More Dusty & Margo Pic-Spam!

I decided to age both Margo and Dusty Dame up a little prematurely in my Appaloosa Plains save, because I wanted to show off Dusty with her ribbon--so while I was at it, I got some shots of Margo horseback riding, because... let's face it, the beginners riding animations are absolutely hilarious.

I also left all these screenshots unedited, so you can see all the color properly on Dusty; I altered her pattern yet again, but I think it's safe to say I have finally settled! Before, her spots just looked a bit fake and a little too bold... I'm still not sure if I'm 100% happy with them, but I have a bit until Margo is a teen, so I can fiddle with it a tad more before then if I have to!

Anyways!

Here's our "My Horse & I Think Pink" ribbon--so cute. ^^

This is the photo prize I got for winning the Think Pink Equus event! (lkahsglkahsr!!) I haven't decided if I want her photo hung in her room or in the living room, so for now I'm just doing both. It looks soooo perfect hanging up in their house--thank you so much, Equus Sims! <33

And now, for some Margo/Dusty picspam.

 

Yup, I'ma happay!

Only shot I could get that actually showed her braces, and you can barely see em. *sulk*

I love how both happy DD looks and horrified Margo is. So classic. ;D

And of course, as a finish--Dusty's coloring, beneath her getup. The spots are much more subtle and less... reptilian looking, I guess. (If you're curious, here's the first attempt and here's the second, previous attempt.) Obviously, she's looking much better now!

Also, Dusty... DD... DeeDee (I'm trying to cement in her 'Barn Name'--keep coming back to Deedee, lol) will be making her premiere in Desperate Sims very very soon, which I'm pretty stoked about! I just need Christina's simself before I can finish that part of that episode--hopefully I get the time to actually do it. Mrrr... more on that soon--I'll be writing a small post on Desperate Sims to explain what's going on within the next few hours.

Til then--Ciao for now!

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Dusty Dame!

Sometime in the future of Desperate Sims, Margo's going to have storyline that involves horses to a certain degree--and because I plan almost everything way, way too far in advance, I decided to make her equine partner ahead of time!

Margo's also going to be the sim I use for events at Equus Sims, so this little bugger is going to help out with that!

So, without further ado... Meet Dusty Dame!

Dusty Dame's appearance is based heavily off of an Andalusian/Tennessee Walker mix Savannah (click here to see some pictures of her); it took me a while to decide what breed I wanted, but after I did quite a bit of browsing I decided to go with a buckskin colored Andalusian, which led me to those pictures, and I fell in love!

Our Dusty, however, is currently a Playful, Anti-Jumping little Piggy. I still haven't totally settled on traits, but I know I want her to be silly but a little bit of a handful. I noticed other piggy horses chomping on gardening plants and totally wrecking them--so not only amusing, but totally annoying. Perfect. ^^

Margo and her family decided to come to Appaloosa Plains for a visit, and naturally, Margo got to meet Dusty while she was there!

However... She wasn't exactly too keen on the horses, at first.

We kept encouraging her to try and get their attention...

... so finally Dusty gave her a bit of a sniff...

... buuuut she decided to keep snubbing her. Margo was not entirely thrilled--she thought Dusty was pretty!

Well, after some... shall we say, bribery and flattery... Dusty finally decided to start cooperating.

I think Margo was pretty impressed. ^-^

I think giving Dusty a good brushing helped their relationship too, though little miss Piggy wasn't *too* keen on being clean. She promptly rolled in the dirt, afterwards. XD

The two spent the rest of the evening playing Chase around the yard--though poor Margo never could keep up!

Even Lilobot seemed to warm up to the horses a bit--but Dusty's mother was a little bit skeptical of what Lil was... Can you blame her?

Obligatory snuggle shots of mother/daughter. ^^ I named the mother Sand Flurry, because I am possibly the worst horse namer on the face of the planet.

So anyways! Just a little foray into the future! None of this is going to remain canon to the story, because I know I want Margo to initially meet Dusty at the LEC, whenever I get it (*eyes Christina* ^^), but I wanted to share my adorable little creature with y'all, so there you go! :D

Oh, and yes--I do have a shot of Dusty Dame when she gets older, but it's a crappy CAS shot, so you're just going to have to wait 'til she grows up to see her!

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Tips on using Picasa

There's a lot of really good photo-hosting services out there, but of all of them I would have to say that Picasa is by far the easiest (for me, at least) for Sim story blogging, for various reasons. Biggest is probably that I use Blogspot, and Picasa is built right into it--but even if you don't, it has some pretty handy tools that make it really handy to use, anyways~!

But, there are some things about it a little hard to get used to, so I'm gonna try and give a quick explanation of the way to use Picasa to get the most bang for your (free) buck!



A few extra notes:

• Picasa has some really handy photo editing features that make cropping and lightening darker shots really easy and fast--these changes will upload, but won't effect the hard copy unless you manually save.
• You can move each folder on the left sidebar into a new 'Collection' that can make it really easy to keep all your folders with Sim's screenshots together. Just right-click a folder and hit an option under 'Move to Collection...' That way you can collapse everything else you aren't sorting through.
• Picasa has some pretty neat collage-making options--can pry spot some of mine in the video!
• It will take some time to upload the photos when you 'Preserve Image Quality', because it's both resizing the image and maintaing the file size at the same time. Trust me, it's worth it.
• The URL to the page with all your images is probably going to be https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos (when you're logged in).

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Margo May

For all you Margo-lovers and Should-Be Margo-lovers:


Margo May by ~kaleeko on deviantART

Posted this on my tumblr about a week ago. Cute girl is cute. ^^

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Screenshot Dump!

As usual, I've taken lots of screenshots that are totally irrelevant to the storyline, but I want to share them anyways--so here's a sampling of what's been going on in my game the last few days:

For those of you who didn't see me post this on twitter--yeaaah, Margo sure knows how to pick spots to do her homework.

Okay, much better spot. Lil definitely enjoys the role of Big Sister, too, and helps her out with her homework quite a bit.

... Not that it really seems to be helping much.

Margo's also taken to the habit of carrying around her teddy a lot--which, goes by the name of Pixie.

Also, I am *really* in love with these two as a mother/daughter pair. It is unbelievable the amount of wants these two throw out for each other, not to mention the fact that they're just absolutely freakin' adorable.

I threw a party for Brad's birthday and invited a few choice people I wanted to improve relations with--in the story things'll go a little bit differently--and of course, Party Animal Lamont decided to serve up the entertainment. First time I've seen someone tell a ghost story autonomously, I thought that was cute. ^^

Meanwhile, though, Phillip apparently was using a pick up line on Meredith. I know she's cute for an elder, but dude. Your wife? Silly man!

Uuuggggh, the obligitory candle-blowing shot. (Though, I actually get an insane amount of happy feelings looking at this pic--probably because it's my Bradley-kins. T_T)

I hate it when it resets the hair like that--but man, does he look like Jeb or what.

"Oh god oh god oh god, how did you convince me to come up in this treeeeee..."

"La la laaaaaaa!"

They finally came out with a solution to get the outdoor lighting tweak mod to work with Twinbrook, and so I decided to give it a whirl to see how I felt about using it on my main hood, and I have to say--it is pretty darn sexy.

I don't think I'll leave it installed ALL the time, because the same orange sunset every night could get a little irritating, but I like the other additions with it quite a bit.

In contrast, here's sunrise--I love how you can see the shadow of the treehouse on the side of the house, there's something oddly adorable about it.

Yeah yeah, I left all the party decorations up... Still. Cool shadows are cool. ^^

Alright so this might be a little morbid, but I sent Brad to the cemetery to get some vampire fish and when sunset hit, I really started to notice how beautiful Twinbrook's graveyard is, so I decided to take a few shots to show that + the pretty sunset colors from the mod.

Yep, Farah's statue is still standing and admiring itself.

One of these days, I'm going to write a short about her early days just so you all can see what a narcissitic biyotch she was. ;D

In contrast, Emerald's tomb, which y'all got to see quite a lot of in Season 4. It's started to get a tad overgrown, now; all the remaining Greenwoods have moved away, leaving Brad as the only person left in Twinbrook who would regularly visit her grave--but, he's left it in peace for a long time, now. I still occasionally like to sit and look myself, though, because as mundane a picture as this is, I miss Em sometimes, too.

I didn't set this shot up at all--it happened totally randomly--but it's incredibly applicable to what's going to happen over the course of this storyline, so I thought I'd share it with you. All backstory is good backstory!

That is all--but I leave you with this little morsel:

Giggity giggity.

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