Village progress continues

The weather good news is that we should be having a relatively storm free week with the possible exception of some areas perhaps getting a little precipitation tonight. The weather bad news is that the weather folk are keeping an eye open for some possible snow next weekend. Now that’s a long way off so we don’t get too excited about it just yet.

As we had said over the weekend, Gator Wife and Gator Daughter joined me in working on the most popular section of our seasonal display, a combination Victorian and Dickens Village from Department 56®. We had completed the first section last weekend. This time through was the Dickens’ A Christmas Carol section. Every piece in the display, except we did use a few other Department 56® characters to give it a busy look, represents part of the story of Scrooge.

We had built a frame last year to hold half the window display with the other half utilizing the sill of the bay window. Like all our frames from last year, this one began out as very wobbly, unstable unit. We added some cross pieces to all the frames. Over the weekend we put the Dickens base in place (left) and added a Styrofoam base for the beginning of a “winter” look.

Not all the contouring was completed when we took this picture (right) of the beginning of the top of the display. We use various sizes of Styrofoam to give the display depth once all the pieces are added. Those layers, most of which are small and only hold one structure or accessory, are added after we place the pieces.

And finally, more structures and accessories (right) are added to the display. Once that is completed, we decide where those small units of elevation are needed to give the final display some depth. More accessories and people get added, eventually along with trees, to fill in “white” spots. “Fresh fallen snow” will be added when the entire display is ready to be lit.

Next weekend we’ll complete the third and final section, which also is the largest. On it will be a woods scene, a waterfront, some village, and a farm. We are at least on schedule this morning, and since we had a little extra time yesterday, we did add some trees to the two completed sections.

GiM