hi ho, hi ho: Steffie's first day working at Coolidge House

February 2086. 


Off to work she goes.

In game, Stephanie is working in the part-time manual labor career. That career actually pays a TON of money. Like nearly $50-something an hour at entry level which is much higher than most of the adult entry-level careers, so I'm rather restrictive about who can enter that career. But Stephanie's quarterly wages will be deducted from Sharon's business account, and she did say that she paid well! Mostly I liked the hours, weekend mornings, so that Justin can stay home with the girls.



Cutie in the work outfit I made for her!

So there are two different work sessions at play here. First, there is the in-game career that Stephanie goes to from her own house and earns her wage. Second, there is the Sunday Brunch session that I play from Sharon's house and bring Stephanie in to work. The second part is where Sharon makes her money for the business, and since Stephanie has already been paid by the game, she'll come in to work on this occasion for "free." Although I often have my business owners throw their employees some tips, too, if they did really well in a play session.

update 1/14/17: with the addition of this little mod to add vacation days (or I think MCCC has the option now, too), your sims can be employed in real game careers (culinary, for example, or whatever career) and take a "day off" to attend their active work place and get paid for it at the end of their day. Much like the way active GTW careers work. Except there won't be any career progress on those days since the game thinks they're taking a day off. But with this trick, it's now possible for me to send my teachers and students to my school lot on real weekdays without being penalized for missing work/school, and I'm totally excited about that!  


Sunday brunch prep. They look so happy to be cooking.

Sunday brunch is just one of the events that Sharon hosts here. People can also book the hotel and grounds for weddings, parties, family reunions, or whatever other gathering they might want. Obviously, travelers can use it as an actual hotel, too. Other seasonal events may pop up as she has ideas for them.


Planting in the greenhouse.

Sharon paid Stephanie $1000 in game for these heirloom seeds, since they're already great level in quality and they'll keep producing. Seemed fair for all the work Stephanie has put into them over the years.


From about 7:00 to 10:00 a.m., Sharon and Stephanie get everything set up. They put out three dishes of food. (I made 8-serving party platters, which was way too much food and most of it went bad by the end of the day. Next time, I'll only make servings of 4 at a time.) They also made coffee and filled the drink tray, and at some point I'll buy her one of those drink fountains, but we're saving up for a remodel first because the house is hardly changed at all from how it came and I HATE that wallpaper, lol!

Then, before they start, Stephanie needs a little pep talk so her “stranger danger” moodlet doesn’t make her in a bad mood all day, lol! Anticipating that she'd also probably get hungry and tired from being pregnant, I also loaded her up with some more positive moodlets, so she's good to go.

I started their club gathering, and their duties are to clean, repair things, and socialize. Then I save and leave them to their work!


You ready?

Let's bring in the guests!


Colette the realtor and her boys.


The Thompson family.


Sal the bartender and his girlfriend, Jewell.



Mostly everybody is eating and having a great time!

This is where I have them leave their money, in Sharon's locked room upstairs. Sunday Brunch costs $50 a head at the moment, although that's a bit pricey, to be honest. Probably more worth it after she's made over the gardens with some more things to do here. But $50 was a nice round number that I had a coin for. The next coin down is $20 and that would have been too cheap. 

So this does require a lot of loading screens, but it's the easiest way to have everyone pay for their ticket. Luckily the loading screens are pretty quick. Still about 30 seconds each for me.

I'm not controlling either Stephanie or Sharon at this point, but because of the club setup, they'll go about their work pretty well. For the most part.


I did have to lock Stephanie out of Sharon’s room on the second floor because she kept wanting to play games on the computer.





But after that, Stephanie was actually much more diligent about the work than Sharon was. I suppose that’s fitting. Since Sharon owns the place, perhaps she entitled to sit back and just oversee things. Sharon is also a lot more outgoing, so she spent a lot of time socializing with the guests while Stephanie preferred to talk to the plants.





Sal ditched his girlfriend at some point and tried to make nice with Laney. I didn't catch what happened, exactly, but I found Jewell off crying in the closet, lol!


Ingrid and Ian, playing in the games room which needs a huge remodel too!


Amy and Blair. They came to brunch to check out the venue as a possible wedding location.

Amy is the bride that Sharon mentioned in this post, and their wedding will be in June of the 2086 timeline, so that will take place within Steph's story. I've been wanting to do a wedding in my game for so long, but my sims keep getting divorced instead, lol! In the 2091 timeline, I said that these guys were already married, but I skipped over their actual wedding. But I thought it would be fun to give them a real wedding as part of the flashback story. These guys would have been VERY young in 2086 (like 19-20, I think), but they're also adorable and well matched, so I'm not too worried about it. I think they'll make it work.

So this will be a very small wedding since neither of them have family in the game. Blair kind of has some "foster siblings," George and Blossom, but I didn't make Vicky yet for TS4. We'll imagine that she's still off traveling on her houseboat. Maybe she'll come back though. I worry about having SO MANY sims in her age group that the town is kind of unbalanced. But April misses her, too, so I'll probably make her. She had a HUGE story in my head that I never got around to telling (storyteller's ADD), so she might come back with a surprise or two. ;)


Pretty spot for a wedding once the trees fill in for the summer.


These guys didn't do too bad for two townie teens who hooked themselves up in the photobooth at junior prom! They're even color coordinated, lol!



How you doing, Steph? Still holding up okay?

Poor girl, I made her work much longer than 5 hours, even though brunch was supposed to be over at ~2:00 pm. They stayed until around 6:00 because I wanted to give everything a good test.


But Stephanie gave herself a little break when she needed one. She sat down to rest and had something to eat. I actually didn't see her in a bad mood all day. And since she was on overtime already and Justin and the girls walked by, I let them come in and check up on her. There was so much extra food about to go to waste anyway, so it was no big deal.


Awww. Sweeties being sweet.

Being VERY sweet.



So that's why she's so happy, lol!

Justin, go home! You're distracting her. You're not helping.


Or wait, he actually is helping. Why is he helping? He wants a job so bad that he's going to do Stephanie's job for her? Or maybe he feels bad that I made her work for nearly 12 straight hours while pregnant. Oops.

So that completes the grand opening of Sunday Brunch at the Coolidge House Country Inn. I'm quite happy with how it went, although I really want to makeover this whole lot. Sounds like a project to complete in time for Amy and Blair's wedding here!