KateB

It's like when they start selling 'Back to School' stuff well before the Summer holidays even begin! For goodness sake, let us enjoy the moment!!

My wonderful hubby surprised me with this today - he knows me too well Can't think of a better way to countdown the festive season

Yep, it takes all the joy out of it

Yep, for as long as I can remember there are fireworks going off nearly every night from the first day they are available to buy in October. A lot of it is flipping kids, you can tell as they're the ones that decide it's a good idea to set them off at midnight on a week night

Thanks, bummer though. I soooo wish that Lego was cheaper, I need a second job to feed my addiction!

Were there any Harry Potter sets on offer, or is that being unrealistic?!

Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle 4842, available to pre-order from firebox.com for £89.99 with free delivery (cheaper than Amazon): http://www.firebox.com/product/3075/LEGO-Harry-Potter-Hogwarts-Castle

Placed my order at Lego.com for the Winter Toy Shop and Winter Village Bakery - 'tis the season to be jolly

Hi all I have an incomplete boxed Creator House 4956 for sale. It's a long story which I wont bore you with, but basically it has 624 bricks by my count, whereas the complete set should have 731. I don't know which bricks are missing as I haven't had time to check them all off but basically the person who sold it to be on Bricklink just packed up the pieces from the main building after dismantling it and shipped them to me, forgetting about the additional bricks involved in the other 2 builds. All the bricks are in really excellent condition, as are the box and 3 sets of instructions. I regularly use ebay and have 100% positive feedback, so I am trustworthy! This is me: http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/devil.with.a.halo I would be happy to receive offers for this set if anyone is interested, just message me Thanks.

Received my second hand Creator House 4956 from a Belgian Bricklink seller yesterday, a mere 2 days after posting! In excellent condition, as stated, and packed fabulously - seriously this guy should get a medal for secure packing. Can't wait to build it, my 7th Creator House :-)

Yep, this is me. Love taking the time most days to move my minifigures into interesting positions in my Creator houses. It's a great way to wake up my imagination

I loooove 'Shaun of the Dead', I would easily buy this if it was within my budget I still can't listen to 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen without having a quiet chuckle to myself

So very, very true - it's shameful

That looks excellent. Love the use of the baseplate as it makes such a huge difference to the finished model. Really nice placement of all the little details too

Completely agree with you there. I so wish that Lego would create a Halloween/Spooky theme like they have done with the Winter Village theme. I'm sure there's a market out there for it.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about fish and chips! Oh and a decent cup of tea. I agree with you on some points, especially Mr Men & Little Miss, Roald Dahl and the education system but as for the brilliant music and pantomime - gah! I've only watched about 1 thing on BBC in the past 5 years even though that's what we pay our TV licence for! I think watching 30 years of american sitcoms and films has erased 75% of my British-ness! ...and if anyone mentions Eastenders or Coronation Street I will scream

Ahh, to be British. Well reading the posts on this topic we British folk really do come off as rather grumpy buggers but then I think that is a fair statement really. It's not surprising though considering the amount of rain and rubbish weather we have to put up with during August, which is supposed to be Summer! The most annoying thing about the British weather I would have to say is the complete unpredictability of it. You can leave the house at 9am and it's sunny and warm with not a cloud in the sky. 2 hours later it's cloudy, miserable and raining - pah! Sometimes I hate being British and wish I lived in the states but yes, I agree, the grass does usually appear greener on the other side but invariably turns out not to be. America seems to produce all the best stuff which I always end up having to buy and get imported. Don't even get me started on the thieving toe-rags at Customs & Excise. I wonder if a lot of Americans think we are quaint and love the idea of the Royal Family, they are certainly a great tourist attraction, but that is where their usefulness ends unfortunately. I always used to find it funny how, at least up until recently, whenever an English person was protrayed (either by an actual English person or an American doing a woeful attempt an an English accent) in American films or TV, they either had a 'queens English, plum in your mouth' accent or a cockney one. (Anyone remember the horrific example with one of the baddies in Tango and Cash?) There are plenty of nice things about being British but I can't quite think of many at the moment except for: - Lots of rolling hills and moors/dales - Free health service (yes, well, it is free so who are we to complain) - Plenty of History - Heinz Beans - Cadburys chocolate - We know how to spell colour and pronounce aluminium correctly That's it, I've run out of ideas now.

Hillside House 5771 just keeps coming down in price on Amazon.co.uk. It's decreased in price twice already today!! Not that I'm obsessively checking it or anything... http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-Creator-5771-Hillside-House/dp/B004OT2QM8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314282724&sr=8-1

100% Yorkshire, hence why no one could understand a word I was saying when we went on holiday to the states

Yes, they are rather naff I agree. Someone else bought them for her, I would have got her the Duplo of course but then I think the minimum age for Duplo is 2 anyway, though I'm not quite sure why

My 2 year old daughter is always saying "ding dong Mummy's houses" as 3 of my creator houses are currently on the mantlepiece. My husband has previously held her up so she can move the minifigures around (he tells her to be careful) but I can't bear to watch as she invariably accidentally drops something and the sound of it bouncing off the marble fireplace makes me wince! I will be moving them to our bedroom soon! I am way too protective of my Lego houses and don't see them as toys (especially when some of them are discontinued so their value is quite high) so have tried to distract her with other things and she seems to have stopped asking to play with them, phew! Though I feel a bit guilty that I won't let her just play with them as she pleases, she is just way too young for them anyway and even when she is older I will try and teach her that she can touch the houses but she needs to be gentle and respectful of them. When she is MUCH older I have promised her that we can build houses together which I am very much looking forward to. I will happily buy her loads of Lego in the future which she can do whatever she likes with. She's currently using Megablocks so I definitely want to get her some Duplo for Christmas

I've just finished cleaning my second hand Creator House (4954) which I bought from ebay recently. It was a bit grubby when received and I'm a bit of a clean freak so I soaked all the pieces overnight in warm soapy water but that didn't do much good. I didn't want to scrub them as wasn't sure if it would scratch them. So then I decided to follow the advice that apparently came directly from Lego (can't remember which website or forum I saw it on) which said Lego was fine to wash in a dishwasher on no more than 50-60 degrees celsius, in a sock. I put the pieces in very fine mesh bags and put them on the top rack of the dishwasher on an Eco wash which is 50 degrees on our machine. They went through the drying cycle too and have come up lovely, can't see any damage. They were still pretty wet when I took them out though so I had to hand dry most of the pieces individually to avoid those annoying water marks, but just got the worst of the water off the tiny pieces by shaking them up in a towel. I then put all the pieces in a dry mesh bag in the boiler cupboard where everything dries really quickly as it's so warm. If I had particularly delicate pieces to wash in the future, I would do them on the delicate wash I think. I'll definitely be using this method again in the future

As I am currently lusting after this house, I noticed with a ridiculous amount of excitement that you can now get it on Amazon.co.uk for £40.29 with free delivery - hoorah!

I completely agree Being a major Creator house fan and owning 6 of them so far, I would love to see furniture sets incorporated within future houses. It's the details that I love so the more the better, light bricks would be fantastic! I even sent an email to Lego suggesting that with the popularity of the Creator houses it would be a good move to bring out a specific Furniture set/box where you could create loads of different furniture pieces. For me this would be fantastic as I currently do not own much Lego which is not part of a set and having to order specific bricks to make furniture can be pricey. Currently my poor minifigures are having to sit on the floor

Thank you for all the warm welcomes, nice to know there are Lego fans nearby :-) Now, I really should do some work but there are soooo many posts to read...