Advent

Nikolaustag 2025

Today is one of my favorite days of the entire Christmas season…Nikolaustag!

We tend to celebrate this holiday in a German way, so of course our main activity today was…Christmas on The Hill?

Yes, some of us spent the afternoon in the Italian neighborhood of St. Louis to attend a fun local event. It wasn’t our normal Nikolaustag, but it was fun to switch things up a bit! And we still had our traditional dinner of chicken Döner Kebab this evening:

This year’s gingerbread dessert was a tiramisu:

And we had our traditional wassail while decorating the tree (I didn’t get a picture of the drink, but I did get a shot of one of this year’s ornaments…the theme was Pokémon). I realized this year that the Fab Five fall into two camps about decorating the tree…three of them want to hang their personal ornaments near each other in a collection, and two of them want to scatter their personal ornaments all throughout the tree. These two methods of decorating are pretty incompatible when five people are trying to hang ornaments, and that results in some hilarious conversations!

It wasn’t quite our regular Nikolaustag, especially since Bunny had to work today, and Turkey was at school taking a scary national math exam, but it was fun!

Advent 2025–Day Seven

The first week of Advent draws to a close with Ladybug having built bags 12 & 13 of Lego Rivendell. I’m having a hard time envisioning what this base is going to become, but she definitely started on something new!

She also added Gloin to our cast of characters:

Week two begins tomorrow!

Advent 2025–Day Six

Today was a rare single bag day for Lego Rivendell…Moose completed bag 11 and added a spire on top of the tower Ladybug started yesterday…it looks really cool!

Advent 2025–Day Five

Today Ladybug continued the build of Lego Rivendell with bags nine and ten:

Isn’t the tile pattern on the roof pretty? And she did such a nice job of keeping the squares perfectly aligned!

She also added some window details to Bilbo’s room, and a nice tower:

We’re already about a fifth of the way done with the set…Advent always moves quickly!

Advent 2025–Day Four

Today Bunny continued the upward build of Lego Rivendell with bags seven and eight:

And also added some cool details, including arches, green decorative elements by the painting Moose added yesterday, and a cozy nook with a desk with Bilbo’s book:

And also Bilbo himself!

We can’t believe how pretty the set already looks after only four days!

Advent 2025–Day Three

Today Moose built bags five and six of Lego Rivendell, and he already got started on the second floor!

There are some really great details in this section:

Advent 2025–Day Two

The walls are already going up at Rivendell, and Chickadee also got to add some cool plant elements from the two bags she built:

She also added another member of the Fellowship, faithful Sam:

It’s fun that you can already see a small part of the structure taking shape!

Mani Monday

This year’s Advent mani features Halo Taco “Shadow Lake” and “What Do You Pink?” plus an accent of “Sugar Rush” on the thumbnail, and a topcoat of “Shooting Star Taco” over all.

Advent 2025–Day One

Happy Advent!

After taking a break from building a big Lego set during Advent last year to build a chess set, we’re back with a very special set (and what might honestly be our last really extravagant Advent project)…Lego Rivendell! Turkey took care of the first two bags today, beginning the base of the structure:

And Frodo and the ring, of course!

The Fab Five have really been into The Lord of the Rings during the second half of this year, trading the worn copies of the books we have and impatiently waiting for the volume they’re ready to read to be finished by whoever currently has it, and watching the movies on repeat. I’ve thought Rivendell is the most visually beautiful set Lego has ever made since it first came out, but the steep cost had prevented me from adding it to our extensive Lego collection. I finally figured out a way to make it work, and I’m really excited that the Fab Five get to build this set, because it’s one they have all had their eyes on, too. The bag numbering system works out almost perfectly…this year there are 25 days in Advent, and there are 49 bags in the set, which means that other than one day, they’ll build exactly two bags each day during the season. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it comes together (and trying to figure out where it’s going to go when it’s complete, because it’s a BIG set!).

Advent 2024–Day Twenty-Four

Chickadee built the king and completed the Lego chess set!

It looks so nice!

Did I mention that it also came with discs for checkers?

Turkey and Moose got started on a game right away (Turkey won)!

I can’t believe another Advent has come and gone already!