Father-Husband-Marketer-Geek

My wife and I went up to the wonderful G+L Christmas Barn in Willimantic, CT, last night, racing to get there before it closed at 7 pm. We arrived about 6:30, plenty of time to peruse the "50% off" retired snow village halloween inventory. Well, we were a few weeks too late. There were only a few items left. We ended up getting a string of bat lights for $ 5.00 which we thought would go well with the ferris wheel in our halloween amusement park (decorating begins today, by the way!). Discouraged by what was left, what was there to do but look over the new buildings and accessories. We were torn between the Howl Radio Station and the Dead Creek Mill. We weren't sure where we were going to use the Mill if we bought it, but the radio station would be the official sponsor of our amusement park...you know, there's always a radio station broadcasting live from an amusement park. We then considered perhaps putting the Dead Creek Mill in a standalone display, perhaps in a ha...

Every now and then it's fun to just create new ideas, and with Halloween approaching, I thought it would be fun to come up with a few new buildings and accessories for Snow Village Halloween, so here goes: * "Smoky Bones Crematorium" (my wife actually came up with this idea - most likely the best one!): this building would have a few animated features: smoke coming out of the chimney, and a casket being pulled into one of the doors. The casket would slide in and out, slowly. * "Dead Letter Office" - would feature an eerie abandoned post office with a strangely lit window scene sneaking a peak at piles of unopened letters. This would be complimented by an accessory called "Skeletal Delivery" featuring a broken down mail truck and a skeleton postal worker. * "Haunted Trolley Museum" - this would be a larger scene with 3 or 4 abandoned trolley cars, spooky lighting, ravens, scattered trolley parts, and tires. The accessory would be a abandoned t...

My wife's Original Snow Village Halloween collection has extended beyond the amusement park theme , and now we must start laying out our second vignette. We don't have a name for it yet, but here are the pieces we are going to include in it: - Jack's Pumpkin Carving Studio Set - Dead End Motel - Black Cat Diner - Halloween Dance - Castle Blackstone We also have the Water Tower, which is currently in the Amusement Park theme vignette , but we may move it to this as yet unnamed layout.

While we eagerly await the arrival of the " Howl Radio " limited edition piece (only 9000) from the Original Snow Village Halloween set, we are very excited about the " Black Cat Diner ", a 2002 piece. The piece has a good sized black cat perched on top of the diner, and it looks just like Azrael, our own black kitty. The diner is designed with fun little details like the "Skeleton Crew", which are the workers inside the diner, one being a skeleton with a chef's cap and the other a feline helper. The light bulbs circling the diner's roofing are flashing pumpkins. The other animation is the cat's glowing eyes. The diner comes in a " Halloween Gift Set " that includes an autumn tree, a bag of leaves, and an accessory called "You Go First!" depicting three trick or treaters. The diner also has an outside eatery, where a weary waitress takes orders. Could she be a witch? Quite possibly....

My wife has embraced the original snow village halloween series, creatively designing an amusement park of certain animated pieces. Here is a gallery of our amusement park pieces: Here are the pieces we'd like to add this year to the amusement park: We also have another Halloween vignette, which I'll save for another post.

I've looked in every physical store in CT and even one in upstate New York, but I haven't been able to find the original Department 56 Yankee Stadium piece -- I see it's on Ebay, but I'd like to find a discounted sale on the piece, of course! This one I'm looking for is from Christmas in the City and it's much larger than the current accent pieces that are being sold. Speaking of the upstate New York store, I can't remember the name of the store, but it was one of the nicer ones I've visited. They had some spectacular displays, especially the Original Snow Village Halloween display. It was halfway from Hartford to Buffalo. I'll dig more into Google and try to remember the city. I recall they had a large billboard on the highway and that was what made us stop by. I'm due to return to upstate New York possibly in October, so I'd love to get some recommendations for Department 56 shops to visit on my way. We go up to Olean, NY, to spend time ...