1.3 - First community lot: the Salon!

This is toddler Emilio with his imaginary friend toy Jelly Bean. I want at least one of the kids to make their IF real and marry them so he gets to play with her a lot (i normally just delete the toy because it annoys me). 

And here he is figuring out the pegbox like a pro. We don't have a bookstore yet so I can't read toddler skill books to him, but other than that I will try to have the kids gain as many skills as possible in young years.

Emilio's genetic mix is very clear: he has dad's eyes and mom's nose and mouth/jaw. It's easy to tell because Eve always has her mouth slightly opened even when relaxed due to her lower jaw, and Emilio has the same. It actually looks really cute when he's a child!
Overall he looks more like mom and less like 1 out of 10 Brooks.

Suddenly the message that Eve ages up... Already? I'm clearly not used to playing at default lifespan, that was way too short :(

She's in a midlife crisis, which actually comes at a good time now because she will have to dump Brooks relatively soon (sorry Brooks, it's what the rolls say!) and sims in a midlife crisis often wish for divorce or flirts with others.

Eve has finally maxed her painting skill which means I have now fulfilled the requirements to build a salon in town!

 The salon is one of the lots that can't be bought or partnered so it has no money requirements in the NIF challenge. I decided to build this as my first community lot because one of the careers in generation 2 is stylist, so I will need a salon by then. It also just so happens that Eve rolled the "get a makeover" and "get a tattoo" midlife crisis wishes so that's also great timing.

Now I'm not the greatest builder but I promised to build everything (except for rabbitholes) from scratch in this playthrough and so I took the time to build this salon and tattoo studio myself.
It's actually two separate buildings. The yellow one is for stylists:

And the blue one is the tattoo studio.

Come on, seriously? I'm trying to give a tour of this building, that's not a good time to get arrested!

Oh well. At this point Eve rolls a midlife crisis wish to flirt with the police officer, so keep this guy in mind, he becomes important soon. But for now, back to the salon tour.
Overview of the first floor:

Second floor:

Inside the tattoo studio:

Eve is getting a tattoo on her thigh, so I'm not entirely sure what the artist is doing on her arm.

The upstairs part of the tattoo studio is meant to be a place where the artists retreat to draw and prepare stencils for custom tattoos or just work on their skills when no customers are around.

It also has a small tv, a mini fridge, and a cheap sofa to chill.

And here's a couple of pics of the yellow building, the stylist salon.

I tried to make the second floor look like a hair salon. The restroom is right next to it.

I think that's it, I hope you like it because it seriously took me way too much time!

But of course the criminal warehouse is still top priority on our community lot wishlist. To earn that as soon as possible Brooks is forced to work on his athletic and logic skills pretty much all the time and only takes breaks to sleep, eat, and bathe.

As a result, he has barely any relationship to his son, whose care is mostly in Eve's hands.
With the (almost) maxed painting/logic skills earning money is a lot faster now. As a reminder, I will only paint and search the galaxy for money until the rabbithole is bought, then they will only earn money through their rolled careers.

Now as I mentioned before it is about time that Eve finds 1) a father for her second child for the half-siblings roll and 2) a roommate for the Shake Up. Since she already has the social networking skill I tried out the sim finder...

... but after testing it I decided to ban it for the remainder of this challenge, even though it's not explicitly mentioned in the rules.

A big part of the difficulty (and fun) of the NIF challenge comes from the lack of people you can meet; it's hard to find mates for your first generations and even harder to build the charisma skill which needs a whole lot of friends/relationships and is a requirement for building important rabbitholes like the school or the city hall.
The sim finder really takes this challenge away by giving you an endless supply of randomly generated sims, and you can set their age, gender, and even their exact traits: boring and unchallenging. So I decided that I will not befriend the guy in the pic above and I will not use the sim finder again in this challenge.

So that was mid/end (?) of week 3 I believe! Also here's a bonus pic of Emilio as a child.

 I haven't played any further than that so I don't know how the second child will look like buuut if Emilio keeps this cuteness he might just become my heir...
______________________________________________________
Skills
Eve
Street Art: 5
Painting: 10
Handiness: 4
Social Networking: 4

Brooks
Logic: 9
Athletic: 10
Social Networking: 3

Household funds
$25,500 / $50,000 for next community lot (criminal warehouse) [halfway there!]