Why I Oughta...

I've been busy getting to know Sketchup - in an attempt to create a true, accurate model of my (hopefully to-be-built-in-2024) backyard wood-fired pizza oven .  But, I also figured out a different, three-dimensional approach that will work (at least for me).  The stand of the oven is built from typical cinder blocks:  16x8x8 (16" long, 8" tall, 8" deep) and half-blocks of 8x8x8 (8" long, 8" tall, 8" deep) that are commonly available from any big-box hardware store.   I was playing around with sketchup one afternoon when I realized that I could build out a model using some common bricks.   I wanted to get a sense for how the stand would come together and also begin to build out a parts-list for the blocks.   I went up to the kids lego bins and quickly figured out how to build this: Part 3001 (2x4 brick)  has 8 studs on top and is the typical rectangle brick that you think of when you think of LEGO bricks.   Using a one-stud for 4" each direction, t

On all of our trips to campus to see a Fighting Illini football game down at Memorial Stadium, we do a few things:  park at Frat Chi, walk the quad and buy some stuff at the bookstore or Gameday Sports.  Or both.  On one of those trips in the past few years, I guess I made an impulse buy that I recently came across.  Doing what most of us do at the new year, I decided to clean out my desk drawers.  In one of them, I found a package that contained this Fighting Illini football player minifigure you see below.  He's wearing W-O-W or White - Orange - White...which isn't my favorite look (I'm much more of a traditionalist in O-B-O), but seems like something the team wears a lot these days.     A few notes:   1.  He's wearing #00 - which I think has to do with players not being paid to play. 2.  If you look closely at the yoke, you'll see "Team Shield" showing up.  Nice little detail. 3.  He came with a football, but TKOTBS seems to have misplaced it. 4.  The h

 Quarantine is a funny thing.  We stay home and some days, we get NOTHING done.  Other days, we power ahead with a bunch of projects.  One of those projects is the Lego Walt Disney World Cinderella Castle that I've posted about recently .  After a few years of dormancy (seriously...years), you can see that we finally put the last few pieces together and finished the castle.  See below: The Babe and I put the final touches on The Castle (that's what we've been calling it) and now we have to figure out where we should put it/where it should live.  We knew it was big, but the height of this thing makes it such that we can't put it on a lot of her shelves in her room.  

 On Monday, I posted an update on our Lego build - the Walt Disney World Cinderella Castle - that has been going on for more than a year and a half.  I mentioned that we were on step #626, but I thought it would be good to post a reference photo - and I failed to do that in Monday's post.  So, here's where we are as of today.  Two steps forward (#628) and the build is focused on the tan portion on the left of the photo below.  The grey portion on the right is the lower section and is complete.  After we continue to build this part on the left (tan part), we snap-it into the part on the right.  Doing two posts in one week on this build certainly ups the ante on getting this done before Christmas, doesn't it?

Step #626.  That's where we are RIGHT NOW on the Lego Disney Cinderella Walt Disney World Castle that we started in July of 2018.  Yes, you read that right:  17 months ago, we started this build .  And it was 11 months ago that I posted here on the blog how I worked with Lego customer service to source some of the parts that have gone missing.  That was January of this year.   You would think that the pandemic would have gotten us going a little bit faster on this thing, right?  But, it wasn't to be.  However, now with the colder weather + us sitting around inside AND staring down Christmas where the kids will likely get EVEN MORE Lego sets, we have a deadline we're facing.  I want to get this thing done in the next week or two.  But, we're at a stage where we're - once again - missing parts.  Between opened bags and just flat out MISSING bags in our set, we have to go back-and-forth between where we're building this (in the screened porch) and the Lego storage

Last Summer, I posted about how we were kicking off a new LEGO build of the Walt Disney World Cinderella's Castle with the kids.  In that post - dated July 9, 2018 - I mentioned that we had started the project seven days prior (July 2, 2018) and talked through how we had encountered some trouble with the early steps in the build due to lost parts.  One of the kids received this as a birthday present a year or so ago and I made the mistake of putting the big LEGO box in the room with the rest of the LEGOs at our house.  With young, curious kids around, they couldn't help themselves and opened the box to look at the parts.  That lead to opened bags and, ummm, missing parts.  From that July 2018 post : Also, Step 3 is where we already ran into trouble. Why? Because why wouldn't a seven year old who has this Castle set in her bedroom for seven months open up bag one and tinker around. The only problem? When we sat down to do it together, we had to scavenge together

A few days ago, I posted photos about my first Nanoblock build of the Kaminarimon gate from Japan and today, I'm happy to say that I finished the build.  I put the penny in there for scale.  The LED is piped from the base to the little lantern in the middle that is suspended from the roof structure.  The two little people are cute, aren't they?  Time to move on to the next set - the Shinkansen bullet train . If I had a shelf in my home office that this could live on, I'd put it up there.  For now, it is just sitting on my desk.  Until it gets wrecked by one of the kids.

Recently, we joined our kid's cousin at his birthday part at the Lego Discovery Center up in Schaumburg where they have a couple of rides a show and other assorted Lego-related things.  The first room you enter is a LEGO layout of Chicago and includes some signature members of our skyline including the building I work in:  the Aon Building.  There are a few touchscreens around the layout that give you the details on the various buildings.  Here's the screen for the Aon Center: 91K bricks.  Holy moly. 

I had to look closely to be sure this sea dragon in one of the lakes/ponds at Disney Springs was, indeed, made out of Lego bricks, but after a closer inspection, I can confirm that it is, indeed, legit Legos.  I have no idea if they build these big installations from ONLY bricks (meaning all the way to the middle) or if there is some form they use and apply bricks to the exteriors?  Do you Lego folks know?   Seems some folks use Duplos?  Or, as you'd guess, other structures . I love how this Lego sea serpent/Loch Ness Monster is reminiscent of the topiary version from the Magic Kingdom  and we always stop at the Lego store at Disney Springs.  Despite having that HUGE World of Disney store just a little bit further down the way, the LEGO store is always my kids favorite stop and where they typically put their (very limited) spending power.

The Babe scored this little bonus pack that includes The Mini Batwing from the Lego Batman movie as the VIP Club 'free' gift along with a recent Lego purchase.  I say 'free' in quotes because while it *is* free, that's because we bought the sets directly from the Lego store, which gives us VIP points and little free sets like this.  They don't, however, have the best prices.  You can go on Target and compare prices on just about any recent set and see that Target has it a few bucks cheaper.  But...you don't get the points and the little things like this.  So, since the kids are so young and it seems like we're just entering our Lego years, I've decided to play the long-game and go with the VIP points program.   See this brickvesting post for some details .  (btw...brickvesting?  Like investing in Legos???  Seriously?  Maybe that's how I can convince Nat to let us buy more!   Honey....we're investing in our future!! ) The Babe seems to be

For the second year in a row, we participated in Reddit's Disney Gift Exchange with the girls being the 'intended audience' of the gifts being sent and received.   Here's my post from last year's exchange where we gave away some Peter Pan and Wendy gear to a Redditor .   I'll post the details of what we 'gave' at some point, but here's the details on what we were sent.  I posted the full note here on RedditGifts, so you can see the full story .  Our "Santa" was super thoughtful and asked a bunch of questions.  Turns out, they were in couple in Kansas who are Disney fans (just like us) but don't have kids, so they loved (so they said!) being paired up with our girls.   The day the box arrived, we let the girls open it.  And on top was a sweet little note from their pal Mickey: And under the little tote bag was this bounty!   Ermahgerd ! Tons of stuff for both girls.  They were in heaven! And some pins f

On Monday, I posted a couple of photos of the Lego City Advent Calendar that we're giving to the Bird and today here is the front and the back of the Lego Friends version of  the 2016 Advent Calendar. This one is intended for the Babe - the older girl - because she already has a few different Lego Friends sets.  Also...if you know them, you know that their personalities are just about right in that the Bird gets the City version and the Babe gets this one.

For the past five years, our girls have been enjoying the little chocolate treats that come inside the Trader Joe's Advent Calendars as well as the larger one that that Nat stuffs with little treats on our kitchen table.  And the Elf shows up every morning.  And we've also started down the North Pole Communicator route , too.  So, we're busy with daily activities.  But this year, we've up-leveled the game by joining in on the annual Lego Advent Calendar business. Above is the front of the Lego City version that the Bird will be enjoying.  We also got a different version for the Babe, but I'll post that another day. I'm also inclined to pick up this year's version of the Holiday Train at Lego to set up a little village for the girls to play with their Advent creations because we won't be putting up our O Gauge setup once again this year. If they had these things back in the 80's, I would have been all over them.  I'm hoping that that ki

Last week, I showed off a few of the recently acquired Disney Lego Minifigs including Ursula, Mr. Incredible and the alien from Toy Story  and talked about how the girls have been tearing through blind bags.  Well...an update.  Still no Ariel.  But, above is the one and only Peter Pan. And...I kinda love him.  He's carrying some weird double-sword-like object?  But...his hair and hat combo is perfect (and removable) and while he doesn't have any 'back paint' (which...I've learned is important to Lego nerds???), he does a pretty good job of reppin' Pete, doesn't he? For those of you guys keeping track of such things (which...I know you *all* are?!?!), this is the second post in the [Peter Pan] tag category.   First one was about the Reddit Disney Gift Exchange we did last year .

I'm a sucker for Disney stuff.  And with our two girls getting into Legos and being totally addicted to anything in a 'blind bag', there might not be something that is more addictive in our house than these Lego Disney Mini Figures.   There's a set of 18 different Disney characters in what I think everyone is presuming is the first edition of multiple editions that came out earlier this year. We've been picking up blind bags here and there, but I also went on eBay and bought a dozen bags.  The girls have begun to go through them, but we're no where near the full set.  No Ariel so far.  And like three Captain Hook's?!?! But, we did get Ursula that you can see down below.  She's pretty great! The whole Disney Vinylmation thing ran it's own course and we stopped buying them, but these feel different.  With a Mini Figure display in the works, these seem like something that the girls can get after.  If a second edition/season comes out (which

 Over the weekend, I took the girls to see the  Lego Train Show out at Cantigny which is put on by the Northern Illinois Lego Train Club .    As you can see from the shots here, it was pretty awesome. Who knew that (first!) Lego trains and (second!) that a club for them even existed? The show took over the biggest room at the Cantigny Visitor's Center and had two big main loops set up.  There were a few guys behind the setup that were members of the club and had built this whole thing.  It was impressive in scope but also really neat with various details.  They had set up little towns/sections like Paris and Springfield. And I'd be lying if I told you that I haven't given a lot of thought about trying to figure out a way to incorporate these Lego Trains into our existing O-Gauge Lionel setup.  Thinking we need to give these a try, right?  Besides the trains, just the idea of the buildings/town structures via Legos seems to be a good gateway, right? The Babe is jus

The girls are really into 'blind bags'.  You know...those toys that come in little packages and are part of a series but you don't know which one you'll get until you open it.  Between Shopkins ( which I've talked about here ) and My Little Pony, they like to open the little bags and get surprised.  Kind of like toddler gambling or toddler toy roulette. Recently, we were at the Toy Store in Elmhurst and they spotted these Simpson mini figure Lego blindbags .  The Bird got Hans Moleman.  The Babe got Groundskeeper Willie. They've quickly fallen out of grace in favor of ponies and unicorns with both girls.  Too bad for them.  Good for me I guess, as they're now adorning my desk. I was saying "Boo-urns....".