Horse farm / barn . . .

[Breakdown]

Let me start by stating that I never thought in a million years, that building a barn would be a priority of mine. To me its one of the wonders of the Pick-a-brick wall. You get a bunch of horses when you've never had any and then eventually the guilt eats away at you until there's the fine line between sanity and insanity starts to get blurred and suddenly you need to build a farm, or get a job at Taco Bell in an in vain attempt to rescue your sanity.

So . . . my first farm project after a 30-year hiatus will be a birthday gift for my one & only niece who's turning 5, I'd imagine that she'll play with it a while, and then finally it will be destroyed. I tried my best to take pictures at every stage of the build of the actual barn portion so that it could be rebuilt if damaged or if regret ever set if after it was taken apart.

I can say that there's a very good chance that this will NOT be my only farm project ever. I've enjoyed this lots. I realize that there's a use of what would politically correctly be called "religious iconagraphy" within the MOC. I was thinking of hiding it, but people have built churches. I'd rather that aspect not be discussed, and apologize in advance if anyone is offended.

I understand that the barn is probably not overly accurate with windows on the front side (they may have their glass swapped out for bi-fold white glass-less windows that would divide the windows into quarters that was the original intent. I'm curious on opinions on the stairs leave them where they are or move one stud to the left - opinions would be greatly valued. As much as I hate the new green baseplates. I used them for two reasons. I'm selfish and don't want to give away my old classic dark green ones, and my niece if she gets other sets will have these match at minimum.

The last picture is dedicated to my Uncle Norris and Aunt Verna. They had a wonderful farm and a huge barn back in the day. One day they removed the massive roof so that they could better access things on the inside and enhance the playabilty of the barn as well. A jumbo jet happened to be flying overhead and I guess the pilot was so distracted by the barn with the intact roof immediately next to it; intact but removed, he crashed the plane into the farm. The crew of 22 and all 387 passengers perished. Fortunately my aunt and uncle weren't hurt in the crash, and most of their animals on the farm were far away from the barn. The crash did have devastating effects on them. One of their brown chocolate milk cows was so spooked by the crash that it always made sour chocolate milk after the incident. I put this here because only you can prevent removing the roof to your barn and shocking a pilot who's flying above it so much that he crashes a plane into the barn.

[TheLazyChicken]

Wow great job! The little story goes well with the barn too. Keep up the good work!

[Breakdown]

The birthday party was this past Sunday afternoon.

I didn't wrap, the barn, so my niece had a little confusion as to whether I had brought the barn to show off to her or it was actually her's. Once she was convinced that the barn was her's for good, she really got excited!!

I had acquired two brushes, blue and yellow for the horses. It's amazing with kids what goes through their heads versus yours. She insisted that the brushes ONLY be used for the girl's hair. Not at all for the horses!

At first she was swapping hair, tops and heads around on the three female minifigs, and then when she was finally satisfied with their appearances, she started rearranging some of the horse structures, and making a dog house for the little lego dog.

This is the very first MOC that I've made to give away. It has me re-thinking my nephew's birthday gift a little. He's at the age where he's more structured and every set that he's received is assembled as per instructions with only the smallest mods.

The one thing that I did with both the niece and nephew about 6 month's back was build a pizza oven out of lego. My niece helped sprinkle magic ingredients on the oven, and while they weren't looking and the pizza was cooking I snuck in a couple of lego pizzas, so that when we checked on the oven later there would be some pizza.

Edited November 10, 2015 by Breakdown