Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

So Christmas has come and gone by so fast this year. I hope everyone had a happy holiday. My Christmas was small this year, but I'm happy I got to spend it with friends and family :)

To celebrate Christmas, I've created "Santa's Restaurant" in The Sims 4. I think it's a very cute, small, and rustic restaurant. I built it this way so it would resemble a log cabin, and decorated it with Christmas items and colors. I'm so happy The Sims introduced nutcrackers. They're my mom's and my husband's favorite thing to collect.

Here's the video of my speed build:

This was my first time trying to complete a speed build in this way, and it took me forever! I had built it, and then recorded myself deleting everything and had to reverse the videos. Then, because I didn't want the yellow delete tool to show, I had to take picture by picture of everything I deleted. It got frustrating, but I did it!

( I had a much better Christmas song than this one, but I couldn't use it because of copyright)

I don't know if I'll continue to do speed builds in this way. I had use the in game video feature, and it had some glitches in it. So I may go back to just recording my builds how I used to do them, by using Quicktime to record my screen.

You can find my build on Origin under my ID: SicilianX

Black City {Review + No Spoilers}

 Black City, written by Elizabeth Richards, takes place in a corrupt world. There are two races divided by a wall, the Darklings and Humans. They can't quite seem to get along, and to make matters worse, drugs are thrown into the mix along with a deadly disease that's spreading throughout the Darkling community.

The story revolves around Natalie Buchanan and Ash Fisher along with their friends and family. Now the story is about a girl who's family is a very big deal and a boy who's an outcast and not well-liked. Can you guess what happens next?

Yep, they fall in love. The unthinkable in their world. Considering that Ash is a Darkling. If caught, they'd be called race traitors and killed. Now I won't say if they do ever get caught or not. I'll let you read it to find out. But I will say that their love is the kind of love...

            (I thought that picture was pretty) 

Black City involves romance, mixed with some mystery and political corruption.

I just finished this book last night. It gave me so many mixed feelings towards the end. Everything is fine and good starting out, but as I got further and further in, it just got more complex. In a good way, and I say that because it really kept me going. Although I don't think I felt totally crazy about the book as I have with other series. I still enjoyed reading it and I do plan on to keep reading the other books in this series.

Red Queen {Review + No Spoilers}

I read this book not too long ago and it is by far one of my favorites!

Summary:

'Red Queen' is written by Victoria Aveyard. It's about a world in which there are two classes of people. Red bloods and silver bloods. Silver bloods are thought of like royalty with god-like powers. And the red bloods are your common lower class citizens. The main characters name is Mare and she's the main focus. Mare one day is working in the palace, watching some silver blooded girls battle for the hand of the prince. All of a sudden something happens and Mare releases some pretty awesome powers. But how can that be? She's not a silver blood.

Well, after the show Mare puts on, the royal family decides she was the missing daughter of some lost silver blood family who's finally been discovered. They want to hide the fact she's a red blood. They decide to keep a close watch on her by having her get engaged to the younger of the two princes. Who seems nice in the beginning.....but you're in for a HUGE plot twist.

Mare has to navigate her way amongst silver bloods, not ever bleed in public, and not fall in love with the once prince she can't have, and stop an upcoming war between the two social class.

Thoughts:

This book literally grabs me and it's just so good. I love how Aveyard wrote the book. Mare's character is different. different from Bella from the twilight series and different from Lucinda from the fallen series. I didn't want to just shake her and tell her she's being stupid. I highly recommend this book to any young adult reader who likes romance, fantasy, and major plot twists.

I had borrowed this book from the public library, and I actually plan on buying it sometime in the future. Again, great, great book.

Manatee Springs State Park, Fl

Manatee Springs State Parkin in Chiefland, Florida is such a beautiful place to travel to. I went camping there with my fiancé's family. In this part of Florida there wasn't much to do outside of the park. Although there are plenty of places to eat at. But in the park, you can swim in their beautiful crystal clear waters and go kayaking.

You can rent a kayak or canoe by the hour. You could bring your own too, if you have one. My fiancé and I had to rent one. 

Phone reception was bad there, unless you're with straight talk, like I am. I had perfect service there. However,  I believe it's a time to be with whoever you're with and to get away from technology. But if you do feel like you need to be connected, don't worry they do have free wifi that you can use at the little shop they have.

They have so much wildlife there. There's a lot of fish and turtles swimming around in the water and there are crocodiles, so be careful. When you go all the way out to the pier they have, you can see sturgeons jumping out of the water and they are huge! There's a lot of deer in the park too.

Check out this video here for some deer that came up close to our campsite.

There's an option of getting on a pontoon boat and taking a tour down the river, but it was a bit pricy so we chose to not do that. If you're not planning on renting a kayak or a canoe, then it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for you to do the tour.

We stayed there for a weekend, and I had a really good time there, apart from how humid it was. I'd definitely go back there again.

SaveSave

Missy's Story

I really wanted a pet growing up. My mother knew some people who had 2 dogs in a small fenced in area in their back yard. They weren't taking very good care of the 2 dogs. The dogs were both Australian Shepard mixes but had the markings of a Boarder Collie. They both that little stub of a tail. Missy was black and white with brown eyes. Her sister was a beautiful light brown where Missy was black and she had blue eyes. That was the dog my mom had wanted, but the owners said no, take the other one. So my mom brought home Missy.

Missy was very aggressive in the beginning. It got to the point where my mother would go to different pet shops looking at other dogs because she was thinking of getting rid of Missy. But I didn't want her to. Even though I couldn't get close to Missy without her growling at me, I still wanted her to stay. Eventually my grandmother had hired this very amazing dog trainer. I barely remember it, I was maybe 6 years old at the time. I remember my mother told me that during Missy's training she did bite the trainer pretty bad. But after all that was done, she was by far the best dog I'll ever know.

She never left our side. She followed my mother everywhere. She learned to stay and come. She learned bathroom, ball, and rope in sign language (My parents are deaf). She was the sweetest dog ever. She still had some quirks of course. She always barked at the door (which was a good/annoying thing because my mom could actually hear her a little and knew someone was at the door). She was very shy and wary of new people, mostly men. If you came around the house often and she got to know you, she would always be so happy to see you. I remember Missy liked to sleep with my mom on my parents bed. My dad hated it. So whenever he left early in the morning to go to work, she would jump into bed with my mom. She learned who "Nana" was. That was what we called my grandmother on my dad's side. My sister and I would yell, "Nana is here!!!" and Missy would get so excited. It got to the point where sometimes we'd say "Nana" just to get her all excited (cruel, I know). She was very smart.

Missy playing in the snow

 There was one remarkable/scary day, however you look at it. I was playing in the backyard with a water sprinkler. The kind that moves the water back and forth in an arc. My dad was in the front yard working on something. My mother was on the first floor of the house (we called it our basement cause the living spaces were up on the second floor). Anyway, my mom told me if I needed her, I could reach her through the backdoor. Dad had told Missy to stay in the backyard. Every so often Missy would go through the workshop, through the garage, and out to my dad. He would bring her to the backyard again and tell her to stay. Now the water sprinkler had exposed gears on it. I was between 6 and 8 years old at the time. Somehow (I was being curious I suppose) I got one of my fingers stuck between the gears. I became hysterical as the gears grind my finger between them. I ran to the door that leads to the basement and my mother wasn't there. I kept crying and screaming. Missy had started pulling on the water hose and put holes in it with her teeth. When pulling on the hose wasn't working, she then ran out to get my father's attention (because she had to have known he would come back and tell her to stay). My father saw me and was able to quickly stop it. He took me to his workshop where he took the sprinkler apart and freed my finger. Nothing serious had happened. My finger had bruised and turned a little purple. I owe all my thanks to Missy for saving my finger. 

Missy was always such an amazing family dog. There were so many wonderful times with that dog, that it would make this post much, much longer. She lived to be 14 years old. She had a long and happy life.

Swamp Cabin

Hey everyone! I have a new speed build up and it's the Swamp Cabin :)

I hope you enjoy using in your game and it is up on the gallery. My origin ID is SicilianX

Cloud 9

How many of you have had a dream of a house or hotel that was so beautiful and amazing, you keep wishing you got to go there? I most certainly have.

I had a dream I was in this beautiful hotel room. It was so wonderful that I was inspired to build a similar replica on The Sims 4.

This is no where close to how amazing it was. But it's the closest I could get in the game. In my dream, the hotel room was very white, crisp, and clean. The floors were a white marble, very cool to the touch. When you walked through the door, you could see straight out to the pool and waterfall sculptures. I can't remember if the waterfall were in front or behind the pool. There was no door to the pool. Only a curtain that you could close for some privacy. To the right of the door, you had the small kitchenette. Further down on that side was the bed. The bathroom next to that. On the left you had some closets and your couch and TV.

Here's a speed build of it:

It was so beautiful... If that kind of thing was real I can only imagine how expensive it would be. Since I've made it in the Sims 4, I will upload it to the gallery so other players may enjoy it as well.

Is Destiny Still Fun Without PS Plus?

No, not in my opinion. There are still things you can do and accomplish. There are quests and missions that you can still do. But once you get past what you can do, there's nothing really left to do other wait for the next expansion or game update.

When I first got Destiny I had the PS Plus. I'm not the kind of person who plays online with friends all the time. Besides the fact that none of my friends have the game. I enjoyed doing the missions and quests. I like upgrading my equipment and weapons and leveling up my characters. After I had gotten myself stuck with a mission a few times, I'd venture off and play in their crucible. I hadn't played in there before and I was curious to try. 

I sucked so bad at first. I liked playing Control, and I'm sure I had team member who were frustrated with me, but I still had fun with. The more I played in the crucible, the better I became and the faster I got to level up my characters. It was easy to get better gear that way too. So I grew to like playing online much more. 

When my 1 year subscription to the PS Plus was over, I was super frustrated with playing Destiny. I don't have the money right now to get the subscription, but I definitely plan to in the future. Destiny just became really boring for me. There are still a few missions I can do with some of my characters, but I'm stuck on them (Yes, I've looked up walkthroughs for what I'm stuck with, but I'm still stuck regardless. Plus better weapons wouldn't hurt).  With every game update and event that comes around, you need to have PS Plus to do it. Otherwise you'll be left out from the goodies you can unlock with completing some tasks.

So in my opinion, Destiny isn't worth my time without having a PS Plus. Sure I'll still play to kill some time if I have nothing better to do. But other than that, you just can't do much without that subscription once you've done everything you can.