Building with ease was designed to remove the grunt work from vanilla Minecraft without changing the play style. Ore Excavation speeds up digging immensely, at the cost of hunger. Better Builders Wands makes building large structures much easier. And then you have Chisel for added textures, and Vanilla Builders Extension which adds dozens of slabs and stairs, all with vanilla textures. Add to that a few quality of life mods such as Easier Villager Trading, and Swing Through Grass, which do exactly what they say. Then you have Bounding Box Outline Reloaded, a technical mod that outlines things like villages, ocean monuments, etc, making it much easier to build those sorts of farms. Lastly Traverse adds a few gorgeous biomes that, without straying too far from vanilla world generation, will brighten any explorer's day.

Mod List:

Aroma Backup

Better Builders Wands

Better Than Mending

Blocks to Items

BB Outline Reloaded

Chisel

Easier Villager Trading

Gravestone

Inventory Tweaks

iTorch

Journey Map

Light Level Overlay Reloaded

More Beautiful Buttons

Mouse Tweaks

Ore Excavation

Quick Leaf Decay

Simple Harvest

Swing Through Grass

Traverse

Vanilla Builders Extension

Building With Ease

Aroma1997Core

AromaBackup

Better Builder's Wands

Better Than Mending

Blocks to Items

Bounding Box Outline Reloaded

Chisel

EasierVillagerTrading

GraveStone Mod

Inventory Tweaks [1.12 only]

iTorch

JourneyMap

Light Level Overlay Reloaded

More Beautiful Buttons

Mouse Tweaks

Ore Excavation

Quick Leaf Decay

SimpleHarvest

SwingThroughGrass

Traverse Reforged