Genevieve took longer. I wanted to make sure I did her justice. G started out as absolutely not a favorite. She was a family sim who wasn’t nice at all and was pretty mean to everyone she met. So I decided she would be my first vampire. She’s not the most careful vampire and she’s been resurrected once and saved from Death once, both times by her brother Ian. Over time she has not only become my favorite female sim, but also my avatar and perhaps even “me,” online anyway .

The lovely kit I used is Dazzling Evening by Newlife Dreams, the round spider lace frame is from Ephemeral Victorian and her name is spelled out with Elegant Gold Alpha by Meryl Bartho.

I was so thrilled to finally see the pointed ears when Fiona turned toddler. If I’d have been thinking, I would’ve let her and Robi have another child in hopes of passing the ears on again. Alas, I wasn’t. She and Robi had several really bad chance cards and were dirt poor living in a cardboard box for much of their lives. I had to start buying $5k paintings and storing them in inventory so they wouldn’t lose all their money. As a result of their poverty, their daughter Faith, now in college, is a fortune sim and is about to make a poor husband choice (I think).

The “papers” are again actually fabric from Marcus Brothers. The embellishments are from Too Soon by Shabby Princess (and modified somewhat) and Just Passing Through. Also, a great place to find free supplies is DigiScrapDepot.

I was digging around my old sims stuff before I had Gethane Sims and found a bit of backstory for the 10 kids, mostly about Charlie. I thought it would be fun to post it as an intermissions between the first 5 scrap pages and the last 5. I wrote this entry and first posted it at a private Sims group I used to belong to, in September 2006.

As I was playing through and building Swanson House during the 10 kid challenge I was just sending sim after sim to college. My favorite of the 10 was number 3, Charlie.

Not sure exactly why. He’s a hunk, its true, but also he just has a kinda dreamy and sweet personality. So after Swanson House was built, 8 of the 10 kids were sitting in Uni at separate dorms (I love watching the going-to-college animation movie so I like to move them in separately, then start consolidating households).

Then I built Aurora Road and wanted someone to playtest it. I downloaded a sweet sim from MTS2, Kiara, and decided to use her.

I made her a fortune sim and sent her on several dates (as well as testing all the toilets, sinks, showers, beds, couches, bookcases, etc., at Aurora Road). She didn’t fall for any of the guys even though all were 1 and 2 bolts. So I broke down and used twojeffs Find-a-mate crystal ball that lets you see who some good matches are (top 5) and even teleports your choice to you if you want.

Imagine my pleasant surprise to see my dear Charlie pop up in the ball menu! I immediately teleported him to Kiara and they had a wonderful time. But now I was faced with a horrible, terrible task — getting Charlie (and Aaron and Bianca before him) through university. Bleh.

My plan was to stair-step the 10 Swanson kids so that as each year ended, I’d bring into the playing dorm the next Swansling in line for their freshman year. I also installed twojeffs college adjuster so that once everyone was all good on the grade meter, I could just jump to 2 hours before their final, saving me about half of each semester.

Ethan, who I wasn’t real fond of to begin with, was going to be a player, but he 3bolted with a fellow romance sim so I let them marry. They were going to live the DINK lifestyle (double income, no kids) but instead Ethan became a favorite by getting abducted! Only my 3rd ever. My 15 year old daughter nagged me into letting them also have a biological child together. ETA: Kit is Urban Kiwi by Shabby Princess.

I actually had this one done before Charlie’s 2nd version. This one is different in that I didn’t use a kit. Instead, I first used fabric swatches I downloaded from Marcus Brother’s Fabric Gallery, specifically the Ellery Collection. I saved the image, excised the tape measure, resized the images, and used them just like I’d use “papers” from a page kit. I did use a kit called Festival by Shabby Princess for the embellishments.

Anyway, on to Debra.

Charlie is so special I did 2 separate pages for him because I wasn’t happy with the first one. He’s a favorite sim, second only to my beloved Kyle *grin*.

I used a LOVELY free page kit from Shabby Princess. She has a ton of stuff for download. Bandwidth heavy though!

Charlie married an older woman, Kiara (by noema @ MTS2) after they fell in 3 bolt love. They make out everywhere, still as elders. They have a lovely daughter Chloe, in college now, and Clark, a teen.

Wow, I just checked my stats. I must be getting some hits from digital scrappers . My record hits just doubled since yesterday.

I’d love to hear from all you simmers and scrappers, etc. I think my settings are default and I’ll have to approve your first comment.

I’m having lots of fun learning this craft. And downloading lots of free stuff!

For Aaron’s page I used a “Quick Click” i.e. the picture and background placement was done and I just had to layer in some backgrounds and pictures. This one I did from a “Page Kit” but did all the placement and layering myself.

And on to Bianca!

For unknown reasons, I got it into my head that instead of wedding pictures, I should learn digital scrapbooking and do a page for each of the 10 kids. What the heck, why not. Good reason to learn how to dig scrapbook and also how to learn photoshop. My paintshop version doesn’t support png’s with alpha channel so I was forced to install my dh’s photoshop (which he has been bugging me to learn. He is really disdainful of paintshop.) I must say, I do now understand what all the fuss is about with photoshop . I found all my supplies and instructions in the freebies at Digital Scrapbook Place.

Without further ado, Aaron.

This post will continue on with the history of the founding of Lake Crossing through the 10 baby challenge.

Amanda is concerned that her butt is going to be as big as the Nanny’s soon.

Todd is not thrilled at all for yet another birth.

Hannah!

Though I had a mod in to allow more than 8 people in the house, it was getting too hard so I took this pic before sending Aaron and Bianca off to college. From left to right: Fiona, Bianca, Todd holding Hannah, Aaron, Amanda (pregnant with Ian), Genevieve, Ethan, Debra, Charlie.