Father-Husband-Marketer-Geek

Who would have known that the piece I was looking for would be discovered in the home state of the rival Red Sox? My wife and I visited Graziano Gardens in East Longmeadow, MA, today. This was one of the recommended shops from last week's posts (see the Map of Recommended Shops below). It really was a nice garden store. There were four or five decent village scapes in the Christmas Shop, but you could tell it wasn't really ready for a holiday visit - much of it was in an "organizational" phase. Still, the store had some great scenes - especially Dickens' Village. My wife actually found a great deal on hanging plants there - buy one, get one for half off. We raced home and set up Yankee Stadium on our Kitchen Bar, temporarily (it will be heading to my office, where I can enjoy it during the workday). It has a bulb which shines through all the little windows of the ballpark. It's still hard to believe each piece is hand-cut. They must have lots of little elves...

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 ...