The Ultimate Guide to Creating the Ultimate Neohome

PART ONE Planning: Decide very carefully on your style of neohome as you can only choose once. Before you decide, think of a theme for your neohome, and match the style of house to your theme. Some examples of themes would be Haunted House, Elegant, Mystery Island, Lost Desert Pyramid, or Shenkuu Temple. You could choose to incorporate many different themes, or even make your neohome look like a very fancy real life style home. The choice is yours; let your personal creativity shine.

Before choosing a theme you have a little bit of research to do. Find a guide of all neohome v2 items. I found neopets.com/~Gen_Jack_Oneill1 extremely helpful. This is a complete guide of neohome v2 items in alphabetical order. See how many different items you could use that match the theme you chose for your neohome. Then look up general costs of the items you want. Whether you like it or not, you are going to have to spend a very pretty penny on making your neohome perfect.

Don't choose your theme based on budget alone, though. Make sure you know you are going to have fun and genuinely enjoy decorating your home. You are going to put many hours into it, so make sure they are hours spent happily designing your home. I really do have a lot of fun decorating.

For inspiration, I like to look at past spotlight winners. Seeing really nice homes will help give you ideas for yours. For example, I saw that many people took 5 NP chalkboards and turned them around, and then connected them to make walls. This is a great idea, and really helps you to save neopoints. Never directly copy anyone's ideas, though; they put a lot of time and hard work into making their neohome unique. Make yours unique too.

PART TWO Make a List: Grab a pen and paper, or even easier, pull up a Word document. Create a list of all the items you want with their price next to them. This can be used as a quick and handy pricing reference so that you can make sure that you are spending the least amount of neopoints possible. Add items to your list when you find ones you want, and erase them once you buy them. Don't forgot to erase them or the list will get to be too long and hard to navigate quickly. Keep this list pulled up when buying items. This will be your secret weapon.

PART THREE Spending the Least Amount of Neopoints: Like I mentioned in part one, making your neohome into an award winning home is probably going to be hard on your bank account. There are many things you can do to save neopoints, though. Furniture and garden items are usually cheaper in the Neopian shops, but it's sometimes hard to get the items you want before someone else snags them. This can be very frustrating. That's why when I buy my items from Neopian shops, I always do it around 2 or 3 am NST. A lot fewer people are online this late at night, so it makes getting the items you want easier.

Some items you just absolutely must have will probably turn out to be pretty expensive. Make a list of these expensive items, then head to the trading post and search all of them to see if anyone is quickselling the items. You will usually find that someone is quickselling at least one or two of the items that you need so you can buy them at a discounted price. This could save you tens of thousands over time. For the items you have to buy full price, refresh at least three times on the shop wizard to make sure you are getting the lowest price possible. Hold off on buying expensive items that you don't need at moment as someone may be quickselling in the future.

PART FOUR Layering Tips and Tricks: This section will consist of random tips and ideas for layering the items in your neohome and giving them the appearance of other items. For example, some people will buy twenty Simple Blue Rugs and put them all together outside to make them look like a swimming pool. You can also buy items that look like something they aren't to better match your theme. Taking a Bubble Chair and placing it on top of your twenty Simple Blue Rugs will look like a pool float even though it is just a chair.

To make your items look like they are out of the border of where can you put items, just move them up all the way and place them on the edge of your neohome. You can also use this trick to mount items on your walls or put items on top of tables.

The neohome furniture guide I mentioned in part one has pictures of every item so that you will know what they look like. Just use your imagination. Spotlight winners have neohomes that are extremely unique and creative, so just be different.

I hope you all found my guide extremely helpful. I kept as short, simple, and to the point as possible. I told you all my secrets and hopefully they will benefit you as much as they have benefited me. I wish you all luck in winning the Neohome Spotlight. :)