daemon4001

Looking at the review on on New Elementary, it gave me the idea that either of the buildings would look good as tiny bistro restaurants - there's even a candle lit table in the upstairs of the music shop. I don't need another Toy Shop so I think I'll make one of them a little restaurant and buy place some tables outside (a patio heater shouldn't be too difficult to build!) and then keep the music shop in some form. Except for the nice sticker sign, the Toy shop doesn't even look much like a toy shop and is incredibly easy to transform. A little Italian restaurant or French bistro would be great and reminds me of the scene in The Bishop's Wife when they go out for lunch.

I think I'll have to get a small circuit of track to go around the inside of my town area just for the tram. That way the train can keep speeding about on the cloverleaf track outside. My general thoughts on the new set are not that it's bad, but that it's just a wasted opportunity. The facades are pretty, the tram is original and the mini builds look fine, but it's just such a shame, when you see the incredible winter MOCs that people build, that Lego have not only produced a repeated store - when there are so many we don't have - but that they must know that lots of people have been buying these sets for 15 years and slowly building a whole town, and that we want all the things we don't have yet. I long for a cinema, restaurant, diner, theatre, etc. or a really well developed snowy cabin like this one - https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/design.page?idModel=134996 I managed to order one of the winter chalet from the Bricklnk designer programme, but it's not the same as Lego delivering a great new set for us. I hate being negative about it, but they simply could have done a better job. I hope I like it when I'm building it. I'm sure I will.

Ooh, this is a question I'll stop lurking for. My first set was Santa's Workshop and, despite the brick-built reindeer, I think it's an incredible set. The building is really nice looking and I think a lot of MOCs since have copied the style. Also, unlike last year's, the sleigh seems more in scale compared to the buildings, and sits nicely on top of the toy shop roof. I do like moulded animals, but it sometimes feels that they're not so much Lego as action figures. I have every WV set, and I can't say there's any one model I don't like, but the firehouse and perhaps the new set are the only ones where the architectural style doesn't feel quite right. The train station is the one building which feels kind of underwhelming, it just isn't as substantial as most of the others and, if you see old country train stations from Britain, they were sometimes quite beautiful and elaborate. I do love the bandstand from the post office, the tree from the Toy Shop, and the house itself from the gingerbead house. I'm halfway through building the Home Alone house and have the Santa's Visit and Elf Club house to go before christmas, but this is my layout from last year... It has a town area on the left, a snow area with ski slope front right then a fairground behind and fantasy land back left. It takes up too much room in my lounge so I only set it up for a couple of days and then put half of it on display on a dresser. Can't wait to take it all out in a month or two.

Elf Clubhouse came out the year after Gingerbread House. I'm pretty sure they've largely been retired in the order they were released, 2-3 years later. I started building my original WV Cottage (10229) and loads of the square 1x1 tiles and plates cracked down the middle as I secured them. I've never had that before, I wonder if it's because it's an old (though previously unopened) set or there was a faulty batch of pieces at the time. Elf Clubhouse will be my next build. I'm running out of time to get everything done before Christmas.

Has anyone got the Home Alone house yet? I'd like it as I love the film, but would it be absolutely massive compared to the official WV buildings? I love the set, but I think it can be Christmassier! Surely there were far more Christmas lights all over it in the movie.

https://inklingbricks.com/instructions/29-winter-village-roller-coaster.html There's that MOC which I made my own version of using the frame of the Pirate rollercoaster which I slowly replaced with more Christmassy colours (this year my grey track and carriages will be red and green instead!) I can tell you from messing around with it a lot that the weight of the coaster carriages makes a huge difference to how willing it is to go up a slope so, unless you're going to have a pretty simple coaster, I think the brick built Reindeers from Santa's workshop would probably be too heavy. I tried to upload a photo of mine, but I can't make it small enough to fit the attachment limits. Do we have a monthly allowance or something? 30kb is crazy small!

Are there definitely going to be Christmassy GWP this year? I thought, in previous years, we'd known about them by the time the main WV set was released. When I saw they'd reissued the Dickens set, I wondered if that would be it for this year. I hope not! I love that Christmas Carol set, but have no idea how I'll fit it into my winter village. I've found that with some of the smaller sets from past years, I've repurposed them to become sort of like decorations for other areas - the old Santa's visit and snowman scene became part of a rollercoaster for example. I don't know where Scrooge and Tiny Tim might end up.

Thanks! I assumed that was the case but one of the first links I got when I googled Lego recolor was a guy spraypainting pieces. I will also be making a BL order as soon as the instructions are available online and I can see what we need.

I like all the details of the new WV set and will definitely get it as I have everything except the first ever train, but I'm not crazy about that blue. For me, blue is the least Christmassy colour. It's also a little annoying to have a revamped set as I finally got the original Cottage on E-bay for the crazy price of $60 - which became a lot more as my friend sent it to me from the States and I had to pay the same in shipping and the same again in customs fees so that my cheapest ever WV model became my most expensive - though still pretty good for the rarest set. I've completely run out of space for everything I already have. My favourite non WV set that works as an addition is the 3in1 snowy cabin ( 31080 ) which I built up higher to make a full size ski slope - see the photo. I also have a pretty big funfair and circus area now with the rollercoaster and Ferris Wheel from Bricklings as well as the fairground people pack, the UFO merry go round and some Toy Story 4 fairground pieces, all of which I've Christmasified. This is last year's village in the photo but I think this year will be twice the size as I have loads of new pieces and have a plan for a coverleaf train track with four distinct areas in amongst it. I started building my Hogsmeade village already and will move onto the Elf Club house next as I'm always a year behind on the sets. If only I had a bigger lounge. When people talk about recolouring the house, do you mean swapping out the pieces with other colours or spraypainting them?