Christmas crazinesses

It's been far too long since I've mentioned anything around here. Worky work and holiday busynesses have abounded. Now that it's mostly over it's time to relax, well at least until next weekend when I get to go up on the roof and take down the lights, and put everything away. Fun times.

So, my Mom has collected these ceramic village houses for years. They had to move to a much smaller place, so I inherited a bunch of them. So far I have received 3 bigass boxes of houses. We got to display some of them this year on the mantel in the living room.


Here's an overview of them with the lights on. We set it up so from right to left we go from the skating pond to the farm, bad side of town, town hall, good side of town and finally to the harbor with lighthouse.Here we can see the town hall with the carolers. To the right is the "good" Post Office, to the left you can see the "bad" side of the tracks Post Office. It's connected to the fabric store.

In the foreground is the Smoke house and in the background is the Ironworks.

This is the long view from the farmhouse end.

During the day, you can see the lighthouse, and the dock. To the left is the Navigational Charts and Maps store, and then the B&B




Next to the B&B is the "good" part of town Post Office, on the hill is the town hall. To the left of town hall is the "bad" side of town Post Office and fabric store combo.

To the left of the P.O./fabric store combo is the General store, then the bell caster.

On top of the small hill is the Ironworks, and you can see Sinterklaus on his horse. To the left is the Smokehouse.

Finall we see the woodshop on the small hill behind the farmhouse. To the left is the ice cutters working away next to the skating pond.

And here's a view from the wharfside of town.

Pretty freakin' cool, eh? It's actually kind of fun to put up and get organized. Apparently there's another 3 bigass boxes of houses coming my way.


So, we also decided to make a gingerbread house from scratch this year. We made several batches of gingerbread and glued together with icing. Putting the first two walls together is a total pain in the ass. After that it gets rather easy. Putting all the junk on is alot of fun.

Here's a front view of the house. Awesome aint it?

And a closeup. Notice the lack of back wall.

Side view. Notice the icicles.

Right side of the house. Look at lower right corner.

And a closeup. Damn dog got to the house when we were out. Ate half the back wall and chewed up the corner.

Here's the Christmas devil herself. Not only chewed on the house, but was looking behind the tree for foodbits and knocked it over!! Fortunately only one ornament was broken.

This is a view of the backyard showing the snow covered bird house and feeders.

Here's our garden buddha.



And it's been far, far too long for pirate chicken. Here she is in all her glory. Notice the good compost heat on the edge of the nest box. About the only thing these damn chickens are good for is making chicken shit for the compost heap.


All pictures taken with my Xmas present to myself, my new Apple iPhone telephonic device that is keeping me from paying any attention to the hippie chick. She's now an iPhone widow.