Why I Oughta...

The folks over at the Home Depot continue their annual tradition of releasing a dated Home Depot building for your Christmas Village. Here's a post from 2011 that shows that year's version .  The date was in a different spot and they had Santa ringing a bell out front. This year's edition comes with a couple of people lining the sidewalk (one with the - of course - orange apron).  They're pricing it really well at $9.98 (same price as 4 years ago!), but it isn't the best quality made building.  Nevertheless, I'm thinking that getting a building for less than 10 bucks is going to make this thing find plenty of homes in villages around the country.  Mantleburg is more of a Menard's kind of town, though.  So, we'll be without Home Depot for a while.

Here's another of the 2015 Lemax Christmas Village buildings at Menards:  Jackson & Son Grocery store.   Like the Snowflake Theater that I posted last week , this one leaves a little bit in terms of finish and design.  It just kinda seems sloppy and the details aren't very fine in terms of how they're presented.  Too bad, but it seems that either Menards OR Lemax has let down their standards a bit.  This Jackson & Son Grocery store won't be finding a home in Mantleburg.  What will the residents do?  Hold out for a Whole Foods?  Who knows!?!?

Here's another building from Lemax that Menard's is carrying as part of their 2015 Christmas Village set.   Unlike the Snowflake Theatre , this building wasn't displayed on the top shelf so I couldn't tell if it suffered from the same quality issues, but based on the photo on the front of the box, it appears that this is a click up - in terms of product - from some of the others this year.  It has a clear window in the front left that shows the cobbler working in it and it has a nice hanging sign that sticks out from the front above on the left side.  That's a nice touch.  This one was on sale for $31.99, so that also explains the quality improvement.   Alas, the kids shoes in Mantleburg are going to have to continue to deteriorate because the Village Board has decided to not approve the application from the Cobbler to open up shop in Mantleburg.  Maybe another year, Mr. Cobbler.  Maybe another year.

 Here's the annual photo of the kids (in this case...The King of the Ball Tossers) in front of the Menard's Christmas Village set up.  I posted last weekend a photo of one of the buildings ( the Snowflake Theater ) and I'll be posting more shortly.  We went to the Melrose Park store (the one that has the shopping cart escalator and piano player!). We were there to see if there were any worthy additions to Mantleburg.  The Village Board has been picky lately as the last annexation to the Village of Mantleburg happened back in 2012 when they brought in a new Tavern .  Will 2015 be the year that the Board loosens up their requirements? Here's a post from 2011 that shows The Bird doing the EXACT SAME THING . Ahh...traditions at their finest, aimrite?!?!

If you head down York Street, you'll now notice this massive scaffolding setup in front of (and down the alley of) the old Plass Appliance store on the west side of the street. You can check out what the plan is for the site here on the blog .  It is a terraced-looking building that appears to have retail on the first floor and condos(??) up on the upper floors.   The Plass building is two stories and based on the rendering this new structure is going to be three stories.  It isn't just York Street that will be impacted.  Check out what the 'alley' looks like going west towards Nu Crepes. I posted a few days ago about the Nu Crepes sign, but after hearing all the chatter about their sign-issues, I can't help but wonder if this construction is going to make things A LOT worse for them. But...on the good side, I'm wondering if the opening of the new parking deck will help them with foot traffic? And, they're going to save the Plass sign, right ?

This weekend, we went over to Wannemaker's for their annual Christmas season Open House with all three kids and Nat's folks.  This is the second year in a row we've gone and it was a totally lovely experience.  Last year, we got their early in the day and waited for a long time to get to meet Santa and pet his reindeer. This year, we arrived pretty late.  I think it went from 10 am to 3 pm.  We arrived about 230 pm and walked right in.  They switched things up this year.  Last year, it was meet Santa...and THEN...go meet his reindeer.  This year, they put the reindeer part first.  They were allowing groups in two at a time to pet each of the reindeer.  The girls got up close and person with one of them (in the photo above). After that, you went around to the Santa line.  There, they had some cute coloring pages for the kids set up with crayons.  Really great way to keep the kids occupied and give them something fun to do while other kids were meeting with the 'Big G

There's a BIG set of scaffolding up around the Plass Appliance building this week as it appears that it is about to turn into a giant construction site.  As part of that process, it appears that the much-maligned Nu Crepes signage issue has a solve of sorts:  They have this sandwich board sign up right on the sidewalk.  Will it last?  Who knows! If you're trying to figure out what is going on with the Plass store, check out this post that shows the rendering of the new structure .