What to do when you're space challenged

If you are anything like me, you want to create a fantastic village display, with incredibly detailed landscapes. You want to set it up in a room and leave it out all year long. When visitors arrive, they'll be awestruck by your dedication and craftsmanship you've used on your village set-up.

In reality, our two bedroom condo is less than spacious, and every inch is preciously distributed to something which is required for any demonstration of civilized living.

What do you do when you are as space challenged as we are? In my case, specifically, we'll set up multiple smaller vignettes. My wife's Original Snow Village Halloween display will morph into the Halloween Amusement Park (featuring many of the animated pieces, including the spinning pumpkins, the scaredy cat ferris wheel, swinging ghoulies, witch's ride, and more) and a new halloween vignette anchored by Jack's Pumpkin Carving Studio on one end and the Black Cat Diner on the other. Castle Blackstone may require it's own display altogether.

For christmas, we'll maintain our traditional "A Christmas Story" vignette (complete except for any new pieces that come out this year!). We'll add two new vignettes, dividing up our Snow Village pieces. It seems we have an awful lot of food buildings, from Starbucks to Krispy Kreme, Gus's Drive In to the Pillsbury Bake Shop and the Long Haul Truck Stop. One anchor will definitely be the Stardust Drive In theater.

Of course, for an alternative to smaller vignettes, many shop owners sell collectibles display cases. These are decorative in their own right and contain deep shelving that is perfect for village displays. They also have built-in places to hide electrical cording and wires. They're also good for keeping dust off the villages, although you "get" to wash more glass, and most likely you'll be forced to keep it up all year long. I found their website, http://collectibles-display.com, in a full page ad in Village D-Lights. I also found more display tips and information on building displays on Dept56tips.com.

I would definitely appreciate any other tips you may know of, so please comment below!