Legos are making a come back...

Are they really or are they just making sets for the adults today that played with them as kids? Ill tell you right now that I never owned a set of Legos or any plastic bricks at all. I grew up in the country where I was an outside kid and never seen the inside of my own house. That being said, I had several friends that moved to the area that came from cities where they did not get a lot of "Sun" time. These friends shown me what fun was on rainy days. We build things that could travel to the moon and back, sail the open waters, battle evil robots, and whatever our imaginations could think of. It was great. Back then in the 80's Lego bricks where in the simplest form where you can only build square objects which back then you did not really care about as long as you had enough to build.

While I was growing up I vowed to make sure my children had Legos to play with. At first they were interested and played with a few sets but it did not stick with them as much as it had for me. According to Lego packaging, I can play with Legos up to the age of 99 years old. That's fine with me I still have years let to go. 

I enjoy building sets as they are intending and marketed for. That is just me. I also look at Legos as something that you can share with your family, with your kids and grand kids. It is great way to have conversation with others while working on a set or personal design. 

Your children can grow up with Legos. Their entire life can be just Legos and still have a great life.

Duplo - ages 2 and up

  They are large bricks that tiny and can grab on to and hold without any problems. The bricks can be put together with little help from the older playmate. They are also large enough that they do not fit into the mouth of the intended party. Duplos come in several different styles and sets why your child can learn and use their imagination to help their minds to grow and develop. 

LEGO Juniors - ages 4-7 and up

  These are great sets for this age group. They are the same size bricks as those of larger sets but have fewer pieces as the large sets. They still have all the fun. These sets do not have the large amount of detailed small bricks that older players enjoy. I have a race car set that I bought for when our nephew builds and smashes up during a race like he sees on television.

LEGO Play sets
This covers everything else from Lego. There are so many sets available from city style building sets to carnival rides, Harry Potter to Batman. Disney has several sets you can choose from as well.


There are so many programs out there for children to learn with Legos that you may never known about. Foe instance a project that I was involved with for a couple of years is a program called FIRST LEGO League. This program, like Legos in general are divided up by age groups. This program is world wide and it gets the kids involved in many activities leading up to a robot battle. I was involved with the FLL where we had won in the local events but fell short at the State level of competition. it is a lot of building, programming, strategizing on how to build your robot to do different tasks in the fastest time. Team building and getting everyone involved is a key component of having a successful and winning season.

To this day in 2016 at the age of 47, I still buy Lego sets and I build each one piece by piece page by page until I have the complete model. Whether it is a Haunted House, a lodge cabin, garbage truck, or a city building, I enjoy them all. I buy what I like with what money I can gather up.

Stick around and see what I'm building next. As always, if you have questions or concerns, please me.

Tiny House Movement

The “Tiny House” movement is on the rise and I’m working on getting a ticket. The economy over the past few years have gotten shakier than ever. There are people that have been forced out of their jobs and had lost their “Dream” homes. Out of the fire and coming in to the main stream “Tiny Houses” have seen the light and people have realized that they have a better life by living smaller.

It was just a few years ago my wife told me about a man who lives “off the grid” and loves it. His lives in a 14’X14’ wood home with solar panels and a good size front porch. Here is a link to his website. http://www.simplesolarhomesteading.com/  I was brought up like most other people to live better than how you did when you were growing up plus at the time of the conversation we had two teenage boys who I could not conceive being cramped in to a small 200sq foot house. I need room to relax after a hard day’s work and didn’t want to be stacked on top of each other. She again told me that we could design a home that we can expand in any way we wanted to achieve the effect that we desired.

            Right now we live in a house that is over 2500sq feet. We also have her mother that we moved in to help her out with health and bills. My wife also explained to me that the less you spend on monthly expenses, the more money we would have in our pockets to spend on something else. I love to be able to use solar panels to power my home and save that energy money to put towards a family vacation or whatever we want. For example, we build our home at 600sq feet on our property. It’s not going to take much energy to power the place so the solar array wouldn’t have to be so large. Therefore we could add “Extra” comforts that we normally put in a house like heated floors. While some people wouldn’t have that expense living in SC, based on the size of the house.

            I started thinking about it and it started making sense to me to start downsizing now and building what we want with the best layout that made more practical sense. Let’s just look at the house we have now. As far as we can find out, the house was built in the late 1800s so by now there are so many problems with the layout. It’s a 3 bedroom house and these rooms are very large. The 3^rd room was added to the house much later and added to the back porch and house. The large hallway is 6ft wide. There are 2 bathrooms but are small. The kitchen is large but not at all laid out like it should be. We have 3 other large rooms living room, Sitting room, and a front entry room. The entire house has 10.5ft ceilings. There is a lot of energy use to heat and cool the house. There is a lot of wasted space that we don’t need or use.

            We started shopping at a store called Ikea. In the Concord NC location, there is a house that is showcased that is just under 600sq foot. It is only a two bedroom layout but the bathroom is much larger than the one we have now. With a couple adjustments to add a set of stairs, we can add the two needed rooms to an upstairs area. The Ikea had shown us how to set up storage units in a way we can have larger spaces for what we need. Ikea has a lot of great products that will fit your every need.

            After long talks with my wife we started looking at a transformation a transformation from a large house down to a small home. While looking at this we found a website about “tumbleweed” houses. http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ These are even smaller homes with a smaller footprint. Another advantage is that they are designed and built to be taken to other locations. This is where I got some of my inspirations. The website shares stories about several people/couples that have left their former lives of big houses to a much smaller more comfortable living.

            It wasn’t much later that we started looking at what we can do to get to this stage. The stage of smaller living that we can take anywhere we can. We looked at trailers to build on with much of them being out of or price range. My wife did more research and found that there are some people building these homes on the trailers of old campers. They were strong enough to hold the weight plus many had the braking system already build in them. At most we would have to put some extra metal on them for added support for the weight and the building of the home. So she started looking through Craigslist for a trailer that was cheap and able to get moved to our house. It wasn’t long before she found one. It was a good price so we bought it. I post a few pictures of it on facebook and my friends said it would be nice once it was fixed up. They didn’t understand that there was no way that I was going to put money in to this camper only to have it collapse on me later. There were all kinds of leaks on the outer metal shell that the wood in the walls were rotten. There were buckles everywhere. I didn’t care, I was going to take it all apart down to the trailer and then build it back up again this time the way that I want it. Here are a few pictures of what I have done so far. I still have a long way to go. I will post lots more information here as the project grows.

 

Lone Ranger Legos

I have just finished putting together the last set that I received as a Christmas gift.
The set that are shown are all I have been able to buy.
The Stagecoach 79108.
Colby City Showdown 79109.
Constitution Train Chase 79111.

 

The following pictures are of those I arranged as Christmas decorations. I like Lego trains so I added one to the scene. I also like The Walking Dead TV show. See if you can locate any Zombies here.

 

There are so many sets that I am behind on buying.

 

Once I have the cats gone from my Lego area I can more sets back together. They like to play with them and move the figures around the house while we are a sleep.

New Story

I am putting a story together based on the movie character “Leatherface” from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. As some of you may know that I played this character in a Haunted House this past Halloween. I find the story from the original Hopper movie great. There was no gore to the movie just a lot of buildup, sound, and surprise. I will be writing the story from the view point of Leatherface. It will be continuing that will be posted over time, it maybe a page or idea everyday or so and there could be a bit of editing to older entries. So if you find the story is more puzzling to read and doesn’t flow real well, please contact me and I will rewrite it so it can make sense to you. I will only use one label “Leatherstory”. The main page will be "edited and added to so look for it in the same place every week.

So please look for it weekly.

Direct email

The Leatherface Chronicles

 

            Much of the time I stand here looking out of the landscape of our immensely large back yard with the tall grass blowing around in the wind where you can see rusted cars parked throughout the clearing and overflowing through the tree line. I listen to a calming song over the old AM transistor radio that my grandmother listen too when she cooked for us years ago, with the warm meat and flowing blood of the fresh kill reminds me of the first time I took the life out of another living thing.

            Growing up in Travis County Texas was a fun time in my life. The entire family would get together and have cook outs that would last for hours. Back in the 60s the family was much larger with many political and official connections. The larger annual gatherings brought in people from all over Texas and were used as a ceremonial event for coming of age to those male family members that were turning thirteen. Years earlier while I was real young I was being watched by my overweight aunt who would come over and sit with us while the family went out to handle “family business”. It was at this time she taught me a little about the business. With living on a farm, we had plenty of animals. While we walked around in search of a possible killing, a small kitten started rubbing at my feet and let out a small “meow”. My aunt with her raspy voice yelled to me “Grab that little beast”. So I picked it up and cuddled it like it was a small newborn baby so it would feel safe and try not to escape. We walked up to the butcher room that was attached to the backside off the kitchen. I was not allowed to go in before now. I looked up and my aunt and she gave me the nod to assured me that it was okay to go in. To a small child looking up at everything that the family has built on for years made me feel honored and proud. To think I would be able to use these tools of the trade made me feel proud. She helped me up to the edge of a large dark would table that was covered with stains of the past. She put on a large pair of leather gloves took the kitten from my arms and held it down on its back. The leather gloves protected her from the screaming and clawing that the kitten was doing to protect itself from what was going to next. With the other hand she pulled over from the side of the table a clean canvas roll with bulges on all sides. She told to take it and unroll it out. I pulled the neatly tied knot that looks it the ones on Christmas presents. As I opened it, the tools shined in the sunlight as each on became visible. They were each cleaned and unsoiled. The handles on these tools were darker than the table and were smooth to the touch. These are the only tools I have ever seen outside the rusty saws and farm tools in the barn. She told me to pick anyone I wanted to use. There was a small awl that had a little button type handle that fit perfect in my small seven year old hands. With my left hand I but the butt of the handle and slowly put it in the mouth of the screaming kitten that I was just holding like a baby just moments before. The awl was so sharp at the tip that it just slid in like momma’s rose torn in my finger with I pick one for her. I can feel it hitting the back of the skull so with the right hand I make a small little fist and slam it down on top of my other hand. This also made the kitten fight a little harder but kept it’s head still while the rest of the body was scratching and fighting to get away from it’s soon to be death. The awl was small and made a small hole that caused just very little bleeding. There was just enough blood that it was pooling in the back of the throat. I stood over it watching the kitten scream and claw under the powerful grip of the leather glove that was getting covered with pattered blood from the kitten spitting up in order to breath. Blood from the back of the head was pooling under the body and absorbed in the fur of its head and back. With all the fighting and jerking of its head it made the hole larger and the blood to flow more and now running out from under the slow moving body of this kitten…………..MORE TO COME

"The Lego Movie"

As some of you may know already, 2014 brings a long list of movies. One of the hottest movies everyone’s waiting for is “The Lego Movie”. In the US the movie comes out on the 7^th of February. It has a host of star voices. It needs to be on every child’s want to watch list. And as Lego goes, If there is a movie about Legos, there should be Lego set to go alone with them. So they have put together 14 sets to be bought and put together so you can re-enact the scenes from the movie. That also includes mini-fig sets that are in packs that you have to buy enough in order to get a full set. Here are a few links to the action.

The Lego Movie Lego Sets

The Lego Movie

Plants Vs Zombies

If you have not yet played “Plants Vs Zombies” by PopCap games, you are missing a lot of fun. It is only .99 for the app through the app store. You can also download it for android. It starts out easy on lower levels and build up to harder levels. As long as I’ve playing both 1 and 2, they don’t seem to be patterned like the 80s video games. After a while you get frustrated because zombies will hit you sooner or later. You can play these are much as you want without having to worry about too many lives lost where you have to go to Facebook to get your friends to help you out. Give both versions a try you will be glad you did. I don’t know why it took me so long to start playing.

OSnap App

OSnap is an app that I used on my iPhone to create a “Stop Motion” video of me putting together a tree house Lego set. It is really easy to use. My problem is that even though there is an Onion skin layer so you can see the previous picture and try to line it up, it is better to find a tripod or someway to steady your phone so there is not so much movement. As you can see in my 10 sec video it didn’t take me long to fill up the space I had on my phone and you can see the shakiness of the video as well. This app is a good place to start if you like to create stop motion style videos. There is also lighting issues with my video. I just put this together real quick to show you how easy it is. So now that Christmas Day has past and you have all your new toys, create something fun. this app is for iPads, iPhones, and iPods, I think that have it for androids too. lets see what you can do.