The Kitchen Mantle: Year 2, Episode 1: It's a Cold, Cold World

I've decided to "restart" my Kitchen Mantle countdown since it's a new year.  Last year, I ended up with 11 different scenes spread out across the year.  The scenes are both visually interesting and (more importantly) designed to be played with and used by my two-and-a-half year old son (soon to be three-year-old son, wow does time fly)!

Anyhow, the last mantle set-up was my annual Christmas Village (see here).  For the first new scene of 2021, I'm sticking with the idea of cold and snow and returning to an Arctic set-up.  

My son absolutely loved this entire set-up.  Every few days, I'd add another vehicle or research station to the scene and he'd be super interested all over again.  The one downside to the mantle is that it's extremely hard to get a good, clear photograph of the entire thing at once - so let's take a closer look at some of the highlights. 

We begin with the largest of the research stations.  Pretty much all of the builds that you see in this particular set-up are official LEGO builds (with the exception of some landscape stuff I did which you'll see in a moment).  I like the bright orange color scheme - and if you combine that with some of the new white base plates, you get an amazing Arctic scene with minimal effort!  

The bulk of the vehicles can be seen here - we've got a gigantic saw, a huge drill, a mobile research lab, and even a crane of sorts.  There's also a dog sled team - my son and I ended up naming the four dogs that make up the sled team as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta.  Might as well learn the Greek alphabet as well as the English alphabet at an early age, right?!  

I mentioned earlier in the post that I did build a little bit of landscape for more fun and play.  Here, you can see the ramp I built up to the larger, snowy plateau.  You can also make out the Snowplow in the lower corner - that vehicle ended up being my son's favorite part of the entire set-up!  

On the backside of the snowy plateau is a small, frozen waterfall along with a bit of forest and some "wild" animals.  My son didn't find the polar bear all that entertaining but he sure loved the mammoth!  I think the fact that he got to "chisel" the mammoth out of the ice blocks helped to add to his fun and enjoyment of that creature.  For another look at the waterfall, you can check out this Minifigure Museum post I did where I was able to make extra use of this particular scenery build!  

Finally, you can't spend all your time in the Arctic with no one to get in touch with people back home.  Luckily for our Arctic explorers, we have a mail plane that is outfitted with bright red skis (and a bright red mailbox tucked away in the forest for sending and receiving letters)!  

Overall, this was a fun set-up to put together - and definitely a fun one for my son to play with.  I'm still working on figuring out what I'm going to do next...I have some ideas though - and I think some of my Christmas LEGO presents will come in handy!  

Stay tuned for more LEGO builds - both official and custom.  I'm working hard to keep the LEGO blog humming along and I appreciate your readership and comments!