Sunday Lego Build

Around the end of November, Mr. GeoK waited until I was away from my desk to me leave a little holiday surprise.

“Brick Friday” bonus set with $100 purchase from Lego retail stores or Lego shop-at-home.

It was the 2012 Holiday set from Lego! I kept waiting for an evening or weekend when K didn’t have to do a lot of homework before asking him to “help” me with the build. This morning things finally worked out…

109 pieces ready for assembly, with the instruction book open for reference.

The first thing we noticed was the horse. We have lots of other Lego sets that include horses, but this is the first one with articulated hind legs. They’re not separately articulated (i.e they move in tandem), but for some of the horse-themed sets aimed at kids, it’s a big improvement on 4 fixed legs.

The set includes 4 minifigs: the sleigh driver, a mother and 2 kids. The clothing details are interesting, including a “puffy” jacket for the boy and printed accessories for the females, including a necklace, a scarf and two different belts. A photo of all the minifigs is the featured image for this blog post, so if you’re viewing this entry on our home page, click on the post title and you’ll be able to see the featured image.

K enjoyed building the sleigh. Red was a great choice of colour and he commented a couple of times on the little green wreaths that decorate the sleigh…

Holiday wreath — On of these little green wreaths hangs from each side of the red horse-drawn sleigh. K was happy to discover that an extra wreath was leftover at the end of the build.

The other part of the build is a small streetscape, with uneven snow covering the ground, a wooden bench, a couple of evergreen trees and an elaborate, old-fashioned street lamp that’s adorned with another style of holiday greenery…

Extensive use of one-third height bricks and angled one-by-ones creates a pretty good impression of uneven snow-covered ground.

Close-up of one of the globe fixtures on the street lamp.

K enjoyed the build and appreciated the 8 or 9 small pieces leftover at the end. I enjoyed the chance to work with my macro lens to try to capture (for the first time) the essence of a small Lego set. In hindsight, I missed taking shots of the completed sleigh as well as an overhead view of all the parts carefully laid out. I also think a lighter background for the photos might have been a better choice, so that’s what I’ll try next time around.

After K added the just completed build to our holiday Lego display, I dug around in one of the cupboards until I found the 2011 Holiday bonus sets, which are now sitting on the corner of my desk…