Mudville Lego City

 

Mudville Lego City with the much loved Yellow Brick house

It’s been almost four years since Mud built a not so little yellow Lego house for the girls to play with and in spite of his repeated requests for it to be demolished so that he can rebuild a new and improved version (the perfectionist in him hasn’t ever really been 100% happy with the finished model), both of the younger Mudlets have resolutely refused, happy with the yellow creation, sharing custody – for the most part, amiably – and incorporating it into their games at will. 

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The toy story

The Playmobil collection grew and grew.

With Christmas over and school due to reopen, Mud and I turned our thoughts to how on earth we were going to fit train tracks and Lego buildings into the Mudlet bedrooms. With some sadness we decided the only way to fit everything in was to pack away and move into the attic, most of the Playmobil.

Under development: the Lego house stage 2

For a free form build, this house is looking pretty special

With the pavement outside his Lego house now looking more realistic, Mud soon turned his attention back to the problem of how to build the upper levels without having to buy yet more yellow bricks from the Pick a Brick, Lego site – well, at least until after Christmas. The Mudlets’ were determined not to sacrifice their own creations for the cause, not that many yellow bricks had been used in their models in reality and so, one lunchtime last week, Mud found himself hunting through all the Lego drawers for any errant bricks … in fact he found himself trawling through all the toy drawers, for little pockets of bricks (off which there were plenty), that had been secreted away and forgotten about by the Mudlets.

The play value of Lego: 40 yrs and counting!

Muds Lego House is looking pretty good to me

It’s fair to say that we have a lot of Lego in our house. Some of the Lego actually belonged to Mud as a boy but over the last 6 years or so, several boxes of mixed bricks and roof tiles have been added to Muds’ boyhood stash, as well as Pick a Brick orders of windows, wheels and flat plates and we now have three plastic storage boxes filled with the stuff. In addition, Middle Mudlets’ room has a large unit and a long shelf dedicated to the display of the specific sets that she has collected over the years from the various themes, not to mention the veritable army of special mini-figures collected from the ‘Blind Bag’ sets.

We’re a three Ferrari family

Well technically it’s two Ferrari cars and a Scuderia Ferrari truck ……. and I maybe should explain that they’re all Lego models but a girl can dream.

Arriving home from Head Office the other night, Mud dumped a carrier bag on the kitchen worktop.

A sleigh full of gifts

The sleigh held some surprises for Eldest Mudlet too

Sunday the 1^st December 2013 and first thing that morning Mud was up in the attic rooting about for the Christmas decorations. Before long the first of 5 boxes and a decorative Santa were being passed down to me accompanied by Muds usual mutterings about needing to sort the attic out because it was packed to the rafters and he couldn’t find anything.

It didn’t help that Mud had to work on Annies electrics again that day and it was freezing outside, so he wasn’t the happiest member of the family at that time and a trip into the equally freezing cold attic hadn’t done much to improve his mood. However, he has always maintained that tradition is important and putting the decorations up on the first day of December is a tradition that he started that first Christmas in the cottage 11 years ago and all three Mudlets were expecting the decorations to go up that day …. no ifs, no buts, no maybes!

Making Space for Christmas

I nearly ran for the hills when I saw this lot!

With that jolly old man, with his reindeer, sleigh and a sackful of presents due for a flying visit in a few weeks time, I couldn’t put todays’ task off any longer and judging by the look of the toy shelves and the Mudlets’ bedrooms, it’s not a day too soon. Today was the day I had to, somehow, make space for Christmas.

Superb customer service and a happy Mudlet

The replacement Lego Chima Ewar figure (stand not supplied)

When Mud returned from a trip to the local shop with a magazine for each of the younger Mudlets, there was much excitement especially from Middle Mudlet because, unlike Little Mudlet, she hadn’t gone with daddy this trip and so was completely unaware that this particular purchase had been made.

Little Mudlets magazine was ‘Horrible Histories’ and had two free gifts on the front which were a wind up ‘Mummy’ figure and a yucky jelly scarab beetle, oh and I think there were some stickers with that one as well. Needless tos ay she was delighted.

A ski lift, some ponies and an Eddie the Eagle mini figure

With the a huge push to finish Ciggys body work in full flow and the need to utilise every available dry warm day to strip and paint the remaining ‘weather sensitive’ sections, we haven’t been able to take the Mudlets anywhere so far this summer and this sits heavy with Mud. He likes to try and take them to interesting places, to pack a picnic and let them spend their pocket money savings in a gift shop somewhere. Creating the sort of memories that last a lifetime and so it should have come as no surprise to me, when he and Little Mudlet returned from a parts run to A&P, calling in at Toys R Us on the way past.

Landy in miniature (updated)

By far one of the best ‘free hand’ models that Mud has ever made from Lego, has to be his representation of a classic Series 2 Land Rover, using green bricks and subsequently adding a white hard top. Personally I feel the end result was pretty good, although it took some time to make as, without a set of instructions to work from, he had to work out what he needed and then try and find appropriate bricks amongst the thousands contained within the Lego boxes.

Eventually, his perseverance paid off and we ended up with this cute little mini ‘Ciggy’, complete with fold down windscreen, bonnet mounted wheel (sadly not the delux bonnet though) and a tow hook on the back.