When our daughter was six years old we started buying her Lego sets for her birthday and Christmas. Then she and I would sit on the living room floor and build new creations. When Dave realized I enjoyed building as much as she did, he started buying me sets, too. By the time she was sixteen, we had enough bricks to build freelanced towns to cover half a ping pong table.
But she went away to college and an old injury of mine said I needed to stop building. Which I found hard to do. So, I sold all our Lego bricks.
Now, in my second childhood, I’ve started collecting sets again. In the meantime Lego invented a tool which removes the aggravation of my old injury.
When I saw the advertisement for the Lego Downtown Diner with its art deco look and a pink car with tail fins I knew I wanted this set. 2480 pieces. Like a giant 3D puzzle. But unlike a jigsaw puzzle, these puzzles come with an instruction book. And the fun is seeing what details they managed to include in each set.
So I opened the box and dumped out all the little bags of parts.
Bags numbered 1-5. Which doesn’t sound like a lot. Until you realize each number has multiple bags.
And some of those bags have more bags inside them.
So, when I open just one set of all those bags and dump them into the shoebox I use to hold them I get this:
.
Which is a lot of pieces to sort through. Which makes sense once I think about it. After all I have nearly 2500 pieces divided into 5 sets which makes about 500 pieces per set.
So, I pull some pieces out of the shoe box to make it easier to sort through those that remain.
And when I finished assembling just those pieces in all the number 1 bags, I already have this:
Most of the diner itself is done and the details are very amusing: a juke box, a gumball machine, a coffee pot like those restaurants use, and condiments on the table, among others.
Only four more sets to go to finish building this three story building of which the diner is only the ground floor.
And I’ve already been sorting and building for two days.
Is this a great new/old hobby or what?
TTYL,
Linda
I love it! you already know that.
when you click on the pictures… and the last one for sure… the detail is amazing when you make it bigger.
going to enjoy the progress of this.
I’m just glad you’re having so much fun! your happiness is contagious. 😀
it’s a great idea to play about with kids stuff as an adult – it’s called “escape adultitis” – that’s one of the reasons why I like cutting up paper and gluing it to other paper :–)
Oh what fun. Our kids never got into Legos. Be sure to share the final project.
That is so cute. Not sure I would have the patience to put it together.
Ed would probably like doing these also. He’s into wooden ship building. He’s been working on the Mayflower. I’ve posted some pics along the way on Facebook, but maybe I should do a blog about it. I keep forgetting that you don’t do facebook.
Our kids were very much into Legos too. I wish we’d kept all of them but we bought sets again for the grandkids.