Tag: Christmas

Christmas Village Fun 2023

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date December 20, 2023

Kelvin's Christmas Village 2023 — Kelvin's Christmas Village and Railroad 2023

Plus five ideas for a great Christmas village

Let’s get started with some pictures. I always have fun trying to take close-ups in the Christmas village. It’s not easy as I need to hold the camera very low to get a good angle. But I like the result. The fun part is to let the imagination take over and pretend you are a child again who can easily invent a story behind each scene.

The Pewterer gets a new stove. This scene accents a Dept. 56 Dickens Village piece.

Idea two: Create mini story scenes all over the set. These guys unloading a pot-bellied stove invite all kinds of imaginative speculation. How heavy were those kinds of stoves? Is the boy on the right by the lamp waving at the wagon driver?

Welcoming Grandpa at the railroad station in front of the village square.

Idea one. Notice the multiple levels on the upper right side. I find multiple levels add interest. They also allow for hidden things like wires and railroad tunnels and improve sight lines for viewers too.

Village Pewterer buys a new stove — Note the guys struggling with the stove in front of the horse.

Conversation with the lamplighter.

More on idea three: Emphasize themes you love. I grew up in Western NY and served in a church outside Syracuse NY for 22 years, so I celebrate with snow features. I loved sledding as a kid too! Actually my wife is the bigger snow fan.

Singing around the manger scene outside the church! This scene relates in many ways. For me, the dominant one is our worship of Jesus as we celebrate his birth. Carol singing is a central part of that worship for me.

Idea three: Major in things you love! As a retired pastor, my Christmas village has four churches and several carol singers too. I also love Lionel O-gauge and this year I have three big loops and two short diorama tracks to celebrate the hobby.

Conversation with the lamplighter — The camera provides focus on the conversation with the lamplighter.

Upper Village Square — Having been raised in a wood-heated home, I can relate to the wood-splitters.

The skating rink in the daytime.

More on idea four: Use different areas. Here the separate area allows for a focus item, the skating rink.

Upper Village Square.

Idea four. Divide the display into various areas. I have used this to accommodate varying time periods, slight differences in display pieces that don’t work well side by side, and different themes.

The skating rink — The house behind is a grandson favorite.

Idea five is no secret to anyone who has tried making a Christmas village, but to anyone who is just beginning it is an essential tip. Use layers of cloth. For example, to keep things white, I use white sheets for the under-layer. Then, a snow-white felt-like or gauze-like cloth makes the top layer(s). The layers hide the piece of blue shiny foam that creates the icy pond look in one section. They hid all the power wires for both house lights and accessory wiring, even one whole power strip. On the hill particularly, the layers smooth over and hide canyons in the woodwork creating the smooth hillsides that you see. They also smooth out the edges wherever there is a foam block underneath to raise a house up a little.

Christmas Village and Railroad in Operation 2023

And one extra idea. If you have a village you love, don’t take it down too soon. It can give you joy all winter! Ours does for us! Merry Christmas!

Tags Christmas, Christmas trains, Christmas Village, model railroad, Train Village

Journal Joy Notes Who Am I

50th Christmas Tree

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date January 13, 2020

This year was JoAnne’s and my 50th Christmas. The grand tree pictured above as the centerpiece of our Christmas decor this year (2019) is our 50th Christmas tree. This year’s version (an artificial tree) is complete with train village and beautiful snowflakes made by our grandson. (For you who subtracted 1970 from 2019 and only got 49, please remember that in counting our Christmases, you count both 1970 and 2019 which will result in a count of 50.) I could not help but reflect how things have changed over the years. Memories flooded my mind and I paused again to count my many blessings. My mind went back to what our tree looked like on our first Christmas together.

I was looking at a photo album the other day for something else and there it was–a picture of JoAnne’s and my first Christmas tree together. What a contrast between the small little coffee table version that brightened our mobile home living room and the what is the focus of Christmas trim in our living room this season. That first Christmas tree was the natural kind you get by finding a tree growing out on the home farm and cutting it down. Sometimes we thinned a stand of trees and used just a top for Christmas. Notice that on our first tree, many of the ornaments were homemade. JoAnne made small holes in both ends of egg shells, blew the contents out, and then painted the shells and attached strings. You can see gold, silver, and green eggs on the tree. I made ornaments by folding cardboard into geometric shapes and covering them with foil wrapping paper. Then we added candy canes and tinsel. Notice that the side of the picture says April, 71. That was when we got the film developed. Remember those days?

50 year ornamant — An original ornament that has hung on all fifty trees.

If you look closely on both trees you will find this ornament. For the record, it is a homemade dodecahedron with the original foil wrapping paper. But what is special is that it has hung on all fifty of our Christmas trees. It has gotten a little shabby looking so some years JoAnne insisted that I hang it in the back, but it has been there to witness all those Christmases. It has appeared in seven or eight different houses. That makes it special.

Tags celebration, Christmas, holidays, Our 50th Year

Journal

Christmas Project

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date January 5, 2020

doll house front view — December project for my granddaughter

My daughter’s dollhouse rebuilt

I was quite busy in the weeks before Christmas. Four days in the hospital for tests for heart arrhythmia didn’t help. But enough about that. This post is about the very grandfatherly project that consumed my last week before Christmas. Of course, my birthday is that week too. Many years ago-likely in the early eighties- I had made Keely a dollhouse for Christmas. Well, we had preserved it in attics for decades and Keely decided that this was a great year to rebuild it for Annabelle. So I did.

Outside redo

I repainted the outside and added the acrylic windows with trim. I made new pillars and added the walkway. The ground trim and trees were Keely’s idea. I removed the old red plastic roof and installed the individual cedar shakes – about 1200 of them.

The Inside

doll house rear view after Keely and Annabelle filled it — Annabelle’s Christmas doll house

I also removed the felt that imitated loud 70’s era shag rugs and installed modern floor imitations that Keely provided. Keely bought the furniture you see and she and Annabelle filled up the empty rooms. The one piece of furniture left from Keely’s childhood (JoAnne had saved the original dollhouse contents) is the homemade brown wooden bed in the upper left bedroom.

Grandpa’s reward

For Annabelle, this is totally the year of the unicorn. But this Christmas present even got her off topic. She was fascinated. Of course, she has no idea how much work went into it. But it is enough to to know she enjoys it and it has a prominent spot in her bedroom. I think Keely was glad too.

Tags Annabelle, Christmas, projects, Woodworking

Journal Joy Notes Who Am I

Christmas Village 2018 completed

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date December 5, 2018

Many of you have been watching the construction of my 2018 Christmas train village as I have posted some progress reports on Facebook. You have been patiently waiting for the “finished product.” Here it is, though tweaks continue. Pictures are in the gallery below. It’s really about interacting with people. That’s one reason why my picture of Sam is the featured picture. Already the grandchildren have run the trains. JoAnne has hosted some ladies of the church who surveyed the set before it was quite finished. Sarah Oliver sat Jake down next to the tracks and his eyes followed the engines as they moved! Then Tuesday, Mike and Karen Ahijevych stopped in to help with the preparation of the church’s Every Door Direct mailing and took a moment to see the trains too. In the next two weeks we will also host three open houses, two for our church family and one for our neighborhood. JoAnne bakes special treats for these occasions.

A question that I am asked every year is: “What is new this year?” There always seems to be something. Last year, one big new thing was changing all the track over to FasTrack. Another was a new Lion Chief Patriot engine. Also last year I bought a Snowy Village Dept 56 church, and was given a Dickens Village Dept 56 church by Ken and Carolyn D’Annolfo. In addition a small country meeting-house type church showed up at our church tag sale, perfect for a pastor whose church meets in an old-style New England Methodist meeting house. So I gained three beautiful churches last year. This year the new items are “Polar Express.” I have a new North Pole station and a Polar Express train complete with the recorded “All aboard” announcement from the movie.

I was thinking about how this came to be. Everyone asks how long I have been doing this. Each year for about 25 years I have had trains around the tree. But each year the project has evolved. It all began when friends in my second church, Bill and Jackie Quick, gave me a classic O-Gauge Lionel set just like the one my brothers and I shared as children. I found three ceramic houses on sale at the local drugstore in East Syracuse and the Christmas hobby began. I couldn’t remember when it started, but Stacey Totoritis Rogan remembered seeing it near its primitive beginning in 1993 on a visit to Kirkville with her parents. It took a big step when the Kirkville parsonage was remodeled around 2001. The display moved upstairs and began to acquire additional houses, accessory wiring, and more than one level. It gained the large front-and-center train station. By then we made no attempt to put presents under the tree. We started inviting children of the church over to run the trains at open house events. In 2013, when we moved to the West Granby parsonage, I had more space so the set grew. But as it has grown more complex, so the time it takes to assemble and dissemble it has increased. However, this year, I was able to assemble it a little quicker, taking only 10 days instead of the usual two weeks.

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Tags Christmas, Christmas trains, family traditions, hospitality

Journal Joy Notes Who Am I

Homemade tree ornaments tell a story

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date December 14, 2017

Tags Christmas, Christmas ornaments, homemade, memories

Journal Joy Notes Who Am I

Christmas Village 2015

Each year I try to get in one post about my Christmas village and railroad. Here it is using Sway. Click on the article to see the pictures. You can expand the picture to full screen. Then in the lower right corner are arrow buttons to click to advance the Sway through the pictures and text parts.

Tags Christmas, Christmas trains, Christmas Village, model railroad, model trains

Journal Joy Notes Who Am I Wisdom

Christmas Decorations Can Tell Your Story

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date January 2, 2016
2 Comments on Christmas Decorations Can Tell Your Story

I’ve been working on a Christmas post in a new program called Sway. Here’s my first try. (Looks like you need to scroll to see it all. )

I think you’ll enjoy it.

Tags Christmas, Christmas ornaments, storytelling

Joy Notes Meditations Wisdom

The Vision of Peace is to be Pursued

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date December 13, 2015

“Peace on earth…”

This morning’s message spoke of the dream of peace that began with the angel announcement to the shepherds on that first Christmas night. Often in our warring world, that ideal seems so far away. But it is up to us to put it into action anyway. Here is a comment by famed Catholic writer Henri Nouwen on the same subject.

Henri Nouwen speaks to our time…

The marvelous vision of the peaceable Kingdom, in which all violence has been overcome and all men, women, and children live in loving unity with nature, calls for its realization in our day-to-day lives. Instead of being an escapist dream, it challenges us to anticipate what it promises. Every time we forgive our neighbor, every time we make a child smile, every time we show compassion to a suffering person, every time we arrange a bouquet of flowers, offer care to tame or wild animals, prevent pollution, create beauty in our homes and gardens, and work for peace and justice among peoples and nations we are making the vision come true.

We must remind one another constantly of the vision. Whenever it comes alive in us we will find new energy to live it out, right where we are. Instead of making us escape real life, this beautiful vision gets us involved.

Tags Christmas, fruits of the Spirit, moral issues today, peace

Americana Journal Joy Notes Who Am I

Christmas Trains for 2014

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How it started

One of my hobbies is model trains, specifically, O-gauge trains running around my Christmas tree. Yes we had a Lionel train which we three Jones brothers shared when I was a boy. But what really started me back in this hobby was the gift of a Lionel train much like the one we had which I received from Bill Quick while I was serving as Pastor at Kirkville Community Wesleyan Church. I promptly ran it around the tree the next Christmas and I’ve been running trains every Christmas since on increasingly more complex set-ups.

The first evolution

One big evolution happened when I moved the trainsets upstairs to the remodeled living room at Kirkville. I was already running two trains. I decided to build a second layer and started collecting ceramic buildings, little figures and antique car models. I had two long bridges too. Then I started inviting children from church over to see the trains. I let them run them too. Of course, they would wreck them occasionally, but I have only had to make major repairs on two cars in all the many years that I have been doing this.

Children in CT love it too

When I moved to Connecticut, God blessed us with a large parsonage living room and my set got even bigger. In the gallery you can see the first two steps in building the multilayer setup. I found my first Dept. 56 buildings (the Cadillac of ceramic Christmas buildings) on a yard sale in our own neighborhood. Again, I invited children from church to come and run the trains. They have so much fun and it is a joy to work with them. This set has only one bridge but it has more room for vignettes. In the gallery are pictures of Shannon and Sam playing with the trains. The Mandirola boys, Schantz family and the Griffin’s also stopped by to check it out but I didn’t have my camera going.

Sam went for hands on

My grandson, Sam, was much more interested in the train set this year too. But he had his own way of investigating it. He wanted to get right in it and touch things. I learned from the preschool teachers that this is a preschooler’s tactile way of learning so I tried to facilitate it as much as possible. It was great fun.

New this year

This year I purchased my first engine specifically decorated for Christmas, a Lionel Santa Flyer. I also added a city block of stores that I made from Ameri-town parts. I started it years ago but this year a change in configuration of the upper track made room for it for the first time. In addition, I purchased new track for the inner lower loop. Last year that loop was hardly operable. This year is was a star. The fastest engine did not derail on it even though it was the tighter loop. It was Lionel Fast Track. If it holds up to the wear and tear of being assembled and disassembled for a couple years I will be a fan for sure. Also new this year, and something I have been watching for, was a ceramic building train station. At last I have a train station for the upper level too.

Tags blessings, Christmas, Christmas trains, family traditions, hobbies, Lionel, model trains

Journal Joy Notes Who Am I

Sam Visits for Christmas

Post author By pastorkelvin
Post date January 2, 2015

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My Grandson Sam is a hands-on guy. He was not very interested in running the trains, though he did that briefly once or twice. He liked the whistle on the train a little better, which is the main reason he might run a train at all. But the main thing he wanted to do this year was pick things up and look at them. So I tried hard to remember the story about the father whose wife kept complaining that he and the boys were destroying the lawn with their sports. The father had replied, “Right now we’re raising boys, not lawn.” So I let Sammie right into the middle of the trainset so he could touch some things. Of course, I had to supervise so he didn’t try to pick up things that were glued down or wired in. But he found plenty of things to touch.

His favorite spot was the left side access alley. I can barely fit in there as it is made just as a place to access electrical switches, position village items and retrieve derailed cars. But Sam found it a great corner, just a boy’s size with lots to touch. He loved the tunnel which he could reach from there. He took one car from the train and pushed it back into the dark. There was a little grade and it would roll back out. He liked the imitation pine trees too. It was pure joy having him visit, a highlight of the season.

Tags Christmas, Christmas trains, grandson Sam, model railroad

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