A Ride on a Trailer

This entire model was built by my 5 year old daughter without any help.  The day this was built she really wanted to build a trailer to pull people around on, making use of a pulley she found in the parts bin.

It seems we were short on traditional posts to hook the tow rope to though, so she improvised with the obvious replacement of some poor guys neck.  Surprisingly this almost worked, although since he wasn't centered on the trailer, it did tend to pull to one side pretty sharply, especially if one drove it too fast.

The car itself was a bit spartan, but it seemed to have the horsepower to get the job done.

I particularly enjoyed the posing of all of the passengers.  I would imagine any trailer of that height being pulled by a rope around a guys neck is going to be a pretty wild ride.  I'm sure the steering wheel is also very important, although I have no idea what it was intended to do.

A Windmill and a Stable

The most popular builds around our house for a long time were buildings.  These would typically be either a house or a stable.  To keep it interesting I liked to experiment with different ways of building the roofs, partially inspired by the fact we were running out of slopes without dismantling the other buildings.  In this particular case I made use of the cheese slopes we filled all the holes in our first Pick-A-Brick cup with.  Not a particularly original technique I am sure, but it was my first time really making use of the piece, so I was happy with the result.

In addition to the roof, this house also has one the windmills I built.  At one point we had 5 or 6 of these around our buildings, although they seemed to fall apart quite frequently.  The base turns so it can face the wind no matter what direction it is coming from.  And of course the horses have some hay inside for their dinner.

The other thing I enjoyed about this door is the use of two headlight pieces to attach a handle, making it very easy to open the door.  You don't want your horses to be stuck inside when it's time to go out for a ride.

A Christmas House

For Christmas we built set 40009, the Holiday Building Set.  This was a fun little set to build with the kids with several little items to build.

Immediately after building a tree and fireplace, it became obvious we would need a house to put them into.  Seeing as how it was the holidays (and the parts we could find to build with) a red and white striped house seemed to be a great choice.

Every Lego house we build has to have windows.  In this case we wanted to be able to see the interior, so we took advantage of a number of 1x2 transparent windows we had from a trip to the Pick-A-Brick Wall.

The interior was nice and cozy with just enough room for all the items we built in the set.

After placing the roof on the house, we decided to a final touch.  We had a plate we covered with light blue translucent studs that we decided when tipped at an angle would make a nice solar panel.  Hopefully the occupants of the house decide to use that for running a heater rather than using the fireplace that isn't connected to a chimney or any exterior vents.

Maybe it's one of those electric fireplaces the Amish make and then sell on the infomercials. Is it possible to over think the heating system being used in a Lego house?