Advent 2014 Day 5

The fifth day in the calendars builds on yesterday’s entries for City and Star Wars; the Friends one is debateable.
Advent 2014 Day 5
Putting together days 4 and 5, we see the stormtrooper getting ready for battle, putting away his red mug and Santa hat, and taking on his helmet and guns. Grim stuff. For Town we now have a baked goods vendor to go with yesterday’s little display, and for Friends we have a little window of some kind which I’ve placed next to yesterday’s fawn and tree:
Advent 2014 Days 4-5

Advent 2014 Day 4

The fourth day of Advent gives us a fawn with a tree (Friends), a Stormtrooper with a Santa Hat and red mug (Star Wars), and a sideboard offering delicious holiday pie and mugs of eggnog (Town). Oddly the Town comes with an extra yellow mug but the Star Wars only gives us one red mug.
Advent 2014 Day 4
I don’t see any tie-in to earlier days so it looks like we’re starting a new “story” here in each of the themes. Maybe later in the series we can find a way to loop back to the first three days.

Advent 2014 Day 3

The third entry in LEGO’s Advent calendars brings us a picnic basket and gift for Friends, a snowman for City, and an artillery gun for Star Wars.
Advent 2014 Day 3
We can take the first three days of Friends and combine them – the girl is delivering a Christmas present (though given the color scheme, Easter seems more apt) on her sled.

I had a bit more fun with the City and Star Wars scenes. First, the boy who sent his letter yesterday has gotten back the response, a fun Star Wars model to play with (though I’m still not quite sure why there’s a frog in the snow next to the mailbox…):

And the Super Battle Droid has a new toy as well, a gun to shoot at snowmen with:

Advent 2014 Day 2

Here’s the second day from the 2014 LEGO Advent Calendars. Our Friends girl gets a sled; the City minifig has a mailbox to put his letter in, and the Star Wars ship gets a droid to play with.

Advent 2014 Day 2

Here you can see the items from Days 1 and 2 together:

Advent 2014 Days 1-2

Sorry folks, I didn’t get home until after midnight so I missed a day already! :( I’ll try to be more proactive. I’m trying to be honest and only open each day on that day…

Advent 2014 Day 1

The time has come for my annual tradition of blogging each day of LEGO’s Advent calendars. This year again we have three calendars, for Friends, Star Wars, and City. Here’s the first entry:
Advent 2014 Day 1
Friends and City give us basic figures, with the City one coming with an extra hair and two printed 1×2 tiles with envelope patterns. Star Wars gives us a micro ship or droid of some kind (I really need to bone up on my Star Wars stuff, sorry). We’ll see what the coming days bring, maybe a storyline or two will emerge?

BayLUG October 2014 Meeting

Last month the Bay Area LEGO Users Group (BayLUG) had its annual Anniversary meeting on October 11th at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto. We had a presentation by Russell Clark and myself on using the wiki pages to plan member participation in club events, a Halloween-themed contest, bulk LEGO for sale, and members brought a variety of their creations to display. Check out all the photos I took on Flickr (slideshow).

The Frustrating World of LEGO Trains

The world of LEGO trains can be rather frustrating for the adult hobbyist. Here’s a quick primer for those who are interested in getting into this part of the LEGO hobby. (This is adapted from a comment I made on Facebook in response to someone who was just getting into LEGO trains in 2014.)

Continue reading “The Frustrating World of LEGO Trains”

Brickpile YouTube Channel – Brickworld 2011 Videos

I’ve started a new YouTube channel for Bill Ward’s Brickpile. I’ll be adding videos from LEGO events, and maybe even some original content, tours of my MOCs, etc. So far I’ve just published two videos, which form a 2-part walk-through of Brickworld from 2011: Continue reading “Brickpile YouTube Channel – Brickworld 2011 Videos”