Happy New Year!!!!

It's a great new year, with great new sets to be excited about!!! I haven't blogged in a while as work and school keeps me pretty busy but back in October I did get a trip to the Lego store, and once school was over, I got down to business with building. Let's showcase and talk about it!

My trip to The Lego store was a pretty small trip. I ended up getting one of the biggest pick a brick containers with some nice items, like several of the brown stair cases. I parted together 6 minifigures, and bought some small seasonal sets.

The minifigures I parted together were mostly meh, I was kind of after pieces more than making someone special, but this guy I really like. I got the Hawiian shirt and the swim shorts and a pretzel! Score! I grabbed as many pretzels as I could and found some good torsos, even the painter's smock from the series 4 artist. I also picked up some of the little "occasion" specific minisets available.

I really wanted a Santa Claus but was not that into the workshop set. The minifigures series Santa cost about as much or more than this little miniset so I was really glad to get a hold of this on my trip.

I was excited to get this one because the clown will be useful in my circus / carnival. All the pieces for that are fallilng in to place and I just read somewhere that they will be releasing a farris wheel this summer. So excited!!!!!

When I use this one where I want it, I'm going to make one modfiication, other than not using the veil because I don't like the cloth pieces in most Lego sets, I'm going to give her sleeves because I'm a modest kind of gal.

Also, since we last met I made my first purchase from SillyBrickPics.com and got a case for my new iPhone 6. I love it! It's good quality, awesome picture, and it is definitely quite the conversation piece.

I have made several orders from BrickWarriors and BrickForge, but I hadn't made anything cool with the items I used, but I did part together this lovely flying lady. I used the BrickWarrior Harpy Wings in white with the gold should gear and a face I got from the minifigure bin at The Lego Store and the extra blond hairpiece that I got from the Wedding Set. I don't have a name for her but I see her as maybe a superhero as I like to make up my own characters rather than using licensed heroes for my stories.

At the beginning of December every year, my church puts on this wonderful exhibit where they display hundreds of nativity scenes from the community or within the church from all over the world. While walking through the exhibit, I found this wonderful gem and decided it was my favorite. It is made of all Lego, with the exception of the cloth used to create the robes. I stared at it long enough, its legit and was my favorite of the nativity scenes, though I may be a little biased. It has me already thinking about next year.

Got these little sets for Christmas. The first one I got free from Lego when I ordered The Fairground Mixer. I have a funny story for that order but I'll wait and tell it when I have actually built The Fairground Mixer, which I will be building that set next actually. The second I grabbed on Amazon.

T'was the season to build this one even thought I bought it over summer and not for its intended purpose. I have accepted the fact that I will never own Grand Carousel, so I am going to put this set in my circus / carnival.

I was very lucky and actually got the Exo-Suit on Amazon for regular price. And I actually really loved the build. I've never really been in to Space that much but this set gave me a new appreciation for space. Which was perfect because I made an awesome trade that gained me some Blacktron sets.

A friend traded me these for an extra Nintendo 3DS I had that he thought would be good for his son. It was kind of a rip off deal for him but I think he was happy to depart with so much to someone that would appreciate them because his son didn't.

Was happy to finally get this house but a little disappointed that you couldn't leave the light on. Not something a little modding or purchasing of Liteupblok woudn't fix but it was still a little disappointing.

Was I the only one excited about this set coming with a port-a-potty? Am I the only one excited about that new 2015 construction set that also does?

And last, but certainly not least. I finally built another old set of mine. This was one of my favorites and was featured many times in play with my brother. There were frequent fires at the control tower where the control tower lady had to be rescued. I think the experiences gave her PTSD because she later she was jailed for stabbing her husband the pilot to the Turbo Prop I and for slapping the president of Legoland.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to and there's still plenty more to do. Happy Building!!!!

Buliding, Building, and Can't Get Enough of Buildng

So, I don't have a lot to report except that I've been doing an extensive amount of building. I have also done a little bit more arranging of my Lego room. I finally have the space mostly clear and have laid out part of the dimensions of where things will be set up, just so I can room to put stuff. I still have much more building to do. But at least I have a place to put it.

I'm trying to decide what direction to take this blog. I like talking about Lego and now talk about it frequently in private chats on Facebook with 3 people from around the world. I love building sets. I love creating pictures of situations, such as I did with my 80s hospital, but to be honest, I don't really enjoy writing like a reviewer or someone writing an article. I find a lot of times I'll have built a set and I found it enjoyable, but I don't have a ton to say about it. Plus, chronicling all my sets is a little exhausting, as you'll see the backlog of photos of builds that I have recently done. So, what I'll probably end up doing is, write occasional blog. Show what I recently purchased / built, if it's a building, I'll probably showcase features or scenarios and really only comment if something particularly stands out. This may or may not help make this blog interesting. Really, this blog will probably get more interesting once I'm up and running with MOCs and creating stories with my city.

So here are a few things that I've built recently:

These are the only two movie sets that I have bought because their alternate build is a good addition to a city set up. Admittedly, though, I don't like this garbage truck as much as I like this one. The back end where the trash goes doesn't open up very wide. I do, however, like the cook. I can't wait to build him a restaurant. I'm thinking Italian. I don't plan on getting very many more movie sets. I really want 70811 - The Flying Flusher and then I want the minifigures Blacktron Fan and Fabu Fan from 70813 - Rescue Reinforcements and I've thought about buying them individually but I believe last I checked they were $20-$25 US a piece on Bricklink, so after paying $40-$50 US for just two minifigures you may as well pay $70 US to get the whole thing and have the additional bricks for MOCs.

The black car is, I've decided, will be my female action  hero that I blogged about last time's car. I really liked the racecar and will be building another just like it with different colors.

Yes! I did get the Research Institute. I wasn't one of the lucky people that acquired it from Lego.com though. I got it from a scalper. But to me it was worth it because it's a cool set. My favorite part of building the set was the dinosaur. I like the minfigures for the most part except I've never been a fan of the non-smiling Lego head. So I might replace some of their heads. At the very least the chemist probably. The Etcto-1 was pretty fun to build but a little complicated for me. The small pieces were difficult for my all-thumbs hands to put in their intricate places. In fact, there were 2 pieces I could not even get on the roof. Two clear round 1 studs. But I don't think its lack detracts much from the model.

I had the best Lego weekend this past weekend. The two tubs of Lego I got from my friend's sister's daughter for $100. It has so many sets in there. Highlights include, The Queen Anne, Bank and Money Transfer, Forest Police Station, Winter Village Cottage, a fireboat, Marina, and several others, such an awesome deal. And then of course I found some of the collectible minifigures. On a random grab of 16 I got 11/16 of the series. The odds are now against me so, I will be purchasing the rest from re-sellers.

So I have a lot to do now between sorting the new used Lego, still getting all of my sets together and the plethora of new Lego. But it's been fun. I love Lego.

Happy Building!!!

Bricks By the Bay 2014

I took another Lego break about a month or two ago to play video games, just to mix things up. But then Bricks By the Bay happened and now I am back in full swing.You will also notice a new URL and name for my blog. A while back I decided I didn't like "Brick-A-Brac." It wasn't very creative and had basically been made on the fly because I was getting some flack for having unknowingly violated LEGO's fair use policy in my original domain name. But today as I was sitting at work having thinking about the stuff I just ordered from Lego.com and aching to buy more and basically having Lego on the brain, realized I was a Legoaholic. But to follow fair use, I had to change it to Brickaholic. So, there you go. But I'm sure you want to know about the con, so I'll give you what I came up with.

I took 80 or so pictures, so to not have to post every single and to not have to pick my favorites, you can look at them all in a handy-dandy slideshow. I don't have a ton to report on the con, I liked it but it was smaller than I though it would be. I was mostly interested in the custom vendors but I didn't buy anything from them because I'm not sure what custom items I need yet since I haven't gotten in to MOCs and things. I went on public day as an early entry too so I didn't get to enjoy the cool things a registered attendee got to enjoy and I kind of skimmed a lot of it too because I felt a bit rushed by the person that came with me. We hadn't had breakfast yet. But it was still cool and I'd like to go back next year. I'm glad we went early too because the line to get in at the normal time even with tickets was terrible. I did get a bit of inspiration and motivation to work on acquiring items for my planned theme park build because in the pictures you will see several carnivals and rides and things. I had also spent the previous day at California's Great America. I'm definitely gunning for that Fairground Mixer now! And I'm gonna have to look into Technic and motors and things to create other rides.

Slideshow

I did stop at The Lego Store that was nearby and picked up some nice stuff. I had my first experience with the pick a brick wall and picked up an abundance of the "girl" colors and the brighter colors you don't see much of. I also enjoyed the minifigure station again and got a cool accessory I don't have. They had these pastel guitars that I imagine probably come from Lego Friends or something, but I grabbed one for each of my minifigures since they were such a unique item. I like the minifigures I put together AAAAND I finally picked up the Ghostbuster set, so that's exciting! I haven't put it together yet because I'm trying to make space among the parts to put together finishes sets, but that will be getting an overhaul sometime hopefully in the next week by next weekend because I bought some plywood that's going to serve as the flat portion for under the tables where I will expand things. I also made my first BrickForge order which I"m excited about and made a rather sizable purchase from Lego.com. All things I will showcase in due time. Anyway, that's about it. Happy Building!!!

The haul!!! You can also see that I have a uniform sky and cloud background now

The guitars! I see a "girl" band in my future!

This guy is my favorite of the three. I loved his torso when it came with the balloon cart. I see this guy as an antique dealer or jewelry store owner.

This was a fun one too. I think of her as a kind of freshmen reporter. She actually makes me think of Drew Berrymore's character in Never Been Kissed even though she doesn't really look like her. If she becomes a prominent member of Legoland I might name her Josie Grossie after the nickname of that aforementioned character Josie Gellar.

She's a really fun one too. I think of her as kind of the hot action movie star that all the men in Legoland oggle over, almost maybe like an Angelina Jolie or something.

I'm not in to Space but this was one of the coolest displays there.

Set 31010 Lego Creator Tree House

It's been a while. I haven't had much to update because I haven't built that many sets (though I do have several waiting) Thankfully I finally finished sorting or at least the first part of sorting. Things slowed down due to the California heat and I found it completely unbearable to be in the Lego room. Luckily, I convinced my landlord to install a cooler in the Lego room at no cost to myself. So, sorting continued and is now pretty much finished. Now the building of old sets will take off in different degrees. I decided it would be better for me to compile the parts to each set before I started building it so I wouldn't be stuck mid-build if I was missing a piece. This turned out to be a very inspired idea because the first set I started on was missing several pieces that I now need to order from Bricklink.com. Thankfully, in the meantime I can still compile the bricks for other sets and even build them. However, the issue of space will become a particular challenge. So,  I will be taking some time to set up the room to be ready to accommodate all the sets I'll be building. I need to buy 3 more of a specific type of table and then some sanded plywood to place under the tables so that I have a flat area to put the rest of my town / city under there since I have limited space. So, things are rolling and I'm super excited. I've been seeing a lot of great ideas online of things to build and do and can't wait to get to the MOC stage of things because I have tons of ideas.

The title set I actually bought sometime last year in March or April and I was super excited when I saw it at Toys R Us. Unfortunately as soon as I bought it, I shifted to a different hobby and stopped doing Lego stuff. It's a cute set though and I really enjoyed building it. Here's the set:

The first thing I noticed when I built this was that it was actually smaller than I thought it would be. The close up on the box makes it look so massively huge, I was picturing it to be really big. I'm happy that it's not though and that it is a reasonably small tree house size.

The Tree House has so many cool and detailed features that one would expect to find in any kids tree house.

Ordinary tree trunk.....

Hides a treasure map!

Inner Tree House: Bed for sleeping and cubby for stuff

Space on the roof

The look-out

Now to play a trick...send down the bucket to get some water...

Fill up the box.....

Dump it on unsuspecting passersby

And of course no tree house is complete without a boy's two best friends.......

Dog and frog!

All in all I really liked this set and it was fun to build. A great addition to any town set up. I'm really looking forward to getting my old sets built and to get things rolling. I do not think it will be without a break though. I have been Lego almost every day for at least 3 months now and might take a bit of an extended break. I'm getting Mario Kart 8 for Wii U on Thursday and that should take up some time and Final Fantasy XIV has been calling me name lately. Coming up in August will be Bricks by the Bay in Santa Clara, CA about 3 to 3 1/2 hours south of me an I'm really looking forward to attending that. My first ever convention. I'll take tons of pictures and show any loot I may score. Thanks for following along and Happy Building!!!!!

Progress and a Few Little Sets

It's been a while since my last update but I've been hacking away at sorting pieces. I'm in the middle of light gray and I only have blue and the random smaller colors left. We're so close. I hope I'll be able to build and update a few of my old sets each week. I've ordered a couple of new sets that should be arriving on Thursday, one is a Lego Movie set as I haven't bought any of those yet and the other is another City set. There is so much coming out right now for summer it's hard to have to sit back and not buy stuff. But I feel that my priority, aside from the aforementioned sets, should be getting what I already have built and taking inventory of what I want to part together that's old and what my town / city will be in need of and what I plan to build MOC. It's super exciting the possibilities. I'm currently in thoughts of how to incorporate the Castle and Pirate themes into my town / city set up because I really like those themes but do not feel my creativity lends itself to older things. I thought about maybe creating a medieval castle theme park piece and a pirate village part. I'm not big in to space so that will probably be left out except for an idea I had for some sports teams. I have so many ideas I can't imagine getting to them all but hopefully I'll be able to get to a good portion of them.

Anyway, the stuff to showcase for this week.

Set 60058: SUV with Watercraft. I thought this set would be a great addition to my mountain lake or ocean set up. More water recreation that I really like.

I haven't been the biggest fan of vehicles getting larger but I do like how in some instances they are making more vehicles that hold more than one person. It always seemed a little ridiculous when you'd get one of the houses and there would be a husband and wife but only one person could sit in the vehicle and the other either had to apparently stay home or ride on the roof.

I like the minifigures with this this set. You could really have them be anything, father and son, best friends, etc.

Ridin' the waves!

The next set is another City set that I hadn't actually intended to get. Set 60017 Flatbed Truck. The vehicle is so monsterously huge and really, how many tow trucks does a city really need anyway. But I did like the car that came with the vehicle and then I remember all the little dinky tow trucks I do have and how they probably wouldn't be able to tow the huge vehicles of now so I decided that I would pick it up. Amazon had it on sale too so that helped.

You can fit a passenger if you stick their arm in the air all weird

Our cute minifigures!

I thought this guy was especially adorable

The next one is Set 40078 Hot Dog Stand. I love food stand / cart sets, so when I saw this polybag which was apparently a free set for July orders in 2013, I had to snag it. It's super cute! I'm planning a carnival / circus set up with The Fairground Mixer and some added things, this will be great with it.

I like the minifgures in this set pretty well or at least one of them. I'm kind of not a fan of that lady's shirt and now it's my second set to have it. The Fairground Mixer has it as well. I wish there was more of an abunance of womens shirts.

Love his little gotee!

You didn't want mustard on that?!

And of course, I have to draw attention to another Lego element obsession. The bike. These were pretty rare back in the 80s and 90s and only came in white, black, and red during that time period. I was always excited to get a set with a bike. And not only does this set come with a bike but it comes in an awesome blue color I don't have!!!

So that's pretty much all for my current purchases. I did build another set but since this is already a long blog and it's a larger set, it will have to wait for next time. As stated in the beginning, the sorting is coming along, about the only thing slowing it down is the weather and keeping the Lego room cool while I'm in there. I am experimenting with many things.

Happy Building!!!!