elevenSims

HELLO! It's simply time I start sharing what I make on the Sims 4. Can no longer spend so much time doing it just for me! I hope those of you that see this enjoy it and I look forward to seeing what the rest of the Sims 4 builders are doing! ♥ I will do my best to list all CC used.

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YOUR BUILDS ARE SO GOOD !!!!! the post-apocalyptic ones and the lighthouse are my personal favorites, though I've scrolled through a lot of your blog looking at the pictures and reading the stories!! do you have any tips for building? I cannot stress enough how freaking cool they are

Ohh thank you so much! You have no idea how much that means to me at the moment. Haven't had the time to build or post recently, life changing time.

Hard to give tips! Find an idea that genuinely excites you and add a story to it, even if it's just in your mind, helps when it comes to choosing clutter and the like. Scour the internet for inspiration is an option too. Some days though, you'll try to build and none of the vibes are there, but they'll come back, and the more you force inspiration the more disappointing the result.

Much love to you 💚

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N A T U R E   R E C L A I M S

The petrol station shop.

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N A T U R E   R E C L A I M S

The laundrette and upstairs staff area.

Just been broken up with after believing we would be together forever, forever trying. Nearly 6 years of my life... and I’m at an age where I want to start a family. Total shock. This Nature Reclaims series is apt for how I’m feeling.

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omg, gorgeous work! I have a Q. do you use any terrain replacements? It's just amazing *-*

Thank you so so much, that's so kind!

I'm very sorry, but I don't know too much about anything 😬 What do you mean by terrain replacements? And what post did you see that makes you ask?

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N A T U R E   R E C L A I M S 

more to come...

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The Lighthouse (P.4)

Up the stairs, Grandma made her son’s old room into their grandchildren’s guestroom. She’s filled it with toys, light and colour since the loss of their father, as if to paint over the sadness. 

The painted blue sky wall is the only reminder of the room’s past and it’s enough to bring Grandma and Grandpa back to when their son played with airplanes instead of boats. 

Their granddaughters only play with boats in the bath now. They both have memories of going out on the boat with their father and Grandpa, but now they see it stranded in the garden, empty except for the weeds.

Grandma and Grandpa’s one living child will be off to university soon, but she is torn. Grandpa wishes someone would carry on the traditions of his family. Grandma wishes no one would and encourages her daughter’s creative pursuits, in the hope it will break the family curse.

Grandma and Grandpa’s room is a private haven. In the morning they share tea and their plans for the day. At night Grandpa drinks a bit too much wine or whiskey and documents old fisherman’s tales shared with him by family or friends when they worked out on the boats together.

Grandma and Grandpa are formidable in their family’s eyes. But when it’s just them, their stoicism disintegrates into sand, forever moved and changed by the waves of their evolving grief... But always moving together.

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The Lighthouse (P.3)

The house is almost completely the same as it was when it was first built except for a few modern conveniences and one major addition, the sun room come dining room. The midday sun was lost on this house for the most part, and when darkness invades a happy life so often, light is needed. Where better than where a family comes together to eat.

The house is dotted with antiques passed down and spaces remodeled for new uses. An old store room is the laundry. The boathouse is now a workroom for Grandpa to take his mind off the trade he can no longer face. Grandma wouldn’t even allow it - she can’t risk one more loss.

Grandma repurposed her father-in-law’s office into her happy hobby room decorated with family memories, grandchildren’s art and even her own. Knitting and cross-stitching allow her to meditate on the menial in the evening, to veer her towards simpler thoughts. But when night comes, and the warmth drops, she occasionally goes to her typewriter and writes about all those she and her family have lost over the generations. 

She aims toward simpler thoughts in the day, but when the sun has been swallowed by the sea like so many of her family, she cannot fight the burning need to keep them alive forever... Somehow.

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The Lighthouse (P.2)

The garden has been well kept for generations and has always been a place of healing for those left by those they love. The garden is filled with memories of children and grandchildren playing with their imagination and laughing at the chickens’ silly antics.

Grandma and Grandpa take solace here with their family, now missing one. They sit out the back to view the boats passing, a reminder of Grandpa’s old trade and new tragedy. 

In the evening they retreat to the porch to soak up the evening sun’s warmth, sharing their love and their longing, listening to the last of birdsong. This is where they overlook their well-beaten, family fishing boat, now retired under a weathered, wooden awning. They can see the slow return back to nature the boat undergoes as the days since the tragedy pass, reminding them as they age, they will too. As did those lost at sea.

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The Lighthouse (P.1)

This out-of-use lighthouse has been home to a family for at least a couple of centuries. When it was made redundant the family focused on fishing to make their living. 

A fisherman’s life is often met with tragedy. The current generation placed a memorial anchor at the cliff to remember ancestors, and nearer relatives, stolen from their families by the waves.

But this family is happy. You can see a few of them playing in the garden.

But this is only a memory as seen by a seagull one summer day. Another loss is to befall them. But they will do their best to make this lightless lighthouse happy again. It’s in their family’s hereditary psyche to know that love and memory keep all things alive.

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MINIMAL? (Less and less so (or much too much) )

Haven’t been able to build much over the last week, so here are WIP screenshots of that house inspired by a celebrity’s house.

The more time I spend on it, the further away from Minimalism I get... which could be the point. Mies van de Rohe said “Less is more”, so maybe more time and more mess go hand in hand. A good artist knows when to STEP AWAY FROM THE CANVAS! That just ain’t me.

I’ll do less next time.... perhaps.

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MINIMAL? P.1

Here’s a work in progress! Who can guess what controversial celebrity’s house inspired this?

I’m far from minimalistic. Absolute clutter FREAK! But I love the style. There’s a link with Brutalism, which could be my favourite architectural style. Maybe. 

When I saw this person’s house I was immediately obsessed, so I had to make a version of it. But it’s very hard for me not to clutter it up. I’m trying to practice self-control in this build. Let’s see how that goes... ha (not known for self-control).

MUCH LOVE!

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Some of the insides of that Country Georgian in the morning light (duh).

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These are just a couple views of that Georgian house’s environs. (previous post) 

I wish I had land to farm and cultivate. I believe hard, physical labour, that connects us to the earth, is insurmountable in its benefit to our mental health. 

Oh to have a garden! Living four stories up with no connection to the earth and with no view of anything except half thought out buildings is NO FUN! So I’ve stuffed as many houseplants in this little flat as possible. But still, I’d like to have my knees on the earth and my hands in the soil.

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as one man can fully experience.”

- Patrick Kavanagh, a great Irish poet who always found the beauty and the magic in the seemingly ordinary.

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I live in a top floor apartment in a city, so I’m constantly wondering how on earth I will own a Georgian house in the countryside (naturally).

So I made this to soothe my longing. I enjoyed building it so much.I wanted to set it as if it was amongst fields and hedgerows and ditches, inspired by the boreens I grew up walking down. Boreen is from the Irish word “bóithrín”, meaning little road basically.

I’ll show more, but for now, just a peak.

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The Secret Garden (extra)

Just an imaginary night and another enlightening quote from the book...

“Perhaps there is a language not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

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The Secret Garden

Found this quote from the book, which I only half read when young (a life theme). The book was for children. For children to be reading such existential philosophy as this quote exudes, is incredible. If I read this as a kid I would not, even nearly, comprehend the depths. 

We all watch films and read books as children and don’t fully understand their worth, or we miss the humour. But you reread or re-watch later and you are shocked at the jokes made or enlightened, or moved, by the worth you missed. This is an example of something fundamental completely missed as a child.

“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.” 

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

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The Secret Garden P.4

Now we move to the pond, looked on by Ares and Nike night and day, amongst the ruins.

The pond in the film was very wild and overgrown which I loved. But I enjoyed the minimalism of the pond in the middle of the wildness, so I didn’t add to much to it.

Ares’ head points to the final arch, leading us to the end and to where we begun.

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

 - Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden