Well, I don't know why you want to since you have a New game to play which you seem to Love... but if you dare and play remembering it is over 14 years old: it'll be harder than TS4. I love the way TS3 looks and dislike TS4 over saturated blurriness- you brought it up.
Start with a few CC- default skins and eyes (modthesims has many from which to choose).
Don't forget to use the Graphics Rules Maker, unless you have a really new graphics card.
These slides give more options for making Sims - http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=610527
Fix the sim shadow- http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=569585
fakepeeps7 for kids clothes- http://modthesims.info/browse.php?gs=0&u=285828&f=342
There are some standard mods for TS2- like notownieregen/nostrayregen/nossregen/ and so on...
