Welcome to Huetsville, A Collaborative Christmas Project
I have what could be considered a decently large family, with five siblings in addition to myself and my parents—and when there are eight of you, it can be hard to find common interests that you can all connect through. In my family, the LEGO system is one of the few things that we can all enjoy to one extent or another, so my dad figured it was a natural choice to use LEGO bricks to initiate family bonding. And what better way to do that than by collaborating on a winter village layout?
Once Upon A Time…
When my dad was a kid, his dad built a wooden display known as “The Village” to sit at the base of their Christmas tree. The display consisted of an L-shaped snapshot of a town consisting of a road and a variety of houses and stores. It was also designed so that lights could be inserted into the houses, and the road was sized to matchbox cars so that it could be driven on. When I was a kid, the display was passed down to my family, and I have a lot of fond memories of playing with The Village with my siblings as a kid.
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However, while The Village was quite charming, the buildings that inhabited it tended to break quite easily as they were made of thin wood. Every year, one or two houses would get destroyed in some accident (or tornadoes, as we liked to call them), and eventually, my dad got tired of continually rebuilding them and gluing the shards of wood back together.
By this point, LEGO had developed a firm foothold in our household, and my dad came up with the idea to make the buildings out of LEGO, allowing them to be easily fixed. What’s more, this would also allow the building to be easily and quickly customized.
Being the LEGO builder that I am, my dad requisitioned my help to design some simple brick-built houses for The Village. The results, while charming, were pretty simple and generic, but they sufficed for a year or so. Then, in early 2022, my dad decided to go all out and redesign not just the houses but the entire village out of LEGO bricks.
And So It Begins
Usually when I start working on a project, I just start clicking bricks together and let them guide me. I’m not much of a planner—I just like to start building. My dad does not share that mindset, though, so the project started out with a lot of spreadsheets, calculations, and numbers. After calculating how many baseplates the village would require, putting in several BrickLink orders, and trying to schedule a day to work on the project, we were finally ready to get started.
Naturally, we started by constructing the base. While we were waiting for the pieces to arrive, my dad built a wood frame to hold the village together. We then filled the frame with the plates that served as the groundwork for the display. In an effort to pay tribute to the original, the LEGO version also formed an L-shape.
From there, we started adding layers to separate the road and snowy landscape. We used tiles for the road and plates for the snow to make a clear distinction between the two. We mapped out where buildings would go and also incorporated parking lots. This was very much a family effort, with everyone pitching in and helping add layers of snow.
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The highlight of the village, though, is the buildings! The plan was that each of the eight members of my family would design their own building to contribute to the village. Everybody took a different approach to their building, with some people designing their buildings in Studio and ordering the parts on BrickLink, and others building on the spot from their collections.
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Once the buildings were completed it was just a matter of adding some vehicles, trees, signs, and other small details!
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The Completed Project
Once completed, The Village was a sight to behold, if I do say so myself. From left to right, there’s a church, a two-story house, a modernist house, a flower shop, a library, a pet shop, and a mechanic’s shop.
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Our tour starts with a two-story suburban house built by my youngest brother. I also pitched in and helped with some of the details of this building. The house has gone through several variations, most recently gaining a gutter along the top and a garage out back.
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My other brother built a stylish modernist house to go on the corner. Using a mix of interesting shapes and materials—there’s something interesting to admire on every side.
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Next is the mechanic’s shop, built by my youngest sister. It has a swinging garage door for cars and a smaller entrance for people. A well-placed printed brick above the doorway completes the building.
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Next to that is a pet shop, built by another one of my sisters. It’s got a fun mix of blues to liven it up as well as a giant dog on top to identify it as a pet store.
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My older sister is a huge book lover, so she built a public library. Using a distinct mix of medium blue and dark orange, the library’s eye-catching dome allows it to grab attention amidst the rest of the village
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My mom built a charming two-story flower shop, with a florist on the bottom and an apartment up top. The intricate brickwork and colorful facade are both masterfully executed.
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Finally, there’s my contribution to the village—the church. Churches, especially cathedrals, have always fascinated me with their ornate architecture, so I leaped at the chance to capture that in LEGO form. I’m quite happy with the results, even if I wasn’t able to make it as large or detailed as I might have liked.
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I also had a lot of fun designing a variety of vehicles to accompany the scene. I drew inspiration from a number of my favorite movies and TV shows to determine the designs of the cars. For example, below you can see the Simpson’s car, the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, Leonard’s Jaguar from Memento, the Jurassic Park Jeep, and the Bluesmobile from The Blues Brothers.
Reflecting On the Past and Looking To the Future
Overall, the project served as a great family bonding exercise and is a lot of fun every year. In addition to bringing the model out for Christmas every year and displaying it under our Christmas tree, we also brought the model to Brickworld Chicago in 2022. The response there was overwhelmingly positive, and it was really encouraging to see how people responded to the idea of building together as a family.
While the project has already been a major success in my opinion, the village is far from over. You may have noticed a blank spot on the village with some brown and black pieces; my dad is currently working on building a gas station for cars to refuel at, so we’ve started mapping out where that will go. I’m also ordering pieces for custom pine trees, I keep adding more car designs, and we’re working on switching out some of the older yellowed pieces.
In the end, I’m excited to see how the project continues to develop and hope that it will inspire more families to build together! As we continue to expand and refine our little village, we hope it serves as an inspiration for families everywhere to find their own ways to build memories together.
Have you built a family project out of LEGO before? Let us know in the comments below.
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