Christmas Train Ride & Christmas Town Square

I've been super busy this month, so the post is a little late. Today, I'll be writing about the two small Christmas sets: Christmas Train Ride (40262) and Christmas Town Square (40263). They were $9.99 each. The train set comes with 169 pieces and the town square has 179. Both of the sets took about 40 minutes to build. Let's start with the train:

This set has 3 minifigures:

The mini builds that make up the set are a coffee stand, a ticket booth, the train, a picnic table, a lamppost with a bench, and a tree with a little snowy area:

These are the pieces I had leftover:

Let's put it all together:

The train is fun and a great addition to any Christmas scene. It could also be used in a park, zoo, mall, or any other place you might find a little train ride. The lamppost is nice, I like that it has a town map feature. I like the coffee and ticket stands, I just wish that they were a little bigger because a minifigure can't fit in them. Overall, it's a good set for the money, especially since it comes with 3 minifigures.

Now, we'll look at the town square:

This set also comes with 3 minifigures:

The mini builds in this set include a snowman, a lamppost with mailbox, a sled with presents, a food stand, and a tree surrounded by fencing:

Here are the leftover pieces:

And here is everything put together:

Another great seasonal set. The tree is my favorite part of this one. The way it is built is interesting and the fancy fence is very nice looking. The little wreaths on the fence are another great touch. Like the map hanging on the lamppost in the last set, this lamppost has a little letter sign to let people know there's a mailbox there. The snowman is adorable. Once again, I like the food stand, I just wish it was big enough for a minifigure to stand in.

Now for one last photo. I decided to put both of the sets together and have train ride in town square:

Thanks for reading! It was a lot of fun building these little holiday sets. For January, I will probably be posting about the Park Street Townhouse.

Thanksgiving Harvest

Today's post is about the Thanksgiving Harvest set (40261). It was $9.99 and has 133 pieces. I ordered it a little too late and just got it Friday or I would have posted this before Thanksgiving. It took me 35 minutes to put this set together and take photos. First, let's look at the box. Just like the Halloween set, there is a little comic on the back:

The pieces are divided between one large bag and two smaller ones:

Two minifigures, a farmer and a little girl, are included:

Now that the minifigures are built, we can move on to the rest of the set. There are 6 minibuilds that make up this set. A crow, a basket of fruits and vegetables, a turkey, a garden with scarecrow, a wagon, and a tree:

Here are the leftover pieces:

Now let's see everything together:

I really love these little seasonal sets. They are fun to put together and they usually have a unique piece or two that I didn't have before. I'm pretty sure the little girl's face is different than any of my other figures. The wagon is a very nice build. The colors look great and I can see myself using this for future projects. The turkey and crow are cute additions, as is the scarecrow with the garden plot. The colors of the tree definitely give the set an Autumn feeling.

The back of the instruction booklet for this set has a picture advertising the two little Christmas sets:

I ordered both of those when I bought this one, so I will be putting them together this week and using them for my December post next weekend. Thanks for reading!

Modular Modern Home

This month's set is the Modular Modern Home (31068). It is $29.99 and includes 386 pieces. It is a 3-in-1 set. Here is the box:

Minus the largest plate, all of the pieces are divided into 4 bags:

There are 2 minifigures:

A new thing that I've done for this post is to put the pictures of the required pieces first. Instead of hunting through all the pieces like I usually do, I looked through the instructions for each build and put aside all the ones I would need. I'm not sure if this saved me any time. The first step is to build the 2 modular units:

It took about 6 minutes each to build the units. The smaller one has a little birdhouse on it:

The first and largest build is a 2 story Modern Home. It requires both modular units and almost all of the pieces. The pieces shown in the second picture are the only ones not used. This build includes the house, a trampoline, an electric car, a remote control helicopter, and a dog:

Modern houses are not my favorite style, but I like this house. It took about 50 minutes to build. The rooftop is nice and I like the solar panel portion of the roof. The electric car and its charging station are a great addition. This family is obviously environmentally friendly. I don't mind building little birds or building that sea turtle from a previous set, but I don't like building dogs like the one pictured above. They always look weird to me.

The second build is a Lakeside Home with a dock. It uses the larger modular unit and the pieces shown in the first 2 photos. There's a little duck in the water, a bench, a telescope on the roof, and a canoe:

It took about 30 minutes to build this house. I really like how the dock goes from the door to the water. The kitchen furniture inside is cute and I like the canoe. The red bench is a great place for this family to sit and watch the water. The telescope on the roof is also a great touch.

The last and smallest build is the Garden Home. It uses the smaller modular unit and the pieces shown in the first 2 photos, but I was obviously distracted while gathering the pieces. The pieces in the third photo are a few that I forgot to include and the pieces in the fourth photo are ones that I included and discovered that they were not needed. This little build includes seating, a garden gnome, and a lawn mower:

 

This build took about 25 minutes to put together. The garden gnome is definitely my favorite part! LEGO calls this a garden home, but it seems more like a little greenhouse or potting shed to me. I like all of the plant details, the garden is great. The seating is a little confusing though. While putting the seating area together, I almost thought that I was making a teeter-totter, but it doesn't tilt. I assume that it was built like this to center it in the 3 stud wide area, but I'm not sure why they needed that area to be that wide instead of just having the seating on the baseplate.

Overall, this is a great set. In total, it took me about 3 1/2 hours to put together, including laying out and organizing the pieces, building the sets, dismantling and reorganizing pieces, and taking pictures. I probably could have put it together a little bit faster, but I was kind of distracted that day. I love all of the little touches like the birdhouse on the small modular unit, the charging station for the car, and the garden gnome. I'll definitely be using the gnome in a future project. Maybe I need to make one for all of my houses. 

I should hopefully be getting the Thanksgiving set soon. I have the Park Street Townhouse set, but I'm not sure if I'll do that for next month's post. I might save it and post something else. I'm currently working on organizing my minifigure collection, so maybe I'll write a post about that. Thanks for reading!