Tag: lego

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.

Great Train Expo Pleasanton 2008, Day 1

The Bay Area LEGO Train Club is taking part in the Great Train Expo at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, CA, this weekend, November 29-30.BayLTC at Pleasanton Train Show

My contributions to the show include the “Blackburn Hotel” and the block that it’s on, a bunch of cars and other small scenic details, and a few train models.

We set up the exhibit all afternoon Friday, with some additional setup time Saturday morning before the show opened. If you missed it, you still have another chance to see it tomorrow; the show is open from 10am-4pm. Also, next weekend we’ll be setting up a somewhat smaller display at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, which will be on exhibit until January 11.

The trouble with the LEGO fan community

The trouble with the LEGO fan community is that it takes all of the fun out of getting a new Shop-At-Home catalog. Not only is there nothing new that I haven’t seen, but I already own several of the things marked “new.” When I was a kid, a new LEGO catalog was a source of great delight…

Ah well, it’s a small price to pay I guess.

My Video of BrickCon 2008 (Part 2) on LAMLtv

As promised, I made a second episode for LAMLtv about BrickCon. The main feature is an interview with Joe Meno, editor of BrickJournal.

This video stuff is a lot of fun. I’ve got a lot more ideas for video projects. For example:

  • BayLUG meeting and event footage
  • Interviews with BayLUG members
  • My MOCs and those of other local folks who will consent to being taped
  • Other LEGO conventions (I’m already planning on BrickFest PDX in 2009)

If you have any thoughts about LEGO video projects, you can share them with me here or over on the LAMLradio blog.

BayLUG Tenth Anniversary Meeting

We celebrated 10 years of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group on Sunday, October 12. Group PhotoThe club was founded on October 10, 1998 after LEGO came to San Francisco on a Truck Tour.

At the meeting we had a lot of schmoozing, showing-off of models, snacking, speech-giving, and prize-winning. If you enjoy any of those, you should come to our 20th Anniversary Meeting in 2018. Or one of our regular meetings, where we usually have at least the schmoozing if not the other stuff.

Enjoy the photos on Flickr (slideshow). I also shot a bunch of video footage, which hopefully I can edit into something appropriate for LAMLtv or maybe I’ll just put it on YouTube myself. Either way, I’ll blog about it here when it’s up.