CHRISTMAS VILLAGE

 Every year  I look forward to putting up my Christmas Village..
I end up taking one day to assemble the foundations and landscaping stuff and also get all the buildings and people upstairs from the lower level. Then I expect to put all of it in order the next day.....because it gets to be such a PRODUCTION I try to start just after Thanksgiving and take it down the end of January so that I can enjoy it longer than normal people would have theirs up. Putting it in order doesn't really describe it, because I take another week or so of reconfiguring  all the houses and the shops and the people and the trees and the bridges etc. etc....enjoying every moment of it, creating stories in my mind, designating certain figures to be those special people in my 'real ' life, while making up a fantasy town/ village/ city all at the same time. Just an armchair city Planner, I guess! In this Christmas Village (from 2009) I took over the Dining Room and made a "peninsula" for the waterway..love that boat..even though they didn't scale it correctly..it's still fun to use! Right in front of the "ship" is the wharf... hopefully I can find a pic of that to share as it is a very busy wharf!

The last two years, circumstances haven't allowed me to create my annual village, so when I knew I had these photos and the wonderful memories, I decided to share them with you. It has done much for my inner self as I reminisce and "re-fantasize"  as I look at these photos. This Village  represents my idea of a river town (like we live in) and all the skaters at the "rink" remind me of my own Dad who loved to skate...I was more like the lady that was falling down and being helped up in the photo. I also have a figure of an artist with a red umbrella doing a "plein air" painting out there in the cold.I always had to use that figure as I love art and have dear friends that are artists....so it represents them in my mind. Oh, also, I decided that every skating rink needed a bakery nearby  so when they got cold they could go in and get their hot chocolate and donut! The imagination goes on and on..PS if you want to see a closeup of the pic, just click on it!