If a Sim flushes the toilet while another Sim is in the shower, the showering Sim will shriek and yell at you because the water got cold. This game always makes me laugh.

Peni Griffin, they were fresh sims with no talents yet, but I did put some orange trees, apple trees, and lemon trees in the garden.

samantha_kathy I did read the guide on it before starting. All my sims joining the Garden Club, get the same thing "You need to expand your garden. Your Garden looks great. etc." Since the rest of my sims did have a small garden, I figured why not build a lot with a huge garden and see what it says. Still tells them to expand their garden. I will stick it out until they can plant veggies and see how it goes.

Thank you both for your suggestions.

I used to think that it was only the cheap showers that did that. But just two nights ago I just had a guest walk into the bathroom and use the (rather expensive) toilet while her hostess was using the (rather expensive) shower stall. It still happened. Price matters not; your showering Sims are still getting scalded.


Also, be sure to buy a bunch of garden lights and garden decorations too. The Garden Club doesn't seem to pay much attention to flamingoes or gnomes, so skip those. They do notice my fountains and scarecrows, though, so you might place some decorative items like those around your garden. And the Garden Club's judges always notice the lamps; you'll find them under Lighting > Outdoor in Buy Mode.

Every time Tiffany Zarubin and her pals stumble across a garden lamp or an outdoor decoration that's good enough for their tastes, she'll say something along the lines of "A good garden needs accents such as these." That improves your garden's final score and determines whether or not you get a Wishing Well too.

I think I did leave out the lighting. I was getting bored with building and wanted to move the sims in, I forgot to put lighting in the house. So I guess I will add some outside in the garden, too. Thanks.

You're welcome. And good luck!

(And remember to let a full day pass before you go wishing from that Wishing Well again. Mrs. Crumplebottom may look all ancient and delicate, but she can fight like the Devil. I'm thinking of having one of my werewolves wish for romance twice in a row just to see if the Crump can beat a friggin' werewolf in a brawl. "When two unstoppable forces go head-to-head" and all that UFC jazz. )

I discovered the cheat "individualroofslopeangle 15-75" so I can FINALLY build my favorite house in my neighborhood, a real-life authentic pioneer house, similar to this one:

Frontier house

Yes, I do live in the middle of nowhere, why do you ask?

I once had 2 teens on a 1x2 lot, small house and the garden consisted of 1 of each fruit tree, vegie & fruit plants. The apple statue, other garden flowers, recycling bin a few other decor items and it was fenced in with a gate. They also went from the yard to the living room where a shelf held a bunch of small potted plants. The teen got money, the well & whatever else they give. The garden doesn't have to be huge. It needs a variety but small amounts of each will work, some decor and a high environment score. Also good lighting. That was the first time I dealt with the garden club. Oh, possible a little bit of relationship points, but I'm not totally sure if that matters. They did know John Smith from fishing.

I don't think that relationships affect how the Garden Club will judge your garden; I've had Sims who had WooHooed Tiffany Zarubin get wishing wells, and I've had Sims who were mildly annoyed from arguing with Tiffany Zarubin get wishing wells too. But having a good relationship with her certainly couldn't hurt, if only to be able to sit her down for dinner and use her to fill your Social needs before having her make that anxiety-building call to the rest of the Garden Club.

Also, is that a little toddler girl building a sandcastle in your avatar? Too cute!

Seriously 20 minutes of gameplay today and I discover that, if you click on the aspiration icon, you can see your date's wants when you're on a date, thus making it possible for you to fulfill them.

Honestly had no idea about this. No wonder all those dates I played through years upon years ago went to the pits.

Thank you all for the suggestions. I have played a few more sims day with them and they helped the gardener out cleaning their lot (it is so huge and the gardener is there until late in the evening) before calling the Garden Club the second time. They faired better but still got that "Expand your garden" again. I told my girlfriend I had a good mind to plant a Mary Jane plant on the lot and see if they get the wishing well or horrify Tiffany Zarubin, either way would be funny.

How about a Cowplant? Do you think that they'd appreciate that botanical beauty? :D

(Note to self: Cast caution to the winds. Try setting the Cowplant(s) near the garden whenever the Garden Club comes over next time.)

I'll try both

Portal may have popularized "The cake is a lie," but let's not forget that The Sims 2 came up with fake cakes first. May Tiffany have the good sense to leave that cake be.

I...must have always ignored the garden club dialog, if I ever saw it.

Today, I discovered the spacebar switches Sims, although I could swear it didn't do that before. I was trying to pause and hit the FTL hotkey for it instead.

I just now discovered that you can do a group outing (I did "Just for Fun"), and then throw a party.. Interesting.. Especially when combined with the mod to throw parties on any lot.

You know how you can only invite, like, two people to a party? Outings back to your place can get around that limit, as I recall. So can inviting a ton of people over to your house before getting on the phone and officially Throwing a Party. That's what I did when my werewolf's Mom brought one of the mountain men home from Three Lakes, got him to move in with her for a while, then threw a wedding party and married him. Their live-in Bigfoot friend was running the DJ booth all evening, and apparently Bigfoots can spin some serious wax. So their wedding party turned out to be a Roof Raiser, and I was proud of that accomplishment.

Just be careful if the party carries on too late in the evening; the cops don't like twenty-Sim parties lasting beyond 10 PM for some reason.

From what I understand, if you are getting a two person limit to parties, it's only because you've already exceeded the limit of how many sims you can have on a lot. I don't know the specifics, I'm sure someone else does though, but there is some limit to how many sims can be on a lot. I don't know if that includes playable sims or not, but from what I've seen myself, the game has to allow at least two people to invite if you throw a party, but will only allow two if you are at or above the limit.

I myself can usually over-ride that by using cheats lol. My own start up cheat has:



Although, I think it's time for me to try upping that (got a new computer recently and it really rocks this game!!!).

Having EPs is supposed to raise the limit of party guests. There are also mods that increase it, as well as the cheat mentioned above.

The police won't interrupt all parties. From what I recall, it depends on if there is music playing somewhere on the lot, and when your Sim starts it. I want to say parties started before 7 are allowed to continue, but I can't find the source and my memory is not to be trusted.

I just discovered that the buy a bird want seems to be triggered by forcing your sim to spend too much time in front of the mirror building charisma lol.

Party size is based on what your computer perceives as the lot load at the moment. If you already have people on the lot, including dormies, apartment neighbors, and service sims; or if something's drawing a lot of power on your machine, you'll be allowed to invite fewer people. Last night I was trying to play with a keyboard that had gone wonky, and threw a wedding party in an apartment after the landlord showed up and the neighbors got out and about, and was limited to four guests. The game then crashed, apparently because I turned the speakers up, and I had to reboot the machine because the keyboard wouldn't respond at all. The keyboard then kept randomly opening new calculator windows and muting and unmuting the speakers, so I unplugged it, loaded the game, and was able to throw an eight-person party, with no wonky keyboard making demands, thrown before the landlord arrived and when only two neighbors were in the common area.

You can often run much larger parties by teleporting in extra guests or also inviting social groups over. If you're running with a properly sims-ready system, this will probably only lag your game.

Parties are broken up by the cops if you leave the stereo on after 10:00 PM.

I once had a sim on an outing run into someone she wanted to date, ask her out, do the first half of the date overlapping with the outing, take them all home, woohoo the date, and then throw a party. All scores were excellent. I recommend this for Romance or Pleasure sims living alone - makes a nice mini-challenge.

Yep I get around party limits by just inviting more people with the phone. This is also useful because only the sim who makes the phone call gets the option to invite their friends and they only come if they have a good relationship. Inviting another sim's friend who they have a higher relationship with is more successful.

I just found out, from reddit of all places, about setQuarterTilePlacement on/off. I'm not exactly able to picture what it does but I'm intrigued. Waiting for UC to finish downloading on this machine.

Apparently if there are no chairs in the house a sim will sit down to drink juice on the floor. Also if a sim is walking their pet past the house and you want to greet them, the option will say "Greet Hannah (the sim) & Bailey (the cat)" instead of just "Greet Hannah".

I never knew that. That's cute (the cat one, not drinking juice on the floor :D).