"Everything is Awesome!"

The title might fool you in to thinking that this is a post about The Lego Movie but it isn't. But that quote popped into my head today as I opened the mail and found that Lego had sent me a $20 giftcard for my birthday! How did they know LEGO was in my birthday plan?! =D So, that's what I first thought, then after an entire day, my friend informed me that she sent me a gift card from Lego.com, but for some reason it didn't say who it was from so it truly looked like Lego just gave me a gift card. I am grateful that my friend is supporting my hobby and gave such an awesome gift.

I have more content to add because some pieces I had ordered also arrived today and I have a group of stuff to add. Last year when I had attempted to start my Lego project, it was kicked in to initial gear by seeing Set 7346 Lego Creator Seaside House. It reminded me of one of my favorite sets that I always wanted from the Paradisa Collection from back in 1992 that I always wanted but never got. Set 6411-1 Lego Paradisa Sand Dollar Café. I did acquire it last year and it will be up pretty soon. Both sets have inspired the creation of a beach area on the opposite side of town from the planned mountain area, so I have been collecting as many beach or sea themed sets as I can acquire, some of which will be displayed here. This set has actually been sitting a round in my laundry room for about 9 months when my last attempt at the Lego project went on a hiatus. I fell on financial hardship and was also temporarily distracted by the present my brother brought back from Japan. Another toy love I have is Sylvanian Families aka Calico Critters in the U.S. and my brother brought back this adorable cat family for me as a souvenir. I couldn't decide between the two hobbies and eventually abandoned both to go on a video games kick. I would love to give the Sylvanian Families the same treatment as the Legos but that will have to wait until a later time. Legos are what I have room and passion for.

I love the Seaside House and it has so many great features. I love the way they built the wave crashing up and the sand castle. It always amazes me how much more detailed and in-depth is in these sets are than what you find in the licensed sets and sets from the 80s and even the 90s, although the 80s and 90s are still my most favorite decades of Lego.

A new thing that I have noticed within Creator that I have really liked is an increased use of flat pieces. In the 80s in 90s they were rarely used, hard to come by, and easy to loose. Their most common application seemed to be the 1 x 2 flat piece used as a telephone receiver or printed like a piece of mail. I've seen so many great applications for tiled floors and walkways, food, and the general smoothing out of normally studded pieces.

Another great application of the flat smooth pieces has been enabling the removal the roof allowing for full wall builds that still allow access to the inside of the building. The jury is still out for me on this one because unless you yank out a wall, you only have an aerial view of the room, or at least in this set. There are other creator sets that explore the use of a swinging wall that I like. Probably combining all methods would in the end be best. As seen in Set 31025 Lego Creator Mountain Hut, it's built with a split room, which admittedly is not my favorite but as a whole the Creator sets are still pretty remarkable.

This poor guy doesn't have any furniture!!!! That will be remedied in the future as I get into personal creation and inspiration. There is a great idea book that I picked up on Amazon.com The Lego Ideas Book by Daniel Lipkowitz that showcases some great furniture building ideas. 

A couple more beach themed sets I picked up were some mini sets. This first one I got just after Christmas. Lego.com had had it on sale for the longest time but I never picked it up and by the time I got to it, it was sold out and not looking like it would come back in stock. Luckily I found it on Amazon.com at just below it's original price plus shipping from Lego.com. Amazon Prime 2-Day Shipping is wonderful and I encourage you to get it. It can really make a difference in price if you shop from Amazon a lot and it also has a wonderful instant video collection that goes along with it. Anyway, this particular mini set is pretty cool because it gives you everything you need for a beach barbecue and some minifigures found in previous minifigure series. It includes 8803 Series 3 Hula Dancer, 8804 Series 4 Surfer Girl, and 8684 Series 2 Surfer. The set is 850449 Lego Minifigure Accessory Pack.

The last beach themed mini set I got over this last summer. Set 40054 Summer Scene. It's super cute and has an element in it that you can't find (as far as I know in any other sets. And it goes perfect with the beach them. The baseplate is not included in either of these sets, I borrowed it from Set 6411-1 Lego Paradisa Sand Dollar Café. It seemed to be only available over the summer and now goes for an outrageous price on Amazon.com. Haven't checked Ebay's price for it.

Bucket piece!

Fill the bucket.......

With water!

So, very exciting for the beach set up. I will be picking up a couple blue baseplates and tan bricks to add to the beach and sea area and perhaps adding a dock and some sort of eatery.

Happy Building!

Just an Update

I feel like I'm the biggest noob to the Lego scene, so anything I introduce here everyone probably already knows about, but I just happily discovered the Lego Cuusoo Site. This is totally awesome!!! I see a lot of sets that I would love to see make it to production but the one that I am most excited about is Lego Goonies Sets. I would totally buy it, I'd buy all of them. What a great idea and the minifigures are amazing. If it doesn't succeed I'll hound the creator to make me a set of those figures.

I've mostly been collecting websites to glean ideas from and had intended to have more content up, however, I hit a stumbling block. So I have a few newer sets to build and photograph but I had wanted to put together one of my older sets to showcase because anyone can get a new set, but I was searching for a piece (a black seat piece) in my drawer o' black pieces and could not for the life of me find it. And I looked for over half an hour. So I decided that with over 28 pounds of Legos, sort them by color wasn't going to cut it. I need to sort them by piece type as well or in lieu of. So, now I'm on that sorting project. It was nice that I was able to get my Lego room more secure aka cat-proof because Legos and cats do not mix and I'm not getting rid of the Legos or the cats. I still need to buy 2 more tables and then some plywood to put under the table as due to space constraints I've decided to use table top and under table for my set up but that will have to wait until my tax return or until I actually have stuff to set up. But it is definitely coming along.

Locke up like Fort Knox. I live in a mobile home and this sliding door on its own can't always keep the cats out because they can push the door in. The random lamp sitting the hallway is to light a normally dark hallway and is controlled by a remote.

I am super excited, a week from tomorrow is my birthday and my brother and I will be going to our closest Lego store which is Sacramento CA at the Arden Fair Mall, It's about 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 hours South East of where I live so this is a big deal. It's also my first time there, an even bigger deal. I still can't believe I somehow have to make it a whole week still to get there.

Anyway, if anyone is following along, that is why I've been so quiet.

Happy Building!!!

I finished the black piece sorting. I need to bag them next but my cats are trying to break the door down. In the background in my laptop is The Hunger Games movie which I was listening to while I finished sorting the pieces.

Set 31025 Lego Creator Mountain Hut 2014

So, I just finished putting together my newest set for 2014. I  had gone to Target to get a different set but didn't find it, but this was in its place and it was one I was very excited about when I got the new catalog in December. It reminds me of one of my favorite sets of all time, one that I only got a hold of early this last year, Set 6552-1 Rocky River Retreat. Both sets will be perfect for a planned mountain and forest area in the set up that I will be working on.

Two newer elements (new to me, I don't have any other sets they may have been in) caught my eye as I was putting this together. The 1x2 with brick detail and the flat 2x2 with the cool picture.

1 x 2 with brick detail. I'd love to have these in red.

Cool picture!

It was a relatively quck assembly with easy instructions. One thing I noticed in current building instructions, at least for the Creator line, is they show better what pieces in each step are needed rather than 80s-00s you had to be pretty observant sometimes to see what new had been added in each step. I've noticed that most building sets now tend to have either removable roofs, or the buildings are built full around with a separation in the wall of the building to reach the inside. This is quite different from most earlier sets that had an open back. I haven't quite decided which design I prefer and will use moving forward when I start working on my own creations.

I love the design detail and I'm always amazed at the ways both Lego employed and independent designers on throughout Lego fandom come up with

Logs by the fireplace

Lantern and dresser.

All in all I really like this set. It was fun to build and will add greatly to my set up. 

It started with something very BASIC.........

Hello! Welcome to my Lego blog! I am very excited to start this adventure of full-filling my life long dream with you all! It has been a dream of mine to be able to have my own expansive Lego set up and I'm very excited to finally begin this process. I initially imagined this opportunity about 10 years ago at the age 23 when, on top of the countless Lego sets I already owned, I purchased a lot of 28 lbs. of random Legos on Ebay for about $200. It has taken about 10 years later as I will be 33 in 27 days, but I am beyond excited.

I got my first Lego set sometime in 1984 or 1985. It was this set Lego BASIC Set 544-1 that I started with after a small stint with Duplos in the couple years before. From there along with my brother it grew into many years of fun building experiences and play time stories, some of which I'll talk about in future postings. My favorite themes are Town and Castle and now in Lego modern times City, Creator, Minifigures, and Castle though I have yet to delve deep in to the new castle stuff since my focus is mainly town / city.

Above is my personally parted together minifigure representation of myself and my first Lego minifigure.

Myself again with a minifigure representation of my brother, Jason

What you can expect from this site moving forward is updates on my old set builds, new set builds, and anything I custom build. I also plan on experimenting with stop motion and picture story-telling. I hope you enjoy following along and if you have any positive comments or questions, please feel free to make them. Anything negative or trolling will be deleted. Below is my combination living room / Lego studio where I live life (watch movies, play video games, listen to music, surf the interwebs and occasionally entertain a guest) and work on my Lego creations. Happy Building!!!!