nornegonc: I am a fan of elven things, although I'm more D&D than LOTR. That market reminds me of something someone else here did, possibly Agneza...a library? It was built in a triangle.
Backdrop: Three words: Tiny. Space. Pods. :-)
EA really flexed their creative muscle with LL. I had to check out the plant house (the name is based around chlorophyll but I forget it now) because they built it in the shape of leaves with that short fence, in green, on the roof to form the leaf veins. That's actually why my LL house has that little fence around the roof--I didn't realize there was a re-styleable short fence (augh!) until I saw that EA had used one.
Anyway, even if none of the LL houses are exactly cozy traditionals, they do give you free rein to create oddly shaped things without it clashing too much (there's also a heart-shaped house), and I'd imagine that can be useful for building houses that are small while also being interesting to look at. And it's introduced me to whole new ideas about using walls and fences and so on to get interesting looks. I've also much enjoyed redoing people's pools (I like creative pools, even if my sims hardly ever use them). If only I could put my goldfish in them. I only wish they'd included alien plants as well as trees--that's a nitpick.
ETA: The color scheme was an accident. I toyed with the included alien walls and other things, and at some point, I found a recolored marble (I forget what it was part of now)--not something I made but one of their custom jobs. So I just applied it to everything. Possibly to too many things, actually--the stairs and railings included. The interior downstairs used to be a lot more wacky, with concentric squares and stuff. And I finally gave up and replaced it with wood because I couldn't figure out how to style furniture around multiple rows of colored marble. Sometimes, simplest is best. But I hung on to the little accent squares and the corner pieces for fun. I don't know, it may still be "too much."
