Schneider Cheung celebrates the Year of the Dragon with the most wonderfully sculpted Chinese dragon I’ve ever seen.

Meanwhile, rack911 celebrates with a depiction of Cai Shen, the God of Wealth, complete with a golden dragon and a bowl for treasure.

(And since we get at least one comment about this every year, Japan celebrates New Year’s on January 1st every year. Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar, the exact date varies by year, and is celebrated by many other Asian cultures. Just not Japan.)

To make things less annoying for your friends and relations, our compatriots over at FBTB have set up a special e-mail account where you can send the messages.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to LEGOSantaYoda.com
2. Select a greeting card.
3. Fill in the form with your name and email address. Enter FBTB for recipient and giveaways@fbtb.net as the address. Enter a message of “For the Tots!”
4. Hit send.
5. Hit the back button on your browser.
6. The information you entered should still be there. Hit send again!
7. Go to step 5

FBTB assures us that every message will be opened so that it counts, and LEGO says that they’ll honor every message sent to this FBTB address. I’d love to see the LEGO fan community get together and collectively enable a million donated toys this holiday season!

But wait, there’s more! LEGO fan sites are also putting up fabulous prizes, not least of which is every single promotional LEGO Star Wars minifigure ever released (donated by FBTB).

Oh yes, you read that right. So, what’re you waiting for? Get clicking!

Standing 38 feet (12 m) tall and built from 600,000 bricks, you can see the tree in person on the lower concourse at St. Pancras through January 2.

Thanks to all the readers who sent us links about this.

Update: Lots more pictures on The Verge.

Via FBTB

Chris McVeigh has posted his series of five ornaments, each designed to bring a bit of life and character to your decorations this holiday season! Each has instructions, so happy building!

Here’s what you get, November 25-28:

• Free shipping on all orders of $49 or more
• Free Limited Edition Holiday set featuring Santa Minifigure with orders of $99 or more
• 10% off all orders of $149 or more
• 25% off a bunch of sets (list below)

All of the following sets are 25% off (plus a few other Duplo, Belville, LEGO Games, and other non-System sets):

Republic Swamp Speeder
Winter Toy Shop
Cad Bane’s Speeder
Skeleton Bowling
Race Truck
Public Transport Station
Horse Stable
Imperial Flagship
Tank Truck
Tantive IV“
Repair Truck
Republic Dropship with AT-OT Walker
Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter”
Emerald Night

The team has just listed several new creations in their online store.

Fine print: Creations for Charity is a fundraising event for the Toys for Tots charity organization. As such, donations to Creations for Charity itself are not tax-deductible. Creations for Charity is not affiliated with The Brothers Brick.

If you’d like to donate a creation yourself, the deadline for doing so is November 15.

Don’t miss Nannan’s writeup about last year’s fundraiser, which resulted in over $14,000 worth of LEGO for underprivileged children.

I like how Kevin left the edges “rough,” as though the vampire painter minifig actually painted it.

My favorite is Dracula Kitty:

Check out bigger photos of all the cats in schfio’s photoset on Flickr

Thanks for the tip, Bruce & Tommy!

You can visit Creation for Charity’s new website for details and other exciting changes this year. Once again, I look forward to the generosity and enthusiasm of the Lego community to share our hobby with many children this holiday season.

Here’s a look at last year’s results and the amount of Lego that was donated.

Press Release:

LEGO is asking consumers ages 6 + to design a LEGO themed postage stamp to be featured in the Late Holiday Catalogue .

For each country there will be 50 finalists selected to receive a copy of 10222. 25 will be for ages 6-14 and 25 will be from ages 15 & up. From the 50 finalists, 1 grand prize winner will be selected per country. In addition to a copy of 10222 – Winter Village Post Office, grand prize winners will have their stamp design featured on the late holiday catalog for their country along with a professionally designed and framed LEGO mosaic of their design.

Where: The US/UK/Germany. These are the only countries that mail a late holiday catalogue

When: We will be accepting entries for the contest September 1-30 and selecting the finalists & winners for each country the first week of October.

How: Consumers must simply visit shop.LEGO.com/Design-Challenge (Germany: shop.LEGO.com/Designwettbewerb) to download the official entry form. They or their parent/guardian must complete the form and email it along with their stamp design to the email address designated for their country. No purchase is required and there will be no physical entries collected.

Click the pic for the complete photoset on Flickr.

Here are the complete details from LEGO:

10222 Winter Village Post Office

Ages 12+. 820 pieces.
US $59.99 CA $79.99 DE 59.99 € UK 49.99 £

Continuing the winter scene series, the Winter Village Post Office is the perfect snow-covered setting. In the cozy post office, the worker is hard at work sorting all the mail into containers and sacks, while upstairs, there’s just time for the postman to take a break before setting off in the traditional post car with all the letters and gifts. From the pavilion outside, musicians fill the air with music, while children take in the wintry atmosphere by the park bench before throwing snowballs at each other – the musicians had better get ready to duck!

• Includes 7 minifigures: female post office worker, male postman, female, 2 kids and 2 musicians and a dog!
• Post office features dark-green split roof with snow, fireplace, light brick, table, coffee mug, and lamppost and mailboxes outside!
• Also features evergreen tree and assorted minifigure accessories

And look for a designer video in this space shortly!

Via Eurobricks