SilvaShado

I agree. A lot of box art lately has not been very exciting. The preliminary box art is very detailed! Hope it stays that way.

My husband gave the Renegade Runner and Caribbean Clipper for Christmas. We were trying to stay out of Pirates since we were so focused on Castle, but with Pirates of the Caribbean and the new Imperial Flagship, I just went crazy over the ships. So he surprised me with two of the older Pirate ships. Now I just need to get the Black Seas Barracuda so I can have some female representation on these pirate ships! Or I'll just need to make my own with an all female crew and they'll rule the open seas. lol!

Guess that's why I'll just need to make my own mythological sets.

Is anyone else excited by the different colored snakes? Maybe it's just me, but I can see myself having fun with a wide assortment of those colored snakes. I'm waiting to pass judgement on the big 4 headed dragon until I see better pictures. I really liked the looks of the previous 4 dragons, but after building three of them, I'm very disappointed in how fragile they are. That new one looks monstrous. I'd be worried about it falling apart or being too difficult to put together. I think I would have liked a new designed green dragon, but seeing what LEGO has done so far, the only really different design was the earth dragon. I think a large part of me is dissapointed in Ninjago. I was hoping for a series more rooted in mythology and have nice architectural buildings. But LEGO is going wild with these modern and futuristic vehicles. Takes half the fun out of it for me. But I am enjoying the campy nature of the TV show and see that reflected in the sets. As much as I don't like the bright green color in many of the new sets, I am looking forward to the snake figures.

My favorite set was 6918 Blacksmith Attack. I've bought like 5 copies of it for parts. The new bucket, the new weapons and a host of great basic parts for Castle building was just too good to pass up, especially when I was able to buy the set on sale. I even used some of the parts to make my own blacksmith shop that I thought was more realistic.

I liked where Kingdoms was finally going with the peasant sets. I didn't like much the first few sets because they were bland to me. I've never been a big fan of Lion Knights or straight Castle. What I mean by that, is that I liked the fantasy styled castles more than the medieval castle. Kingdoms really felt like a rehash of older sets in my opinion until they started getting into the village life. That I wish would continue. That would be so very cool! But more realistically, they'd do that kind of theme on its own, probably with an adventurer's twist that would water it down. I was so excited about Atlantis until I found out it wasn't going to be much mythology... :-( I'm going to buy LotR, but it doesn't really replace Castle for me. I'm hoping, but not holding my breath, for a return to fantasy castle or even into new factions like with the Falcons. I just can't imagine that LEGO would give us one new figure in the Joust and not follow-up with a series of sets with that faction. But who knows. Sometimes I really don't understand their decisions.

I'm thinking that Disney Princesses will probably be made in the Friends style figures if it moves to system. Which will be very sad and quite a loss of current fans who want more female minifigures. The Princesses in normal minifigures would be very nice in my MOCs since I make a lot of castle creations and I was thinking about doing my own fairy tale series.

Yeah, my husband told me to relax too. I'm getting too worked up over something I can't really control. Plus it hasn't happened yet. If it does, well, then LEGO is going to hear from me and from as many people as I can gather. I'm a little paranoid about LEGO's decisions because they don't make them with us adult fans in mind for the most part. And even then, they're not paying attention to the current young fans who, from what I've heard, love the normal minifigure. I'd just be really disappointed in LEGO at the lost opporutnity to have more female minifigures, especially Princesses. Here's a different perspective that I found, which makes another good point. LEGO should be gender equal and give boys a chance to play with something other than police and violent warriors.

That is an awesome creation! Great idea for a gift. I did the same thing for three of my friends for holiday gifts and they loved them. Making something for someone that is a reflection of them is so much fun and meaningful. And it's always great to spread to love of LEGO. Great job!

My only problem with Friends is the minifigures not being normal minifigures. I have the fear that they'll start using these figures for all female figures, which would really suck. If they do a Disney series in system, I really hope they use normal minifigures. There are not enough female minifigures as it is. Here's a blog I wrote on the Brick Blogger and I've gotten a lot of feedback that is in agreement with me.

ROFL! Yeah, that sounds like a plan. I'll take over my friends' lives with LEGO, one piece at a time.

Thanks for all the feedback! Yes, everyone loved their gifts and I felt really good giving them. Much better than buying something else. It was also so much fun, though a bit challenging at times to find the right pieces. lol. I am planning to do this more next year. Expand to birthdays and other celebrations. If I can plan it right, it'd be fun to make one for everyone for the holidays next year. I'd have to start in January with planning and starting to collect the right pieces.

This is one of the strongest series so far with so many minifigures that I really want and multiple copies of. Other series have had a few that I've really wanted, but this one is just so cool with all the new pieces. So I voted for the minotaur as my favorite, but I want multiple copies of that one and leprechaun, genie, celtic warrior, roman soldier, lady liberty, clockwork robot, and sleepyhead. The others are cool, but I probably won't get more than one or two copies.

One fun thing I did this year was make little vignettes as gifts for people who were not fans of LEGO. I based the vignettes off things those people liked and they were a huge success. I wanted to share them here and maybe inspire others to spread the joy of LEGO, one small hand-crafted set at a time. For this one, my friends' biggest love is her family so I made a little scene of her, her husband and her two boys making a snowman. For this one, my friend had, at one point, wanted to be a pastry chef and currently is one of the best bakers I've ever met. So I created this little bakery scene with the counter, which has cupcakes in the bottom, cookies and a pie on top. I did the colorful back wall just for fun and to round out the look of it being inside. Another friend loves to go bike riding on the weekends so I made this peaceful outdoor scene. She loves it so much that she takes the bike off the vignette and scoots it across her desk. She's found a trick to make it roll very smoothly with a small flick. This one I gave as a gift earlier this year as a retirement present. My supervisor loved a lot of things - theatre, mountain climbing and her dog so I combined them all into one scene of her acting in a play about going mountain climbing with her dog. She has emailed me since and says that it's on her mantle and she sees it every day and smiles. Here's the full gallery in case anyone wants to see images of the backs.

While I doubt I'll buy many of these sets and when I do it will be for parts - that's kind of what I'm hoping Friends will do for us fans, give our regular sets more accessories. Like one set I saw had a milk jug (a printed 1X1 blue brick), which would be cool to have in City sets. While some of the animals are on the stylized side, I bet some could fit into other sets. It just comes back to the figures not looking like LEGO, they look like Polly Pocket.

Since both my husband and I are AFOLs, we exchanged LEGO wish list where we each wrote down 5 old sets that we wanted. But he's already told me that he bought me a couple of old sets that weren't on my list, but he knew that I'd love. I got him one set on his list, but also followed suit in getting him one set that wasn't on his list. We sort of talked around those sets to make sure we weren't getting each other duplicates (and we didn't) because in the end, the LEGO is ours and just completes our collection that much faster! It's going to be a LEGO-tastic holiday!

Like most, when I emerged from my dark ages, I searched for LEGO news and info. I cam across Eurobricks and lurked for a while, checking the front page for news, but didn't sign up until I saw a really cool contest that I wanted to participate in. I don't have a lot of confidence in my building skills, but I wanted yo challenge myself, which I did. And I have enjoyed participating in various discussions. It's a lot of fun to connect with other fans.I enjoy getting feedback on my MOCs and becoming more confident in my building skills.

I'm excited about this being confirmed. Still have to wait and see what they produce and I'm very hopeful for a variety of fantasy creatures, hopefully centaurs will be in there. I'm fine with fleshies. I don't see what's wrong with mixing the yellow minifigures with fleshies. Real people have all different skin colors. And there have been a few new other colored minifigures such as brown and that orange tan (zombies in Pirates of the Carribean). I think it adds color and variety to a creation.

I didn't see that anyone had posted this yet, but LEGO is going to donate a toy to Toys for Tots for each Star Wars e-greeting that is sent out. Here's the link: http://www.legosantayoda.com

Glad you liked that! Most people missed it since it's so small. The other thing most people missed was the pirate boy burying his pirate dad in the sand. I'm not very good myself. I tried, but gave up so my husband took over and did a great design. I think it takes a certain mind to do natural. I don't have it!

Thanks so much! If you do gifts like this, take pictures and share here. It's a lot of fun to see what people build for others. I'm working on a few gift vigs for the holidays, but can't post the pics until I've given the gifts.

Thanks! I like to share LEGO with my non-LEGO friends and this is one way I figured out how to do that.

I made this several months back for a coworker who was retiring. I've just now gotten around to posting it. lol. It's not the most elaborate thing, but it represents several things my coworker enjoys - theater, mountain climbing and her dog. She loved it.

It was really fun to think outside the box with having a train in a pirate scene. So glad you like the village. It was a lot of fun to set up and add a touch of fun quirkiness to it. Thanks for the encouragement!

Thanks so much! Glad you like it. We have gotten some great feedback on the various displays we've put in the store. I am very hopeful for this one that, like you said, it will inspire kids to use the microfigs in building with LEGO. Thanks! I loved the idea when my husband built one a few years ago, but we had to take it apart. I was inspired by what he did and I wanted to try my hand at it. Thanks so much! Most of the pieces are courtesy of the Pick-a-Brick wall. All the trans round plates, the clear panel walls, clear mini slopes, clear 1X2 plates and clear 1X2 bricks. Thanks! We actually used the Japanese Kanji. I can see that it's different from Chinese, but we went with what was easiest to write in 1X1 round plates. Me too! Thanks so much!!