A Winter Scene

I can't believe I haven't shown you all these village scenes before! My mother has been collecting Department 56 miniatures for over 20 years. I think she started because I was so obsessed with all things dollhouse.

And she has this giant old antique cabinet that she displays a village scene in every year. It's so much work to set a scene up that when we do a certain creation, we leave it up for a couple of years before switching to another one. Her cabinet has two giant shelves, so we can do a scene on both levels. Not sure why I didn't back up to take a full shot of both shelves of the cabinet.....

I took these with my phone at my mom's place; I'm really determined to try and learn how to use my camera phone a little better, so I apologize for the lack of clarity. This scene here is from a collection called New England Village, which is my favorite. She also has Christmas in the City, which is our 2nd favorite collection, and the North Pole, with a few odd pieces of Dickens thrown in. I just found out that there's a DOWNTON ABBEY series beginning, but I think we'll have to restrain ourselves, because my mom's collection far exceeds anything we can possibly manage.

It really is like dollhouse-ing for grownups! And when the houses are lit up at night...so pretty. I have a sideboard/cabinet thingy now that I got at IKEA, and I'm thinking that next year, it might be time for some of the village collection to come live at our house and I can make a display up on top of my cabinet. And then I can have loads of fun moving the little pieces around. And around.

One year we made a skating pond for this village, by burying a small mirror in the 'snow' (pulled apart cotton with white glitter sprinkled on top). SO MUCH FUN.