Advent Calendars, Day 2

Behind Door #2 of the Town Advent calendar, we find a grille, presumably for Evil Twin to reheat that leftover Thanksgiving turkey leg. Not sure why they didn’t just use a microwave oven though. On the Castle side, we get a little arch and flag so the Good Twin has something to guard.

Oh wait, it must be a flashback to before Thanksgiving! Evil Twin is cooking dinner – this must be before he went bad – and Good Twin is hard at work guarding the arch thingy. Ah, innocence.

Advent 2

But all is not well in Advent land. The instructions for the town set clearly indicate that there should be a 1×4 grey plate under the hinges.

Town Instructions

However, I didn’t get one! They gave me an extra 1×4 tile instead. That’s OK, because I could use those more in my collection anyway. But for a little kid this would be horrible – they wouldn’t be able to build what’s in the picture! Or if they did, it wouldn’t stay on; it would slide off at the slightest nudge. And little kids are very prone to nudging things, as everyone knows. Here are the parts I got behind Door #2:

Town Parts

So, after adding a 1×4 grey plate from my collection, I was left with a few pieces left over. It’s common for LEGO to give you extras of some small, easily lost parts, like the flame or a 1×1 round plate, but a hinge top?? That’s a weird one.

Town Extra Parts

I’m wondering if it’s just me or if everyone had the same problem? I should confess something at this point… when I went to BrickCon in Seattle, I bought an advent calendar at the LEGO store at a discount, and when I realized I couldn’t afford the baggage space to bring the box home, I had to cheat and open it at my hotel. I’m 99.7% sure that I didn’t have this problem then – I think I’d remember if I did.

Wow, just a few minutes before midnight – not off to an auspicious start. I’d better do Day 3 right after midnight to make up for it…

Santa’s Sleigh with Rudolph and the Reindeer by Vincent Pace

Every year LEGO comes out with an Advent calendar (or two) and most years they include some form of Santa Claus and his sleigh. But usually the sleigh is barely big enough to fit a minifig, much less a load of toys and goodies, and the “reindeer” is actually a single minifig-scale dog with no antlers or anything.

Now Vincent Pace saves the day. He’s come up with a great MOC of Santa, his sleigh, and a whole complement of reindeer – including Rudolph with a trans-red 1×1 round plate for a nose. He’s used white droid arms for antlers, and they’re all harnessed together to an excellent red and green sleigh complete with toys.

And best of all, it can be yours! He’s selling it on eBay with a starting price of about $60 (which is about what it costs to get the parts on Bricklink). There is a link to the auction on his site – use the above link or click the photo.

Advent Calendars, Day 1

Thanks to LEGO for relenting and letting us have the Castle advent calendar here in the U.S.! Having both that and the City set, I thought I’d shamelessly rip off the Reasonably Clever annual tradition of having fun with the advent calendars. Each day I’ll be presenting what I find behind the respective door of each.

Advent Calendars

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t visit this blog until you’ve opened the day’s gift from your Advent Calendar(s) or you may find out too soon what it is! This is your first and final warning!!

However, while I am a little clever, I don’t think I’m quite up to the standard set by “Reasonably” so I’ll just blog about each day’s entry without trying to make a game of it. If you want more cleverness than that, go see what they’re doing over at Advent Wars – for example, you can see what it looks like to open the Advent Calendar boxes for day 1. Plus, the Reasonably Clever comic, BRiCK House, will probably be invaded by Advent madness. It’s all fun and I don’t know where they get the free time for all that cleverness.

Anyway, here’s what I found behind Door Number One on each calendar:

Twins

If you look carefully you’ll see it’s the same face in each one! I guess they’re twins.

CITY: Guy with some of the Thanksgiving leftovers (Evil Twin)
CASTLE: Guy guarding the rest of the Thanksgiving leftovers (Good Twin)

P.S.: Yes, I really am waiting until each day comes around to open that day’s box. So if I am ever late with an entry, hopefully you’ll be understanding.

Nelson Yrizarry’s Snowflakes

Another amazing creation from “Big Daddy” Nelson Yrizarry. He’s taken the 5×7 LEGO foliage pieces in white, and turned them into snowflake patterns! Happy holidays!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while… I’ve been either sick or busy almost constantly since early September. I have some big stuff to post soon though!

Trick or Treat

In honor of Hallowe’en I present this vignette.
Trick or Treat

This was actually first mentioned in an earlier blog entry about the October 2006 BayLUG meeting. I entered it into the club building contest which had a theme of “harvest.” Get it? Harvest of souls? I know, it’s macabre and tasteless. Sorry, but my mind just works that way sometimes.

Anyway, it features two kids innocently trick-or-treating. There’s a girl dressed as a doctor and a boy dressed as a policeman. But no medical skills or law enforcement training can stop the Grim Reaper!!

View all the pics by clicking the above image, or click to view the photos on Flickr (slideshow) or on Brickshelf.
[tags]lego,vignette,halloween,death,grimreaper,trickortreat,house[/tags]