOY and PLAY my lots.

So anyway there are at least 4 lots coming out today and 2 more pending approval. i still have two more floor plans I drew up sitting here beside me in my creations notebook i have - where i keep track of my creations. I try to create my onw floorplans from my imaginatin. Sometimes i take a looksy at Coolfloorplans.com to get new ideas .. but I never try to duplicate exactly .. as i know i wouldnt be able to! LOL ( I am limited in somethings i can do within the game) And also i think people appreciate the fact that my lots are MY creations from my imagination not a carbon copy of someone elses idea.

I suppose i will get back to creating re-colors today or tommorrow- i have been busy and so the past two days i hadnt done anything ( and then last night I built two new houses)I have some ideas for new beddings and walls.. and i still have to finish that Bathroom Wall and Floor set i was working on before Christmas! LOL. I havent doen anything with that in 3 weeks - guess i should finsih that before i move on to any more new projects! Yes thats what i wll do- i wont start anything else until i finish the floors ( i think there are still 11 left to do ?) Get the previews pics done and upload it all and THEN i will move one to other stuff. I HATE - absolutely HATE - leaving projects half done - and really that is the only one I have done that with. Oh and I had started a set of recolors of MAXIS Contempto chair - i have one so far but then I left it and moved on- i will go back and finsih that one too.

Well ta ta folks for now- must get another coffee and have a shower. Got to go to work whether i want to or not. Paul and I have been researching into making mony at home online... Paul is a little green and naive ( or rather he was until I educated him) and so I have found a couple of LEGIT things we can do ( that involve work- doesnt everything??) If anyone knows of any - PM me or whatever. To bad I didnt make money from this - Sims- I love it and it takes up alot of my time. And although it is a hobby it would still be great to make a coupla bucks from it.

OK I am totally done rambling now.. have a great day and thanks for reading! :)