Tag Archives: Holiday

From New Year’s Day through Christmas, each year is full of holidays celebrated by the diverse cultures of the world — Setsubun in Japan, Halloween in America, and so many more. LEGO builders love to create seasonal models to celebrate these red-letter days.

We will remember them

Guns along the Western Front fell silent on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. Using LEGO as a medium to acknowledge Veterans Day, Armistice Day or Remembrance Day wherever you are, is just our community’s way of remembering all of those who sacrificed for their country.

Lest We Forget by Simon Liu
Lest We Forget.

Remembrance 2015 by Luc Byard Remembrance 2015

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by Deborah Higdon IMGP7275f

Poppy by Fujiia
Poppy Flower - Unedited version

Lest We Forget by JK Brickworks Lest We Forget

We Will Remember Them by Nick Sweetman
We Will Remember Them

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Graveside at midnight

I have a house rule that I can’t sort new minifigs into their bins until I’ve used them in at least one build. As a result, the Banshee from Minifigures Series 14 has been collecting dust on my desk for almost two months. But thanks to Halloween, her wait is finally over! With this build, I wanted to capture some of the eeriness of Halloween and there’s no place eerier than a graveyard at night.

Final Goodbye

You can see the color version of this photo here.

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And then he rested...

In a unique take on the phrase “year in review”, Ted Andes built a new 8×8 stud LEGO vignette every week over the entire course of 2014. The resulting collection covers all manner of topics, from the well-known to the downright weird. Often inspired by current events, the builds are always imaginative and creatively built. They also demonstrate a wide variety of building styles, proving there’s an awful lot you can do with a simple 8×8 space!

It’s almost impossible to pick favorites, but here goes…

As well covering all the most popular holidays, Ted managed to include some more ‘extreme’ annual events from around the world:

 

SPORTS! Clever building techniques are used to convey scale and speed, respectively:

 

Continue reading

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Galactic happy holidays

With the final hectic days before Christmas, Tiago Catarino (Catarino0937) wishes us a happy holiday’s, and shows us that there will be gifts for all, no matter which planet you’re on:

Alien Christmas

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Medieval Mountain Bobsledding

This winter scene, by mrcp6d is a ton of fun. To begin with, the landscaping and snowbanks are perfect. That isn’t easy to do and it gives this model a great foundation. But it is the posing of the minifigs that really sells this build. The grim vikings as they lose, the celebrating of the winners and their fans and the total dejection of the bare-armed woman (isn’t she cold?) as she watches her team come in last really make this scene come alive. It’s too bad bobsledding wasn’t invented until the 1870s because it would have been a great medieval sport!

Mountain Bobsled Racing 2

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Merry Chrashmas from Santa’s B-Team!

Joel Baker is the agent for this team of misfits and directly responsible for their behavior. I don’t know about you but I don’t want these guys pawing around my roof on Christmas Eve, blacklight nose or not!

I love how Joel got so much expression into each of these deer. They may only be the ‘B’ team but they have a lot of personality!

Santa's B-Team

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A Family Tradition in Miniland Scale

Miniland Grandpa takes his young miniland grandson out to harvest their christmas tree. Luis Baixinho built this little scene, which I find quite touching. It always amazes me how much can be conveyed at miniland scale. It reminds me of time spent with my own grandfather and that is always a good thing.

Xmas with Grandpa

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Micro-scale Gingerbread House

Tis the season for family, friends, snow, gifts, and micro gingerbread houses. Rancorbait presents us this absolutely adorable bite-sized edition, and I personally think the stickers just make it better. It’s a great way to get the iconic royal icing on the roof edges with the candy shingles.

Micro Gingerbread House

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“Oh, oh, my Christmas tree’s delicious”

Procrastination. It’s a crippling disease that afflicts millions every year, especially around December. Don’t become a victim – shop now! And if you’re looking for the perfect gift for the LEGO fan that has everything, Chris McVeigh can help you out with this beautiful range of tree ornament kits. Or if you’re a total cheapskate like me, just print them off a set of building instructions. Bah, humbug!

I particularly like the inclusion of the arcade machine ornaments. Also, it looks like the roller ornaments could be easily converted into dreidels. Or with the application of a rubber mallet, possibly even a mkeka.

 
 

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Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown

Just in time for the holiday, Tyler Sky posted this adorable trio of Snoopy, Woodstock, and tomorrow night’s dinner.

Snoopy Thanksgiving

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10245: Santa’s Workshop [Review]

Lego was kind enough to send The Brothers Brick a copy of the upcoming Santa’s Workshop set for review. I was lucky enough to be the one to review the set, and my 3.5 year old son was lucky enough to help. There are plenty of official photos of the set floating around already, including those in our own coverage of the set reveal, so I’ve tried to concentrate my review on interesting things about the set, rather than take a bunch of new photos. This is partially due too the fact that it has been tough to pry the set away from little hands, as my son ran around the house with it screaming about Santa as soon as I opened the shipping box.

Santa's Workshop 04

Parts
This set is a virtual smorgasbord of unusual parts, in fascinating colors. The set contains 883 pieces, which is pretty fantastic for a price point of $70. Although I primarily build space and mecha, I can imagine repurposing most parts in this set to my own use. The doors might find themselves languishing for awhile, but that’s balanced out by a huge helping of gold parts. There’s certainly enough gold piping here to outfit a steampunk lab (even the inside of the North Pole sign is a gold lightsaber blade). I was also surprised to see quite a few printed parts for the reindeer (both their faces and backs are printed. I was also rather pleasantly surprised by the number of extras included in the set. There was even a spare cookie! Finally, the set is PACKED with SNOT bricks, it’s almost worthwhile as a parts pack alone.

Minifigs
Santa's Workshop 05
As with the parts, I was rather happy with the minifigs included in the set. You get Santa, Mrs. Klaus, four elves, and five reindeer. Oddly, Mrs. Klaus and an elf both come with two-sided faces (alternate unhappy faces shown in the photo). The Santa hat is really nice, though I presume it’s the same as the Collectible Minifig Santa, which I don’t have (at least not open). Mrs. Klaus looks like her dress is a new print, and it certainly fits the part. The elves span a variety of personalities, which helps give the set a bit of a Burle Ives Rudolph vibe, which I personally like. Our complement includes “Magic Wand Guy”, and “The Badest Elf There Ever Was.” The latter steals Santa’s cookies.

Speaking of Reinder, though, there are five in the set, four large, and one small. That said, the set doesn’t actually include Rudolph. According the Marcos Bessa, the designer, Rudolph is a character they would’ve had to license. Fortunately, it was easy enough to swap one of the spare Christmas lights onto the small Reindeer’s nose, and Christmas was saved. The Reindeer count has been raised as in issue in my house, so I may have to pick up more of the printed bits on Bricklink, to bring our complement up to the proper eight (plus Rudolph). The tubing used to connect the harness to the sleigh looks long enough to be able to attach at least one more pair of reindeer. “Rudolph” by the way, can apparently even balance on his tail.

The Build
This set was pretty interesting to build. There are some nice SNOT technique used for everything from the Reindeer heads to window construction. It was far beyond my son’s ability to build anything but the minifigs (and repair reindeer), but that’s to be expected. I’m betting that town builders won’t learn much new from building this set, but it’s still a fun build, with a lot of variety. The set is also broken into a series of smaller sections, as most are these days, which allow you to break up the building into discrete chunks, without opening all the bags. There’s also a great little micro-scale Classic-Space ship rolling out of the toy machine, which is marked improvement over the inclusion of another micro scale train for the minifig children to play with.

Overall
This set is a great buy, you get a lot of interesting parts, a lot of useful parts, and some unique animal bits. It was fun to build, and SCREAMS Christmas. If you’ve got kids in your house, it’d be fun to build a chunk at a time, as a build-up to Christmas. It’s surprisingly sturdy for a set in the Creator Expert line, but sleigh can even withstand swooshing by a three year old. It also looks like the two exclusive holiday sets for spending over $99 with LEGO direct this year are annexes to this workshop. I’ve only seen the one available October 1 in the store catalog, but it looks like a little elf workshop that’d match up with the back of this set nicely. The set is available September 17 to VIPs, and October 1 to everyone. I’d recommend waiting until October 1, so you can add something else to your cart, and get the free add-on.

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LEGO Creator holiday set 10245 Santa’s Workshop unveiled at Bricks by the Bay [News]

While Josh, Caylin, Ian, and I were all off having a little TBB BBQ last night (thus the delay, sorry readers), 10245 Santa’s Workshop was unveiled at Bricks by the Bay in California.

Designed by Marcos Bessa (another pug lover, by the way), Santa’s Workshop includes 883 pieces and 6 minifigs, and will retail for $70 in the US. The set features the workshop itself, Santa and Mrs. Claus, elves, a sleigh with brick-built reindeer, and toy-making machinery. 10245 Santa’s Workshop will be out this October.

10245 Santa's Workshop (1)

10245 Santa's Workshop (3) 10245 Santa's Workshop (8)

10245 Santa's Workshop (12)

See more photos in our Flickr photoset. Here’s the full press release from LEGO:

10245 Santa’s Workshop

Ages 12+ | 883 Pieces

US $69.99 – CA $89.99 – AU $119.99 – DE 69.99€ – UK £59.99 – DK 649.00 DKK
*Euro pricing varies by country. Please visit shop.LEGO.com for regional pricing.

Have festive family fun building Santa’s Workshop!

Enjoy the magic of Christmas with Santa’s Workshop, a festive addition to the LEGO® Winter Village Series! Gather your family around the Christmas tree to build this enchanting winter wonderland. Help the elves make the toys, feed the reindeer and help Santa load up his magical sleigh. Santa’s wife has baked cookies and the clock tower shows it’s nearly time for Santa to deliver the presents—all at the most wonderful time of the year! Includes 6 minifigures: Santa with red gift sack, Mrs. Claus with cookie tray and 4 elves with pointy ears and hats.

The enchanting LEGO® Creator Santa’s Workshop model is full of festive magic and includes a beautiful sleigh, reindeer and a Christmas tree.

  • Includes 6 minifigures: Santa with red gift sack, Mrs. Claus with cookie tray and 4 elves with pointy ears and hats
  • Features beautiful sleigh with red and gold detail and dark green padding, 4 reindeer and a baby reindeer, building with detailed interior, clock tower and Christmas tree
  • Building features stained glass window and Christmas lights on roof
  • Accessories include: 4 wrapped presents in assorted sizes and 4 toys including a blue classic spaceship, yellow car and a pink wand
  • Also includes North Pole sign, Santa’s Workshop sign and a summer holiday picture of Santa and his wife
  • Gather everyone around the Christmas tree!
  • Help Santa take off in his sleigh!
  • Family dual-building experience: includes separate brick sets with instructions for adults and children aged 8 and over
  • Santa’s Workshop measures over 6” (16cm) high, 3” (8cm) deep and 9” (24cm) wide

Available for sale directly through LEGO® beginning

October 2014 via shop.LEGO.com, LEGO® Stores or via phone

And here’s the designer video:

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