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Lego Animal Crossing

Time for a look at something I’ve been working on for about 18 months…my Lego Animal Crossing collection!

I’ve slowly been adding buildings and scenes to my village, until I finally collected every set that’s been available in the US to date, starting with Isabelle’s House Visit:

Some sets are quite small, like Maple’s Pumpkin Garden:

Surprisingly, Stargazing with Celeste came out before the museum she used to be housed in!

The Able Sisters Clothing Shop was my first store:

Followed by Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s House, which adds both another house and another store to my village:

K.K.’s Concert at the Plaza includes what is probably the most important building in the game, the Town Hall:

Bunnie’s Outdoor Activities has a cute waterfall and an adorable tent with all the important camping supplies (mainly marshmallows to roast):

Kapp’n’s Island Boat Tour adds some beach elements:

Leif’s Caravan & Garden Shop brings in some more vehicles:

As does Fly with Dodo Airlines, a set that Ryan appropriately bought for me when he was in Japan:

Julian’s Birthday Party is a fun set to pair with the Town Hall:

And he makes another appearance in the Julian’s Beach Painting set:

Goldie’s Cozy House is tiny and cute:

Blathers’s Museum Collection was a late, but very necessary addition…I just wish they had actually included Brewster and The Roost!

The Creative Houses: Seasons of Fun set adds two more homes, a lovely bridge, and trees for every time of year:

I have a shopping district in my village:

And a residential area:

The museum complex:

And the center of village life, the Town Hall and Plaza:

Both the airport and the campsite are located on the beach:

And there’s even a lovely community garden!

Here’s a look at my 26 minifigs representing 24 characters (I have two different Isabelles in addition to the previously-mentioned double Julians):

It’s an active village!

I don’t know what the future holds for Lego Animal Crossing. There’s a set scheduled to be released in August, but it’s not a minifig scale set, and while it’s cute, it’s also very different, and won’t be a part of the village proper. But I hope that at some point in the future, I’ll be able to offer an update because they’ve added additional sets, and especially characters, because there are a lot of friendly faces I’ld still like to add to my village!

47

Yesterday we celebrated my 47th birthday!

The day got off to a bit of a rocky start. The only real plan I had was visiting the Missouri Botanical Garden, but we had rain. We watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and some M*A*S*H while we waited to see if the weather would clear…and it did!

I even got to see the two flowers in the Daylily Garden that share my name (“Along Came Amanda” and “Amanda’s Little Red Shoes”) in full bloom!

We had meal vouchers left from Combo Breaker, so dinner was birthday burritos from Chipotle while we watched A League of Their Own:

And Bunny made me an awesome tiramisu for dessert:

The Fab Five completed my Lego Animal Crossing collection with the Creative Houses set, and I put it together while we watched some Doctor Who:

The celebration bled into today…the one thing we couldn’t do yesterday as a result of the weather was stop for donuts, because it was too late in the day by the time we got there. So after church, we went to the Donut Drive-In, which, as an added bonus, is a historic Route 66 location! I had the best apple fritter I’ve ever eaten!

And I stopped for my birthday coffee at Starbucks…I love how the employees go the extra mile to make your day a little more special!

A birthday wouldn’t be complete without Animal Crossing…Roald didn’t come to my party, but I did catch up with him later, and Chickadee paid my island a visit, too!

This is 47, and so far, it’s pretty great!

Mani Monday

I loved how Holo Taco’s “Picnic Party Taco” looked on my mani last week so much that I just had to use it again! This time, I wanted to go for a bubbles on the water look, so I applied it over “Never Tide Down.” It’s just as fun and summery, but a whole different look! I’m sure you’ll be seeing this topper again this summer…I think it’s my favorite one in my whole collection!

Patterns in Nature: LightForm by HYBYCOZO

I’ve already shared a look at Patterns in Nature: The Art of HYBYCOZO, the summer exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Garden, by day…now it’s time for a look at LightForm, the nighttime presentation!

First, my favorite sculpture…I loved how colorful it was in the daylight, but it’s even more stunning lit up at night!

Not all of the displays are that colorful, but there is one that changes colors:

My second favorite of the displays has colorful inserts, and makes quite a show on the ground, too!

This one is super reflective during the day, but at night, you lose sight of the mirror for all the lights:

It’s fascinating how pronounced the negative space in each sculpture is as the sun goes down!

I love looking at this one from different angles:

This one also looks cool from different perspectives:

Some of the displays are meant to be spun…this isn’t one of them, but it was already moving when we walked by, so I took a video because it looked really cool!

These look light something straight out of Tolkien, which is appropriate because they line the walkway in the English Woodland Garden:

The displays on the Central Axis never disappoint!

This is a really cool exhibit, and I love how different it is in the light and the dark…definitely one of my favorite summer displays the Missouri Botanical Garden has hosted!

Old Chain of Rocks Bridge

On Wednesday, we took a walk across the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge that connects Madison, IL with St. Louis, MO over the Mississippi River.

The bridge was built in 1929 and was part of old Route 66. It was open to vehicular traffic for about 40 years, and in 1999 became a pedestrian bridge. At about a mile long, it looks like it goes on forever! I guess you don’t usually think about how long bridges are when you’re zipping across them in a car!

But if you look closely, you’ll notice the most remarkable feature of the bridge…a 30-degree turn that was added to the design to make the waters below easier for boats to navigate.

It’s a truly impressive bend…I can’t really imagine actually driving across it!

One of the reasons the waters of the Mississippi are tough to navigate at this point, besides the eponymous “chain of rocks” under the water, are the two “castles” (originally water intake towers) adjacent to the bridge.

There are a few references to Route 66 along the way:

It is an outstanding example of engineering!

There are gates at each end of the bridge that are presumably closed from sunset to sunrise:

We walked from one state to another…and back!

This was our first Route 66-themed field trip for this year’s summer school…I have a few more planned that I’m also really excited about!