Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff's Urban Planning for 2016 Complete

I was thrilled to announce last week that I had a new addition to my ridiculously large collection of Department 56 Dickens Village buildings but I was too sick to actually put the village together.

Not this weekend, motherfuckers.

Village planning...is an art. There are a lot of things to take in to consideration when you have been blessed with a huge variety of edifices and occupants, but have very little space in which to display them. This year, I had one windowsill in the living room to work with and in the office, I had two windowsills AND the top of the large filing cabinet.  To work!

First, I got all of my buildings and accessories out and put them on the bed to contemplate them.

(Just FYI, you can click on any of the following photos to enbiggen. I know you don't want to miss a single detail.)

I started with the one windowsill in the living room - I had room for two buildings there, but nothing REALLY matches my lovely Victorian house. The Bluebird Cottage is too humble; the Observatory needs more space; and there's no effing way rich people are going to live that close to the Molasses Factory. Serious NIMBY issues.

In the end, I decided to place the Village Well and Holy Cross next to the house and wrapped the well's gazebo with some cute little LED lights from Welk's that our friend Boka tipped me off to. They look blue in the shitty picture, but they're white in real life. Then, of course, I added a straight couple about to make out while some lesbian nuns caroled nearby. SEASONAL. Wintersea planning - complete!

 

The much larger metropolis of Rosewood Cross took a lot of planning this year. I decided to go with a municipal/commercial/education theme this year and tried to create a vignette with a variety of shapes and levels, you know, for visual interest.

On top of the filing cabinet, we have the water tower, the Royal Carriage and Cartwright Coach Builders, who - you guessed it - service the Royal Carriage!  The Queen is a very demanding client but they enjoy the prestige. 

Here's a close-up of Cartwright's - such great detail. A lot of the newer Department 56 Dickens Village pieces have weird, fake-looking colours that I hate - this piece has that classic look historical fiction nerds prefer.

On windowsill #1, I decided that a little shopping and entertainment were in order - after marvelling at the animated photographs and Egyptian museum at Piccadilly's Finest Gallery, residents of Rosewood Cross can dabble in the occult by picking up a little something from Lily Bros Gazing Balls (heh heh). To round out the afternoon, the gentlemen can buy their ladies a posy from Eliza Doolittle's flower cart. All she wants is a room somewhere. But don't worry, she's shacking up with the head wheelwright from Cartwright Coach Builders, so she's getting hers.

Windowsill #2 was a big challenge. I technically had room for two buildings. But kids need room to roam. So I decided to put the Boarding School there and surround it with happy youngsters taunting birds.

I like how the little boy in this close up looks as if he's hitting himself in the face with the birdcage.

This afternoon, my old friend Mami stopped by with her adorable daughters to drop off their awesome shoeboxes and when I found out that one of them knits, I brought them into the office to show them my stash (NOTHING WEIRD). They were horrified by how much yarn I had, but they were very keen on the village and spent a lot of time looking carefully at the vignette and politely not touching it. I explained the logic behind all of my building choices and the older one nodded thoughtfully, as if she appreciated my attention to detail.

Then the younger one said "I wish we could see your village!"

Confused, I replied "This IS the village."

"No," she said, eyes aflame with the burgeoning fire of a village zealot, "I mean, your WHOLE village, with ALLLL the buildings."

Ahhh, grasshopper. You have learned well. And Mami, I'm sorry if your kids suddenly want a village real bad.

I'm very happy with my choices this year and am pleased with how it turned out. But this morning, I woke up and found that I was already thinking about next year. And I am already SUPER EXCITED.

Village nerds!!!

Creampuff's Village Hit by Highly Localized Plague

As all 2 of my devoted NaBloPoMo readers may recall, about 10 days ago, I was feeling under the weather. I had had a really bad sore throat for a few days and lots of aches and pains. I put the cat ears on. I neti-potted and gargled and Emergen-C'd and Cold FX'd and I somehow managed to not get FULLY sick!

Until yesterday.

I woke up allll set to have dim sum with an old friend and then set up my village and instead, I had to cancel all my plans and sit on the couch feeling SUPER sorry for myself instead.

But I did still get my annual village expansion permit!! And here is the new building that's going in! Isn't it handsome? It's about time we got some coach builders in town, everyone was just walking around like idiots!

And that's not the only addition to Rosewood Cross this year. For my birthday back in March, my friend Chezza sent me this gem:

I love a touch of the occult. The simple country folks of Wintersea won't know what to do with themselves. 

 

Creampuff Can See the Floor

Last week, when I cleaned off my desk, I felt so damn pleased with myself that I decided that this weekend, I would tackle our mechanical room/storage room. As the person in charge of the horror that is the mechanical room, it was very empowering to finally Kon Mari the hell out of it, with the kind assistance of Drtr (loading the car, driving me to the recycle centre, taking things surreptitiously to the dumpster across the street under cover of darkness) and Katr (empty box breakdown, random "what's in this old bin?" sorting, key decision making on keep/toss items, all-important "where should we take all this?" research).

Cleaning out the mechanical room has three major benefits:

1. We can finally get to the water heaters at the back of the room where Kong, the magical man who comes every year to flush out our radiant heating system, left his phone number. 
   
   
2. With Shoebox Project for Shelters stuff piling up, it's nice to have a little more room to stash things.
   
   
3. A lot of my Dickens Village stuff is in there (oh, and all of our Christmas decorations but whatever IT'S VILLAGE TIME, MOTHERFUCKERS!)

Like an idiot, I failed to take a "before" photograph, but rest assured it was embarrassing and looked something like this:

 I did manage to take an action shot of the dog, wondering WTF all this crap was doing in the the hallway:

And then, when I was finished, YOU COULD SEE THE FLOOR!!!

Pretty magical.

The most magical thing about this whole process was that Katr discovered just how close the recycling centre is to us! We've been driving way the hell out to recycle all our boxes, not knowing that an even better recycle centre exists a mere 5 minute drive away. They take EVERYTHING we've been "meaning to get rid of" - vacuum cleaners! Lightbulbs! Electronics! Plus the guy there was very helpful. Recycling rules!!

Now that the mechanical room is clean, it's time to start my favourite holiday tradition - THE VILLAGE! I have it on good authority that Rosewood Cross's Development Office has a new addition to the village this year, so get ready.

 

In Creampuff's Defence...

HAHAHA just kidding, I have no defence, I'm just a lazy sow. Last year, I wrote 8 blog posts. EIGHT, YOU GUYS. I know no one reads blogs anymore, but it's still embarrassing. 

In my slight defence, though - the last gap of the year, between Oct 15 and now, contained the following developments:

1. I went to see my show, The Good Bride, at Northern Light Theatre, directed by Trevor Schmidt, starring Arielle Rombough. I'm not going to lie, it was AWESOME. I was so happy with how it turned out and kind of astonished at how smart NLT's production made me look. It also received some really amazing reviews, like this one. And this one. And also this one.
   
   
   
   
2. The day we returned home from Edmonton, we welcomed a new fuzzy family member to our home! Her name is Effie Trinket, because she's fancy. She has her own Instagram account.
   
   
   
   
3. Literally all of October and November are a complete blur because puppy. PUPPY PUPPY PUPPY PUPPY. All singing, all dancing, all whizzing, all cigarette-butt-eating, all staples-in-the-facing, all adorable event of the year. So cute but OMG, NEVER GET A PUPPY.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Shoebox Project for Shelters!! Katr was the Vancouver coordinator again this year and we took in almost twice as many boxes as last year. Huzzah!! No used thongs this year but there was a WHEEL OF BRIE in one of the boxes. Score!!
   
   
   
   
5. The Holidays. Which are now, sadly, complete. But Katr's brother Drtr arrived for an indefinite stay, we went to the island and Effie got to meet my family, Rosewood Cross added a few new buildings, I have a huge new pile of books to read and juuuuust as we were getting into a really sweet groove, we had to go back to work, like everyone else with a job. But today, I am basically wearing pyjamas and eating M&Ms for lunch, as a form of "easing back into things".
   
   

As per usual, as I reviewed my pitiful 8 posts of 2015, I looked back and evaluated last year's resolutions:

1. Try a new recipe once a week. This actually went very well for about two months, with Katr generally at the helm, and we did add a few new favourites to our repertoire! Cook books were opened! New ingredients were investigated! Chicken breasts were pounded super hard! But as the year wore on and things got busy, we fell back into our usual cooking routine. 
   
   
2. Weekly reading night. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA NEXT.
   
   
3. Turn 40. Yes, I did this LIKE A BOSS. 
   
   
4. Finish a draft of my play that doesn't suck. This is probably the most resounding success of the year. See above re: good reviews.
   
   
5. Blog more. Big fat fail, hello.

 This year's resolutions:

1. Write a new play. "Resolving" to do this worked so well the last time (I wrote one! Then I bragged about it on my blog! Then Northern Light Theatre produced it!) that I thought I'd try it again. I've signed up for the winter session of Wet Ink's Playwriting Intensive and I have NO IDEA what I'm going to work on but I've decided that it must be something super gay because my last two plays were all about the straights. No offense, straights.
   
   
2. Be more organized in the office. As I emptied out the Crate and Barrel bag that housed all of our business tax receipts last weekend, I thought "Jesus Christ. Who am I...Uncle Jesse (obscure Full House reference)?" We finally bought a new filing cabinet late last year and I am determined to get some shit FILED CORRECTLY and get rid of shit we don't need any more. There will be shredding, motherfuckers.
   
   
3. Read more. It's become clear that after two years, trying to institute a "weekly reading night" is an unrealistic goal. But I do read a little every night and for two weeks straight on our annual Mexican vacation, so I was alarmed that I failed to complete my "40 books in 2015" Goodreads challenge (I only read 37). So I've challenged myself to 40 books again this year and I will READ 40 BOOKS, even if I have to do most of my reading in the ladies' shitter.
   
   
4. Buy some more shoes. I know this sounds ridiculous - aren't most resolutions about buying FEWER shoes? - but I somehow lost my only non-sneaker pair of non-summer shoes and now I only have one pair of sneakers and no other winter shoes. Worse things have happened to better people, but the shoes aren't water-proof and when I walk the puppy in the rain, my shoes get soaked and then they're too cold and uncomfortable to put on again to go over to our friend Cach's house to negotiate who gets what cuts of our shared 1/8th of grass-fed beef. Plus, on the rare occasion that we go out for a meal, it would be nice to have a pair of non-sneakers.
   
   
5. No new tea. Between my epic tea shelf and the beautiful set of 9 tins of TWG teas that Drtr brought me from Singapore, my tea stash is now rivalling my yarn stash. I have a RIDICULOUS amount of tea. I vow that I will buy NO MORE NEW TEA IN 2016! And no new yarn! I am going to drink tea and knit all damn year!

Oh, and blog more.

Happy New Year!

Creampuff Expands Rosewood Cross and Wintersea

As you may recall, last year Katr fulfilled my lifelong dream of owning a Christmas village. My tiny village filled me with joy every time I looked at it and I couldn't wait until next year, when I would add another tiny residence or business to my collection.

Here's the thing: these Department 56 Dickens Village buildings are not cheapo and I figured that if I was lucky, every year, Katr would pick out a suitable building for me and that my village would grow very slowly, year over year, spilling on to adjacent windowsills, perhaps requiring a shelf at some point.

Then Katr discovered eBay.

I knew for some time that Katr was planning something special for my village this year when she informed me that I would have to come up with a name for the village, because the "planning department" needed to know. We decided that the main village (in the dining room) would be "Rosewood Cross" and that the seaside village (in the office) would be "Wintersea".

All through the run-up to the holiday season, there were strange packages arriving and clandestine local meet-ups but I remained blissfully ignorant of Katr's ultimate plans. For our wedding anniversary in November, she presented me with  not one but TWO buildings for my village - a molasses factory (hahahaha)  and a boarding school (where young girls discover lesbianism). I was thrilled - but I thought she was really blowing her building wad.

Little did I know.

On Christmas morning, I was already spoiled and a little drunk when it came time to open my final gift...which was a small box full of replacement light cords and a note from the Rosewood Cross Development Office. I was mystified. And then Katr fired up the Apple TV and played this video. Which she made. And did the voice-over for. In an hilarious "British" accent. Because SHE IS AWESOME.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT. I love you, Katr.

So, many unboxings and squeals of joy and pluggings in later, here is a slideshow of new Rosewood Cross and Wintersea, if you are a nerd and want to see them. You know you want to.

Also included are the photos from last year, for comparison - and because I was too lazy to start a new set on Flickr for the 2014 Village. 

(Here's a link to the slideshow on Flickr if you're on Firefox and can't see it ;)

I love my village so much. Maybe a little too much. Maybe I should make year-round seasonal vignettes, like the hardcore collectors do! Ooo, there's also a "springtime" collection that comes without snow! HAHAHAHA stop me before I become one of them.

What will next year bring to Rosewood Cross and Wintersea? I can only imagine what Master Potts has in mind. All I can say is that whomever he invites to town, I say "APPRRRROVED!"

It Takes a Village

My yearning for a Christmas village began at a young age. I remember the first time I saw those tiny, glowing houses at a friend's Christmas gathering and really thought about pulling a "Laura Ingalls stealing a music box from Nellie's birthday party" kind of move in order to make one of them my own.

Fortunately, I realized that I couldn't possible pull this off - not because my '80s hammer pants were not voluminous enough but because it would cause my crotch to glow invitingly. It's a good thing it didn't occur to me that the houses were just plugged in and did not glow due to Christmas magic - my life could have turned out veeeeeeeeeery differently.

My intense yearning for a Christmas village continued through my youth and into my young adulthood, but it was one of those things - like STDs and how you secretly liked Wesley Crusher - that you didn't talk about. In fact, my shame over wanting these kitschy holiday items over-powered my desire for over 30 years. Until this year. When the dam burst and I told Katr.

Katr doesn't love clutter. But she does love me. She tried to deke me out by suggesting that she wasn't going to indulge my village yearnings, but when, in the face of her masterful deception, my face crumpled like the saddest lesbian in Lesbonia, she gave up her wicked charade and the next day, this appeared:

Please excuse the blurry photo. My hand was shaking with excitement.

Part of the joy of the village is being able to look at it lovingly throughout the holiday season - this is difficult to achieve when you unwrap your village gifts on Christmas morning. Katr gave me this stunning Bluebird Cottage from Department 56's Dickens collection on December 8th. Because she knew how bad I wanted a village. And because I like things that are Dickensian.

At first, it was just the Bluebird Cottage, lonely on the ledge, yet warm and inviting, with its glowing light inside. 

Then, one magical Christmas eve, these babes showed up, courtesy of my brother in law Drtr.

And the next morning, Stratford Pies and Tarts opened up and the whole neighbourhood went to hell.

Flirting by the fish and chips...

The Tea Lady and the Pie Man are clearly TOTALLY DOING IT. Look at those guilty mugs! Like we just caught them at something illicit! Plus, the Pie Man appears to be sporting wood. Good period detail, Department 56.

Those nuns stayed ALL NIGHT. Also, note the adorable birdhouse in the back. It's a wee little church!! 

Aw, yeah, motherfuckin' VILLAGE.

It took all I had to pack the village up this year as we were putting away our holiday decorations. But I know that it wouldn't be special if it was up all year round! I can't wait to see what building pops up in Roseshire next year! Because I am a HUGE NERD.