Animal Crossing

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!

25 Years of Animal Crossing

On this date in 2001, Animal Crossing was first released in Japan. It didn’t come to the US until the following year, and I have been there since the beginning. I have played every game (I think New Leaf is probably my all-time favorite, but I love them all!), created communities with all my favorite neighbors (Roald, obviously), worked for Tom Nook for what seemed like an eternity, and supported the local businesses (especially the museum and Brewster’s coffee shop) in every neighborhood I have been a part of. I have fond memories of characters we haven’t seen in the current game (Gracie Grace, I’m looking at you!), of furniture series that no longer exist (maybe someday they’ll bring back the Jingle line), and of game mechanics that have fallen by the wayside (I loved the Nook store evolution from “Nook’s Cranny” to “Nook ‘n’ Go” to “Nookway” to the obviously upscale “Nookington’s,” and would love to have to work to make that happen again!). Animal Crossing has been a huge part of my entire adult life, and I love that I’ve had the opportunity to share it with my children through the years. I’m hopeful that there will be an announcement of new game sooner rather than later, but in the meantime, I love the way Nintendo acknowledged this anniversary with a special leaf statue, which I am proudly displaying outside my home:

Did I mention my bestie Roald? He kindly sat down on the swing between our houses with me today for a bit!

There are still a few Lego Animal Crossing sets I haven’t been able to add to my collection…today, I picked up the least expensive one, which is also special because Goldie is one of the original, friendly characters who I remember meeting very early in my Animal Crossing experience:

It’s kind of hard for me to believe that Animal Crossing has been around for a quarter of a century through five mainline games (and a few adjacent games as well)…I hope it continues to bring joy to people around the world, and I can’t wait to see where the next game will go, and when that will be!

Stretching Out the New Year

Thanks to the very unwelcome guest influenza, plus work schedules, we stretched out our New Year’s celebration over three days instead of the usual two!

On New Year’s Eve, I made black bean soup and cornbread:

And we had our customary hot chocolate bar, with a twist…Turkey made the hot chocolate from scratch for us! Chickadee helped me bake two kinds of hot chocolate themed cookies to go with it, too:

And somehow I managed to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year on Gloriana:

New Year’s Day was a pretty quiet day, lacking our usual trip to the mall and the Lego store, and we had our celebratory meal today instead. We spent most of the day watching the last few Christmas movies in our annual rotation, and I made some peppermint frappes from a kit I got at Aldi:

I went with a German theme again this year for dinner, featuring Schweinelendchen mit Pilzrahmsoße (pork medallions with a mushroom cream sauce) and spaetzle, plus roasted carrots and green beans with bacon.

For dessert, Bunny and I made a Glühwein-Kuchen (mulled wine cake).

I wasn’t intending to begin 2026 with illness, but at least we still had a few nice meals to end one year and begin another!

46

Today is my 46th birthday!

I started the day by receiving a truly amazing gift from my family…I can’t wait to find the perfect place on the wall to hang it!

I decided that taking a “Hit the Bricks” tour on historic Main Street in St. Charles, MO, would be the perfect way to spend the day, because I would get to see something beautiful and interesting AND learn something, and I wasn’t disappointed!

I finally got to try the lavender Frappuccino using my Starbucks birthday reward…it was just as delicious as I imagined!

We had my favorite dinner, Reuben casserole, and since we also have Starbucks at home, I made a lavender matcha to go with it:

And Bunny made me an amazing tiramisu for my birthday dessert…I’ve come a long way since the years I used to make myself a tiramisu layer cake for my birthday!

It was unbelievably delicious!!!

Roald didn’t come to my birthday party this year, which was the cause of great sadness, but I set up a photo shoot so we could still get a birthday picture together…it’s tradition!

I also got to watch a few of my favorite movies today (one of them might have been a Christmas movie, and another might have starred Donald Duck), and generally feel very special…it was a great day!

Guten Rutsch!

How is it 2025 already?!? It hardly seems possible that we’re at the quarter mark for this century. We’ve had a rather German celebration for the last two days, starting with fondue for dinner yesterday.

And of course we had our traditional hot chocolate bar for dessert…I was very excited about the addition of hot cocoa and marshmallow Hostess Donettes this year!

We watched Apollo 13 and Ocean’s 11, and I made it to midnight (but just barely) to ring in the new year in Animal Crossing.

This morning we were at the Lego store before they opened so we could look for a few new sets…the line was incredible, but we still managed to find everything we were looking for!

We did some shopping at Target and the Asian store and stopped for boba at what I think was a place we hadn’t tried before:

And we had another German meal for dinner:

Plus Black Forest cake for dessert:

Not a bad way to say “goodbye” to one year and “hello” to another…Guten Rutsch!

45

Today is my 45th birthday! I have to admit, I’m not liking 45 too much, if only because it rounds up to 50, and that makes me feel a little old. But, old or not, I had a fantastic day with my family!

I decided that today I wanted to go to Ste. Genevieve, MO, a town I’ve been meaning to visit for years. It was founded as a village in 1735, and was the first organized European settlement in what is now Missouri. It was transferred to Spain following the French and Indian War, but eventually the Louisiana Purchase made it part of the new United States.

We saw several old buildings, such as the Louis Bolduc House, which was built in the French Creole-style in the 1780s:

Even thought it was hot, we had a nice time walking around this historic district and stopping in some of the shops. Sadly, the Christmas store wasn’t open, but the sweet shop was, and Ladybug bought me a pineapple rock candy stick! We also stopped in the tea and spice shop, which smelled absolutely amazing. While we were in town, we stopped for ice cream at Sara’s Ice Cream as well….I had a strawberry cone, and it was really delicious!

I did try to give myself a heart attack on my birthday, though, because we had to drive across the Mississippi River at Chester, IL, on a bridge I really hate!

While we were in Chester, we saw the Popeye statue:

On the way home, we stopped at Starbucks so I could get my free birthday coffee…I love that they wrote a little note on the cup!

I celebrated my birthday in Animal Crossing, too…I was very sad that Roald didn’t come to my party, though.

Bunny, Ladybug, and Chickadee teamed up to make me a chocolate malt cake, and it was outstanding (we were all a little worried the candles were going to burn the house down, though…even though there were only 39 of them)!

It was a lovely day celebrating with my family!