About

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Tia Sunshine

Player profile

Digital Creator • Life-Sim Gamer • Community Builder

Expect detailed lots and occasionally unhinged Sims.

★ “Just one more tweak…”

Who I am

A digital creator, that loves turning my real-world travels into free lot builds for life-sim games.

What I do

I create builds, downloads, and tutorials in simulation games so your Sims always have somewhere new to explore.

Whats Your vibe

Whether you are a cozy or chaotic gamer, I'm always trying to inspire your next game build and spruce up your gameplay.

about me

Hi, my name is Natia, but on the internet I go by Tia Sunshine! ☀️

I have a few resolving loves in my life: animals, world building, and anything involving tech. No seriously, if you look back at almost any phase of my life, at least one of those three things was more than likely consuming an unreasonable amount of my time. I can spend hours upon hours building, and I have absolutely no shame about it. 😂 I mean, even when I was younger, I used to spend literal 16-hour days during summer break building in The Sims 2. Fully knowing our family’s one and only Windows 95 computer was probably going to crash and take all of my progress with it.

And yet, time and time again, I would still get right back on and do it all over again. Honestly, that urge to build carried across many phases of my life. In school, I once built a fully functional cardboard robot for kids… featuring the ever-so-famous VideoNow, because obviously, 🫠 and then proceeded to wheel the whole thing to school on a skateboard. Yes, I was that nerd. 😭 As I got older, I never really grew out of that desire to create things from scratch. At 23, I built my first e-commerce business and made my first six figures. And then again, in college (thanks to an amazing professor) I fell in love with learning how to build websites. Now, somehow, all of those random little building phases have led me here… building this beautiful, travel-inspired, simulation-gaming hub for you guys. So what's the lesson here? Well, basically the lesson here is that: I like creating things, I enjoy figuring out how things work, and apparently if you give me an idea and enough time... I’m going to try to build it. 😂 Now that I think of it, that probably explains a lot about how Tia Sunshine became what it is today.

Lucky for us, a lot of what I create online lives somewhere in the middle of all of that. I love taking places I’ve visited, things I’ve seen, or ideas that have been floating around in my head and figuring out how to recreate them inside a game. Sometimes that means spending an embarrassing number of hours on a building... I mean did you see how long The Paris Cafe took me, but once I’m locked in, friend… I’m locked in.

Outside of the internet, I’m pretty much the same person. I love traveling, trying new creative hobbies, building anything I can get my hands on, oh and of course... playing life-sim games!

FAQ

Answering a few common questions I get:

So… where did the name Tia Sunshine come from?

Well, the first half is pretty easy. It comes from my actual name, Natia… you know… the TIA in Natia.
Fun fact though: even though my online name is pronounced Tee-Yah-Sunshine, my real name is actually pronounced Nah-Tie-Yah, which people almost never get right on the first try. I usually get Nah-Tee-Yah or Na-Dee-Ah 😅. So naturally, instead of making things easier for everyone, I somehow ended up with Tee-Yah-Sunshine. Leave it to me to over complicate things.

🫣 Now about that second half.. the Sunshine part actually came from the people around me. I’ve always been told that I have a bubbly, animated personality, and back in 2014, one of my coworkers started calling me Sunshine. At the time, it was just a cute little nickname. I had no idea it would eventually become the name of my online persona. But 7+ years later, Tia Sunshine was officially born... and honestly? I’ve never looked back since!

My coworkers covering my desk for my birthday — Aforementioned coworkers covering my desk for my birthday (2014) 😂 you'll have to pay me to delete the proof!

Have any other hobbies outside of gaming?

Of course! And boy do you not want to open that can of worms ROFL, so we will not... However I will tell you that my current hyper-fixation is making things out of air dry clay! Checkout my first 3 projects:

What is your favorite travel destination?

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico! Actually my series The Build Files shows exactly what parts of my trip inspired some of the free downloadable lots on this site!

What is your profession and do you like it?

Although I graduated with a concentration in pre-veterinarian studies, I now work in web development! Unfortunately with the government layoffs finding work in the sector is not as easy, but in the meantime I am enjoying coding on this site for you guys!

Do you have a favorite movie?

Oooo yes bestie, I love, love, love movies! Actually I'd consider it one of those hobbies I said we shouldn't open the can of worms on, because I can talk about it all day! As a teen my favorite movies were: Stuck in the Suburbs and Lilo and Stitch.

Fun fact: These were the only two movies to ever make me cry 🥹 leave me alone my teen was going through something and these two movies related to me so much.

🎤😩 "I don't want another pretty face, I don't want just anyone to"... oh oops your still here bestie? Okay okay, moving on, while those were my favorite movies as a teen, during my college days The Divergent series hands down became my all time favorite movie series and that still stands to this day. And as far as my favorite comfort movies, The Last Holiday and Spirited Away are movies I watch like clock work every year.

Do you have any favorite TV show?

Futurama and Bobs Burgers! This two are so neck and neck for me, I grew up watching Fox on sunday with my family, you know the line up: Family guy, American Day, The Simpsons, etc. Such fun memories were made with my family those weekends. And to this day I still seek out cartoons like this, they will always have my heart.

All time favorite book(s)?

Yessss, back during my middle school reading, I discovered 2 book series that I still read to this day. Uglies, Pretties, Specials - by Scott Westerfield and the Daughters of the Moon series - by Lynne Ewing.