Why I Oughta...

More Christmas village stuff, Jake?  Yep.  More. This time it is the East Lake Station that Menards is selling at $69.99 because of both the interior lights and the exterior ones, but also because it plays music.  That is, according to the product listing on the Lemax site . Mantleburg - as a once proud growing community - might need a commuter station, to inject some new life into the village, right?  Become a bit of a bedroom community to some other larger town (that we don't need to construct?), perhaps? Maybe.  But the federal grant didn't come through and funding is tight with the drop in sales tax, so the Mayor of Mantleburg has shelved the station project.  Too bad.  Maybe next year.

We might even be able to consider this one 'vintage' when it comes to Lemax at Menards.  From the Caddington Village Collection comes this Big Ben Pub .  And I'm thinking because it *is* four years old, that's part of the reason for the pricing at $29.99.  That's $10+ cheaper than most of the other Lemax buildings Menards is selling these days. And, no, Mantleburg isn't big enough these days for both a tavern and a pub.

Today we veer off from Lemax to the private label collection from Menards Christmas Village buildings under the banner of "Enchanted Forest".  Menards does this seemingly more and more - by bringing their own private label goods to market.   They've done it with O Gauge trains and now with Christmas Village buildings. This little Maple Syrup Workshop is boxed right next to the Lemax stuff - see below- but is in a bright red box. They price these a little bit cheaper than the Lemax versions, but if you look closely at the top photo, you can tell it is kinda sloppily painted. Does Mantleburg need a Maple Syrup Workshop?  Nope.  Sorry.  Not this year.

Another day, another Lemax lighted building.  This time, it is a new release from 2016 called the Village Wine & Beer Garden.  This is part of Lemax's Caddington Village , which they seem to have rolled out tons of new buildings for this season. None of which are destined for Mantleburg .  Sad face.  (kinda)

Next up in the parade of Lemax Christmas Village structures is this Lubbock's Bar-B-Que With An Attitude from the Harvest Crossing collection .  It came out in 2015, but I don't believe that Menards carried it last year.   Here's the official product page on Lemax's site . Menards is selling it for $39.99 (see photo below), but I don't think that the town of Mantleburg is quite ready for a rowdy Bar-B-Que joint.  I mean... they just got their first tavern in town back in 2012 , right? For those looking to keep up with all things Mantleburg, you can check out the tag page here .

We were at Wannamakers in Downers Grove for their Christmas open house over the weekend and while the rest of the crew was waiting in line to see the Big Guy, I took the Bird and the King of the Ball Tossers into the store to wander around the Christmas lights department.  And that's where I came across these National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation LED light sets. If you look at the box, you'll see that they bill them as being 'twice as bright' and have bigger/brighter/more bulbs than normal strands of lights. Kind of interesting licensing at play here and I suppose it is a cute concept, but I wonder if anyone is actually buying these things?  They're more money than comparable sets and it seems like there's very little bragging rights in these once they're out of the box, right? As for the brightness, I think there's some upside there.  We've put big C9 LEDs on our annual Elmhurst Front Yard Christmas tree every year and I always notice

We now have this little robot assistant living on our countertop in the kitchen.  Thus far, we've built out a shopping list, asked it 'Do you want to build a snowman?', had it play some Disney music and even asked it to play some YouTube videos on our Chromecast.  Kinda nice.  It isn't sending things to our phones yet, but having it create a 'shopping list' on Google Keep is pretty nice. I ordered an orange base (or course, I went with orange!) and we'll be outfitting it this week. Oh, and not that I'm attached to Google Home yet or anything...but I *did* say "Hey Google...see you later." as I left the house this am.  And she replied "goodbye".

On Thursday, I shared some photos of the gifts we received from the Reddit Disney Gift Exchange this year and above shows the gifts we 'gave' as part of the program this year. Here's the post showing what we 'gave' last year in 2015 . The person we matched with lived in Nevada and professed their love of Cinderella and a specific set of Disney pins - which made it easy.  We went with a Cinderella Mickey ears Christmas ornament and that set of five princess pins.   She seemed happy as the pins helped her complete a set. The girls had fun picking out the right items from the Disney store and I had fun teaching them about random acts of kindness.

A few days ago, I posted a couple of photos from our visit to the Legacy Lounge in the Northwest corner terrace of Memorial Stadium down in Champaign that included finding one of the team photos that I was in from my days on the Fighting Illini squad in the late 90's.  But, this was our first trip down that we were able to enjoy the *kinda* new Grange Grove. The Athletic Department christened the Grange Grove for last year's season and it has been a big hit.   From FightingIllini.com : Grange Grove has transformed what was previously Lot 36, the parking lot directly west of Memorial Stadium, into a free, high-energy tailgating area, which Fighting Illini fans of all ages can enjoy. When we arrived a few hours before kickoff, the place was jumping!  There was a band playing on one side and the beer garden was loaded with alums and students.  It was Dad's day, so it appeared that a few Fraternities had their "Football Block" on site in the Grange Grove and

Have been here for more than 15 months and never paid much attention to this doorknob before Halloween this year.  That's when I spent a bunch of time out on the front porch of Vic and Equation Boy/Man's house handing out candy.  In fact, I don't think I've sat in that front porch ever.   Their house is old - not sure exactly - but likely the early 1900's or 1910's or 1920's.  And the front door *has* to be original.  On it, is that knob.  And, it is a beauty and one of the relics that is remaining from the house when it was built originally.  Just look at that knob and think about how many hands have been laid on it.  Very pretty door plate, too, with that huge keyhole.