Santa's Workshop

So, when you have a seaside Lego town, what do you do with the Christmas and winter themed Lego sets?

You put them out in the mountains and design a winter village around them.

Santa's Workshop

Sets like Santa's Workshop serve a dual purpose.  They aren't just an extension of my Lego town, they are also decorations to place around the house during the holiday season.  My wife has some winter village items she sets out every Christmas, so why not put my own spin on it and do the same?  She's cool with it, even encourages me to set them up.

Front (left) and rear (right) views of Santa's Workshop

I had to tweak Santa's Workshop to make it fit on a baseplate.  The taller portion on the right is supposed to sit at an angle.  I brought into alignment with the left portion, so it all faces forward.  There is a small gap between the two portions, so I should probably try to close that up.  I also don't have any side walls to enclose the facility.  I should fix it all up some day, but that can wait.

Mrs. Claus providing cookies for the elves (left), while some man the assembly line (right)

Santa's office above the production floor

I've got several Santa minifigures, but I consider the one that came with this set to be the official one.  He has the most reindeer, a house to live in, a wife.  The other Santa minifigures will walk around the Winter Carnival meeting with kids and doing other Santa type things.

Santa and his reindeer getting ready for takeoff

All the small toys and gifts from all my Christmas-related sets go into a small baggy for now.  I'll divvy them up between all the winter sets.  Some will go in houses, some underneath trees, some in Santa's sleigh, and some into the city (to stock up the Toy Store).

All the presents cranked out by the elves in Santa's Workshop

Sets used: 10245, 40106

Holiday Decorations

Lego does a great job of designing and releasing sets with holiday themes, especially for months with an R in them.  Throughout the school year, kids will be stuck inside the house, so why not give them a little project and let them put together some decorations for their room.  My wife loves put things up to celebrate the holidays, so I give her a hand with these wonderful Lego sets.

Halloween is one of my wife's favorite holidays.  The pumpkins, the costumes, the colors of fall.  I bust out 40090 Halloween Bat, 40122 Trick or Treat, and 40055 Halloween Pumpkin, but I can also grab any monster-like minifigures to act as trick or treaters.  Series 14 minifigures was excellent, as all 16 characters were all monsters.  850487 Halloween Accessory Set (not pictured), the new Scooby-Doo sets, and 31038 Changing Seasons could also be used to build an entire scene for All Hallows' Eve.

Left to right: 40090 Halloween Bat, 40122 Trick or Treat, 40055 Halloween Pumpkin

Thanksgiving is a couple of weeks away, so I've currently got sets on display for Turkey Day.  Lego might not be too creative with the naming of these sets (possibly because it's an American holiday and Lego is Danish).  The dinner sets are nice because they give me more foods stuffs to put in my Restaurant and Grocery Store.  And who doesn't love turkeys?

40123 Thanksgiving Feast and 40056 Thanksgiving Feast (left) and

40091 Thanksgiving Turkey and 40033 Turkey (right)

Christmas is where Lego goes all out every year.  For the last several years, they've released a Winter Village set that relies heavily on Christmas imagery and Advent Calendars (one each City, Star Wars, and Friends themed).  I'm not going to go into much depth here about those sets, as they will be the focus of my next few scheduled posts.  In addition to the big stuff, they'll throw a few items for free with purchases of $75 or $100 during November and December.  The most recent free set I got recently was the 40138 Holiday Train.  I wish I had some tracks to put it on so it could circle our Christmas tree.  And let's not forget the reindeer either.  How else is Santa expected to get around without them?

40138 Holiday Train (left) and 40092 Reindeer

Winter is a great time of year...  Depending on who you ask.  Yes, the cold sucks, but there are all sorts of fun things to do outside in the snow and ice.  Hockey, snowboarding, building snowmen, I love it.  I've lived in a place where it didn't snow in the winter months, and it was kinda dull not having there options available to me.  Lego feels the same way I do about winter.  Let's go outside and do stuff, not stay cooped up in the house all day (we can play Lego's after the sun sets).

Left to right: 40093 Snowman, 40124 Winter Fun, 8804 Hockey Player, 40107 Winter Skating Scene, and 30197 Snowman

Valentine's Day is special to my wife and I.  I surprised her with a 40051 Valentine's Day Heart Box a couple years ago, and she was beside herself.  She broke down into tears of happiness and wouldn't let go of me after she wrapped her arms around me.  The following year, I formally proposed by attaching a engagement ring to 40085 Lego Valentine as a gift.  I didn't do anything special this time around because we bought 40120 Valentine's Day Dinner at the Lego store...  After the first of the year... (pro tip: Lego will release holiday themed sets about 6-8 weeks before the upcoming holiday, and for the Advent Calendars, September).

Left to right: 40120 Valentine's Day Dinner, 40051 Valentine's Day Heart Box, and 40085 Lego Valentine

Easter is relatively new to the holiday rotation...  I think...  I can't say I saw anything related to Easter before last year, but it makes sense.  They'd make great additions to the Easter basket gifts for the Lego fans in your life.  You can also add an 8831 Bunny Suit Guy and 40052 Springtime Scene to make a whole diorama to celebrate the holiday.

40121 Painting Easter Eggs (left) and 40086 Lego Easter (right)

Sets used: 8804, 30197, 40011, 40051, 40055, 40056, 40085, 40086, 40090, 40091, 40092, 40093, 40107, 40120, 40121, 40122, 40123, 40124, 40138

Lego Haul - 11/7/15

Now that I purged the backlog of October 2015 Lego purchases, I'm back on track to get haul posts out in a timely manner.  Yesterday, I checked out the local Lego Store to try to find the winter and Christmas holiday scenes, but only found the former.

40124 Winter Fun

The Winter Fun scene will go out to the Winter Village, as both kids will be having fun in the snow at the Ski  Lodge (if I ever build it).  The scene will also be used as decoration when winter comes around.

40124 Winter Fun contents

The coolest part of this set is the husky dog, which is a paint scheme I've never seen on a Lego dog before.  There's nothing special about this set, so I won't bore you with some longwinded narrative here, even if I had one to being with.

40124 Winter Fun fully assembled

Late October 2015 hauls

I've bought a lot of Lego sets and bricks lately, but haven't had a chance to sit down and write about them until now.  I had a paper to write for class, a Gopher football game to be disappointed by, a Jim Gaffigan show to attend (so freakin' hilarious), and work.  I finally got the chance to put finish everything together this weekend.

I bought a sand baseplate at Target, but since that's only one piece, I don't need to get into that (just yet).  I also ran to the Lego store on October 25th to grab a 10249 Winter Toy Shop and some yellow and sand 2x4 bricks.

Lego Haul from 10/25/15

The Winter Toy Shop will go with the rest of my Christmas-themed sets.  I have the Winter Village Cottage from 2012, the Winter Village Market from 2013, Santa's Workshop from 2014, so this makes me 4-for-4 for the exclusive seasonal sets.  Not that I'm keeping score or anything.  Seriously, I'm not, because I'm not trying to collect every single set out there.  I don't have that much money to spend on Lego's, geez...

10249 Winter Toy Shop (left) and 40138 Holiday Train, a large and a small Pick-A-Brick cop (right)

Obviously, the Winter Toy Shop and Christmas Train will go to the Mountain Village area outside of my Lego city.  My scheduled posts for November, December, and January will go into detail as to its progress, so stay tuned.

Pick-A-Brick cup contents

The Pick-A-Brick contents were almost entirely 2x4 bricks.  Yellow for my Pyramid nightclub, sand for my Tech Startup (for which The Big Bang Theory set will be used as the basis).  More on this later.

10249 Winter Toy Shop contents

The Winter Toy Shop is a bit redundant when paired with Santa's Workshop.  Two toy assembly sets is a bit overkill, even if one of those is also a retail facility.  I'd like to put them on a single baseplate, but that would be too crammed for a 32x32 area.  I'll place the two buildings side-by-side.

10249 Winter Toy Shop fully assembled

The Holiday Train is purely decorative.  I don't think I'll actually use it in my mountain village.  I'll put it on the shelf when Christmas rolls around every year.

40138 Holiday Train contents (right) and fully assembled

Now, let's get to the fun part: Online Pick-A-Brick.  I cashed in $10 of store credit to get various pieces to continue construction of several buildings.  These pieces went to the Grocery Store, Pyramid nightclub, Islanders luau, and Watch Tower.

Pick-A-Brick online order contents

Many of the white, gray, and green pieces built the meat department in the Grocery Store.  I'm built the layout of the Grocery Store around this counter.  I'll work on the next phase of construction soon, with another Online Pick-A-Brick order in late November or early December.

The meat department at the Grocery Store

The 2x4 yellow bricks I got at the Lego store allowed me to finish building the inner portion of the top of the Pyramid.  1x6 yellow bricks from the online order completed the inner wall for the bottom portion.  Now that walls are complete, I can figure out some the internal layout for a DJ booth, a bar, and a storage area inside the wall of the lower portion.  I still need 755 2x2 slope pieces, which I figure will take three large Pick-A-Brick cups to finish off the external sloping sides.

Top (left) and bottom (right) portions of the Pyramid nightclub.

I forgot to order four 1x4 white bricks for the picnic tables at the Islanders luau.  Otherwise, this complete.

Current progress of the Islanders luau

My online Pick-A-Brick order also had a couple of 2x4 medium stone grey plates to close up a gap next to the Watch Tower door.  I move the door up by one-third of a brick to close up a gap between the door and the arch above it, which created a gap at the bottom.  A 2x12 plate with four 2x4 plates (two on each side) took care of that, so there's no physical security breach anymore.

The gap in the Watch Tower doorway is no more

The sand baseplate I got at Target?  The 2x4 sand bricks from my Lego run on the 25th?  Remember those?  They and the Big Bang Theory set will be my Tech Startup Firm.  Not sure what to do with the whole crew, as you don't need that many people to manage the websites of all the Lego businesses and government entities.  Since they are biologists, I'll probably put Bernadette and Amy to work in the Medical Research Lab.  Penny and the guys should be able to run the IT web infrastructure for everyone, but even five people many be too many.  We'll see once I get the rest of the building laid out and assembled.

Tech Startup Firm enjoying dinner while discussing their clients

Gas Station

With a civilian population, there will be civilian vehicles.  And where there are civilian vehicles, there will be a need to refuel them at a gas station.

The Octan Gas Station

Don't judge me.  Lego bricks are made of plastic, which is made of oil.  I'm not a damn, dirty hippie like you are.  No one's driving an electric hybrid solar car here.  Freakin' treehugger...

Virtual model of the Gas Station

The Gas Station was a pretty easy design.  I took my 6562 Gas Stop Shop and rotated some pieces around so a car could fuel up on each side of the pump.  I placed it on a 48x48 baseplate, then added a 24x24 building in one corner, a few flat tiles beside it to represent painted lines for parking spots, and three round plates with a flat tile on top to represent where the gas hauler would deliver new gasoline and store it for use at the pump.  You know what I'm talking about right?  Yeah, THOSE things...

 An old guy filling up his gas tank (left) and a car parked outside the store (right)

Once I got the external layout figured out, I looked inward to add some elements inside.  A counter for a register, a table for customers to sit and talk, and a soda fountain.  I'm quite proud of the soda fountain.  It's massive compared to the minifigures, but I love how it looks.  I need to make a couple tweaks to get the catcher thingy under the spouts in place.  You know, that grate thing under where your soda is dispensed.  (I don't know what any of this stuff is called, I never worked in a gas station.)

 Views inside the convenience store at the Gas Station

Soda fountain digital design (left) and physical model (right)

The soda fountain is so huge that I was handcuffed as to what would fit inside the store.  After some thought while taking these pictures today, I can shrink down the area behind the counter.  The attendant doesn't need that much room to operate a cash register.  Especially if there are no tobacco products or lottery tickets to sell.  That may give me enough room to add a shelf to see some snacks for sale.  I mean, who goes on a road trip with just gas and soda.  I sure don't

A table for customers to sit and shoot the breeze at

 The gas station attendant standing behind the counter

Don't know when I'll make changes to the gas station here.  I've got some parts coming from the online Pick-A-Brick, and once I have them, I'll tear the soda fountain apart and try to get everything in place.

Sets used: 6562

Struggling to Keep Up

I've been having trouble staying focused on cranking out my Lego blog posts lately.  A lot has changed since I started this back in January.  Among them are...

• School: I'm taking four credits this fall (as I did this past spring), so my semesters are taking four months to complete.  It really takes away from my free time when I have to study, so I'm not as available for my Lego people (the minifigures).
• Work: I'm working on a big project at Deere to upgrade Adobe software for everyone, so I'm spending some extra time on the weekends running reports and preparing software deployments.  If I don't get my work done, I won't have a job, and then I can't afford to buy Lego's.
• Animal Crossing: This is a Nintendo Wii game my wife had shipped to her from California (from her parents' house).  It's a fun game.  As a community simulator, it does require about an hour of play time to maintain my status in Rindge (the name of our town).  Those hours could be better spent playing Lego's (or working or studying).
• Pokemon: Yet another Nintendo game I'm playing.  If you don't know what Pokemon are, stop reading this and crawl out from underneath the rock you've been living under since '98.  I've been refining my Pokemon for Pokemon Stadium for Nintendo 64 so I can win more Pokemon (it's a vicious cycle).
• Exercise: My wife and I are walking on the treadmills about 20 minutes three or four time a week.  Again, this eats up free time so I can't play Lego's.
• Money: Earlier in the year, I was playing with the house's money.  Literally.  I got close to $300 in gift certificates to the Lego store, so I didn't have to pay for anything out of my own pocket.  It was much easier to pull the trigger on things when didn't have to shell out ACTUAL dollars to get the sets I wanted.
• Christmas: With the holiday season coming up, I'm holding off to see what Lego will be coming out with and what I'll be asking for for Christmas (and my birthday, which is a few days after Jesus's).  I'm also not sure what I want to ask for.  Yeah, I'm in my mid-30's, so I don't need any toys for Christmas, but my parents like to buy them for me, so who am I to say no?

Not only so I have all that going on to take away from my commitment to those wonderful colored plastic bricks, but some of my projects have not come to fruition yet.  Several of my buildings I've done scheduled posts for weren't 100% completed (Delivery Services, TV Station, Laser Tag Area).  Two buildings I'm planning to write about haven't even been started yet.  No digital design, no physical model.  Those blog posts are postponed indefinitely.  I've got an idea for one replacement, but I got nothing for the second one.

It'd be nice if I had more resources to work on this blog, but it's just a hobby.  Maybe I just need to walk away from it for a bit before tackling it this winter.

Lego Haul - 10/3/15

Made another Lego run this weekend.  But it got me thinking about this blog and what I'm trying to accomplish here.  Stay tuned for that post later this week...

The haul from October 3rd, 2015

I wasn't sure what to get this time around, because I had no idea what would be available.  My wife pretty much found everything for me.  I'll start with the large cup I filled.

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The contents of my large Pick-A-Brick cup.

The Pick-A-Brick wall was fully restocked with new product.  Nearly every bin was completely filled up.  Gone were the yellow 2x2 slope bricks, but they were replaced with yellow 1x4 bricks, which I needed for the inner wall to the Pyramid Nightclub.  I need some 1x6 bricks to finish up that inner wall, but I had enough to build up three more layers of 2x4 bricks.

I'm about 700 slope bricks short of building up the pyramid, but I'm at a point where I can start considering the internal layout.  A bar, a DJ's booth, a dance floor... This place is going to be off the hook.

Current progress of the Pyramid Nightclub

My wife located 40123 Thanksgiving Feast on the shelf and grabbed it right away.  Sure, Thanksgiving is still a couple months away, but as we've learned, you have to get while the gettin' is good.  I was so excited to put this set together that I forgot to take pictures of the three bags of pieces and instructions contained in the box.  It will go great with my other Thanksgiving sets, which will be featured in a future post.

40123 Thanksgiving Feast fully assembled.

The Lego Store at the Mall of America finally got some Series 14 minifigures in stock (or maybe just managed to hold onto some).  I needed five to complete the set, and we got them all.  They were pretty easy to feel out, as the parts to identify them were very unique to each minifigure..

Gargoyle, Plant Monster, Specter, Zombie Cheerleader, and Spider Lady

Not sure when the next haul is coming, as I'm awaiting the Holiday 2015 catalog to come in the mail.  Until then, I don't feel like I have much direction.  Like I said, I have to figure out what my next steps are here.

Laser Tag Arena

Fifteen years ago, Lego started releasing Star Wars-themed sets.  Over the past few years, I've purchased several of these sets (and received a few others for Christmas), but I was always left with the question as to how do I integrate them into my Lego city?  Sure, I put the droids to work in the Research Lab, but where do the Stormtroopers go?

Action is going down at the Laser Tag Arena

How about a laser tag arena?  Sure, Stormtroopers can't hit the broad side of a barn in the presence of a Jedi, but there are no Jedi's in town.

Service counter and orientation room at the Laser Tag Arena

Design was a challenge, as the arena is a two-story building.  Not only did I need to put a floor together, but  a couple of entry rooms as well.  One to handle the customers (reservations and monetary transactions).  The other is a holding room for the next round of laser tag combatants to go over the rules of competition and await for the current battle to finish up.

The arena itself has a number of obstacles in place.  You can't have a laser tag arena without a few walls and other objects to hide behind, run around, cilmb on, or snipe opponents from.  I've got a few in place right now, but I still need some pieces to complete others.

All the Stormtroopers, plus a few others, who are playing laser tag

Stormtroopers and other Star Wars characters work great for laser tag, as their uniforms help distinguish the groups of friends who will team up in the arena.  They also came with a good number of blasters in all sizes.  A contestant can go with a smaller unit that's easier to carry, or a bulky rifle with increased accuracy over other models.  

The open back wall in the Laser Tag Arena, so you can reach in and place the minifigures

One of my favorite features is the wall that opens up so I can access the first floor without having to remove the second floor.  I could have left the wall completely open, but it would have been more difficult to place the second floor in place.  As I write this, I'm now thinking of rebuilding the top layer of plates on the first floor walls by placing flat tiles and 2x2 plates with a single stud every so often, so the second floor could be easily removed.

I have all the staircases to connect the two floors, but I haven't found the best way to ensure they remain connected.  Sigh...  I'll get this finished up some day.  But I got other fish to fry.