The Old Curiosity Club discussion
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Kim wrote: "Here's one of the dining room village I finished Sunday, any hill you see is a book."Wow! That is extraordinary. I love it! Has it taken you a long time to build up that collection?
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Kim, That is fantastic! I have a very small Dicken's Village set for at Christmas and a miniature Dicken's Village set made of cold cast porcelain that I leave up year round. I don't have enough room to have more of the full size ones. I also love Christmas decorations but are trying to scale back and give some of them to my children. I just love yours.
Hi, all. I just heard about this group and it fits in with my goal of reading all of Dickens. I'm looking forward to joining some of the discussions here.
Linda wrote: "Welcome to the group, Sue! :)."
Thank you Linda! I'm looking forward to joining in with the next book when the group starts it.
Kim wrote: "Thirty years probably. A little more than that now that I think about it. My mom loved decorating for Christmas and would spend all summer "planning" her decorations for that year, but her decorati..."Kim, what amazing photos. So many lights!
Welcome, Vicki!
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The best of times ... the Christmas season always begins for me when I see pictures of your decorations.
Vicki wrote: "Hi, all. I just heard about this group and it fits in with my goal of reading all of Dickens. I'm looking forward to joining some of the discussions here."Welcome Vicki. :)
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Welcome Vicki! It's nice to meet you. Have fun while you're here. You caught me in the middle, ok in the beginning, of decorating for Christmas, just in case you were wondering. :-)
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The village on the shelf above the dining room is my Dicken's village. It's Department 56 and because of that (mostly) it stays up year round. I tell people if I have to pay $80 for a building it's staying up longer than two months. I'm out of room to put any thing else in the garage anyway. We have a three car garage and can't get a car in it. :-)
Kim, your pictures got me interested this afternoon so I searched ebay and found 3 more of the miniatures and ordered them. They are Dept. 56 also as the larger ones are, but the miniatures are rather hard to find. I need to find my catalog somewhere which shows all the miniatures. I wonder how many I am missing still. I don't think they sold too well because they are all about 1986-87 or so and then they were discontinued. I bought the first group new but then found the others later and preowned. I love them because they don't take up much room and because they are Dickens. I will try to post a picture later.
Why set up Christmas so early? It is not even Halloween yet? Really?
Haaze, Kim’s decorations are not merely that. They turn her house into a destination and sight to behold. It’s absolutely stunning and the amount of work that she puts into it is commendable. I was absolutely awestruck the first time I saw photos of her house. :)
I was wondering whether there is a reading schedule for the group to show which books will be read in which month? I had a little rummage but couldn't see it, although admittedly I am famous for not seeing things that are right in front of me! Could someone point me in the right direction please, if there is one?Thank you!
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Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol
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Hi Sue
Our reading schedule is one that follows the order of the novels as written by Dickens. When we finish NN at the end of November we will then read one of the Christmas Books. It is our habit to enjoy and read one of the Christmas books each December in the order they were written. This year, since we read his fifth and last Christmas book last year, should be A Christmas Carol as it was the first of his Christmas books.
Then, in January, we will begin The Old Curiosity Shop. A reading schedule will be posted for that novel in the coming weeks.
It has also been our habit that between the major novels we take a breather and read a couple of the Sketches By Boz.
For now, do you have the reading schedule for the remainder of NN?
Hope this helps.
Peter wrote: "Our reading schedule is one that follows the order of the novels as written by Dickens. When we finish NN at the end of November we will then read one of the Christmas Books. It is our habit to enjoy and read one of the Christmas books each December in the order they were written. This year, since we read his fifth and last Christmas book last year, should be A Christmas Carol as it was the first of his Christmas books.Then, in January, we will begin The Old Curiosity Shop. A reading schedule will be posted for that novel in the coming weeks...."
Thank you Peter, that's great!
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I haven't seen any of the miniatures around for a long time either. The new ones though, seem to be getting smaller and smaller each year to the point that I don't buy them anymore, they just seem too small for my village. But as for you, happy hunting!
Peter wrote: "For now, do you have the reading schedule for the remainder of NN? ..."Sorry Peter, I didn't respond to this part but yes, I do have the reading schedule for NN. I'll probably wait for A Christmas Carol though, as I'm in the middle of a couple of other books at the moment.
Thanks!
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Hi Haaze, I get asked that a lot. That and, "How long does it take you to set all this up? (a little over a month), "How high is your electric bill? (around $400 in December, but we're switching to LED slowly, so I'm hoping it helps), and "Why do you love Christmas so much?
I always ask people if they want the short answer or the long answer and recommend the short one since it is only three words and the long answer goes on and on. The short answer is "it's Jesus' birthday" and the long answer is something like this. Christmas is very important to me for the reason I've already said. When I was a little kid I spent a lot of time in the hospital. Back then when I would have a seizure I'd wake up with a panicked mother and in the hospital, now I wake up right here. But back then it would be in the hospital. Also, when I was little the pain from the seizure when I woke up would scare me it would be so bad and I would ask Jesus to help me and I would always feel His arms around me, which didn't help with the pain at all, but it helped me get through it. Each and every time I felt Him there. His birthday became very special to me. Also, a hospital is better at Christmas (along with everything else) then at any other time of the year. They used to decorate it, and people would come around caroling dressed like Dickens characters, and Santa would come and visit us, and it was just better. So is everything else. When I would be in the hospital at any other time of the year it always helped to know that Christmas is never any more than 364 days away, usually much closer.
My mom used to go crazy over my birthday, I used to get the feeling she was excited that I got to the next one. There were balloons, and streamers, and cake, and ice cream, and friends, and presents, on and on, and I thought if I get such a big production over my birthday, Jesus deserved much more than we were actually giving Him, so once I was out on my own, my birthday decreased and His birthday increased.
Also, lots of people come to see our decorations, outside and inside, and begin coming on Thanksgiving and stop coming around New Year's Day, so to get it all finished in time we have to start in October. And all those people who get to come and see two or three I can't remember right now, full sized sleighs out front, and toy soldiers, and painted scenes and trains, also see two nativities, one at each door. Inside along with all these Dickens' houses and other villages, one is Bethlehem, and while there are 295 houses and 95 carolers (something like that), there are also 22 nativities. And each tree has a nativity ornament somewhere on it, the kids love to go look for them. However, that's not the only reason I decorate, someone complimented us once on reaching out to people sharing our love of Jesus through decorations, and I had to tell them they were wrong. Christmas would still be Christmas if I never saw another person, so even if I was stranded on a deserted island - a cold one hopefully - as long as my house and garage were with me, come October we would start carrying the totes into the house. Maybe in September since there wouldn't be anyone else around to complain about it. :-)
Christmas just makes the world a better place. My world anyway. Sorry this was so long, I bet you all wish you could have picked the short answer. :-)
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I would never have picked the short answer, the so-called long one not being one iota too long! Thanks for those moving words.
Tristram wrote: "Kim,I would never have picked the short answer, the so-called long one not being one iota too long! Thanks for those moving words."
Agreed. So glad I was able to read the long one!
Kim wrote: "I always ask people if they want the short answer or the long answer and recommend the short one since it is only three words and the long answer goes on and on."I love this! So glad I got to know the reasons for your love of Christmas.
Blessings!
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https://photos.google.com/album/AF1Qi...
Kim wrote: "Thanks Cheryl, we are now working on the big tree in the living room, the rest of the trees are done. ..."When I click the link you gave, the page won't open but gives me an error message. I'm sorry I can't see your photos, but I was glad to see the one of your dining room village included earlier in this thread. :-)
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I love this! So glad..."
Why I love Christmas Part 2, or 3, or 4, I don't know, there are a lot of parts:
When we were kids there were two old ladies (they seemed old to us anyway) lived up the street from us. These ladies were the two grumpiest people I have ever known. If we walked by their house one of them would open the window and yell, "Don't you walk on the grass, we just got finished cutting it!" if we ran down the alley the window would once again open and we would hear "If any of you run over our tulips, I'm calling your parents!" and if we were playing tag, or baseball, or whatever kids play in the yard next door it would be, "If you knock over any of our tomato plants I'm calling the police!" Luckily we never knocked over any tomatoes. Or tulips. But then Christmas would come and they would put lights in the windows and they would have a Christmas tree with purple lights on it in their living room window, and a wreath on the door. Now, turn your clocks ahead to October and a whole bunch of us kids were going trick-or-treating together, back in the days before the parents went along with you. We'd go up Main Street and down Back Street and we were done, we only have two streets in our town. But when we got to the old ladies home no one wanted to go there, but I remembered those lights in the windows and wreath on the door. These ladies decorated for the birthday of Jesus, they decorated for Christmas, they can't be all bad, so I would drag the rest of the kids with me to their house. Not only did they answer the door without some sort of weapon in their hands, but they didn't just give us candy, they invited us inside, they gave us hot chocolate and more candy than we got from everyone else combined. They took pictures of us together, they took pictures of us one by one, they took pictures of us standing with them, it was amazing. And we never would have stopped there if it wouldn't have been for that purple lighted tree. That's what Christmas does.
Kim wrote: " And we never would have stopped there if it wouldn't have been for that purple lighted tree. That's what Christmas does."I love it, Kim. :)
That brought tears to my eyes, Kim. Now you know that I am a Christmas nut, too. I just got the Christmas trees to go with my Dickens Village miniatures. Two of my new ones arrived yesterday and I have one more to arrive. I also have 2 on my watch list on ebay, but I think I may be out of room on my vintage chest in our entry where they live year round. They are getting pretty crowded.
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Happy decorating to you both.
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Whenever someone says to me, "where are you going to put that?" looking at my latest Christmas village find, I tell them there's always room for houses. And people. And trees. I must have a few hundred people. :-)
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Let me see some of your pictures Bobbie. If you can figure out how to post them easier than I can that is. For the person who posts the illustrations you would think posting my own photos wouldn't be this difficult. :-)
Amazing stories and amazing decorations, Kim! What a treat for your grandchildren and for anyone who walks into your house!
Kim,Your pictures are lovely ... warm and glowing!
And I loved your stories. Truly. Thank you for sharing.
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Yes, Sorry you are having those problems, Kim.
Kim wrote: "Bobbie wrote: "That brought tears to my eyes, Kim. Now you know that I am a Christmas nut, too. I just got the Christmas trees to go with my Dickens Village miniatures. Two of my new ones arrived y..."I will try to post some pictures later but most of the ones I have are from 2013 so very out of date, but may post one or two of my grands looking, playing with my very small Dicken's Village, the regular size one. But for now, I will post the link to my pinterest board of my quilts I have made. If you look through them you will find several Christmas quilts and items, if you are interested. Many of my decorations are things I have made through the years, including my nativity set which I painted 40 years ago during my ceramics phase.
https://www.pinterest.com/bgm444/my-q...
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Bobbie
What wonderful quilts you produce. They were a joy to see. Thanks for posting.
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The Old Curiosity Club
Books mentioned in this topic
A Christmas Carol (other topics)A Christmas Carol (other topics)
The Pickwick Papers (other topics)
The Pickwick Papers (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Charles Dickens (other topics)Bryan Kozlowski (other topics)
Thomas Hardy (other topics)
Thomas Hardy (other topics)
Good luck with all your Christmas prep this year, Kim! I love seeing all the photos of your villages and decorations, it's always so impressive.