My LEGO Winter Village 2024: Now with More Lights!

Last year, I took a 64x64 stud base plate and turned it into a LEGO Winter Village complete with lights (both inside the buildings and outside with working street lamps).  This year, I doubled my village by adding another 64x64 stud base plate!

To double the village's real estate, I had a few challenges that I needed to overcome. First, my original single base plate was not designed for me to add to it in future years. For starters, three of the four sides had buildings up against the edge of the plate with open backs. It looked fine (and allowed my son to play inside each building), but the open backs of a building would be dumb if they were adjacent to a second base plate.  My solution was to build a new open-back building on the new base plate in such a way that if I pushed the two plates together, the two building "halves" would seamlessly combine into one large building.  

The new base plate holds a Christmas tree stand, a bakery, and the Winter Village Fire Station

I designed a bakery to serve as the backside of the same building on the original plate that housed the toy shop.  For the upper story, I continued the apartment that was above the toy shop by adding in a fireplace (that lights up), a cozy chair, floor lamp, and a small table with chairs.  The downstairs bakery has a display case in the window for cookies, a table of different flavors of cupcakes, plus a large pie, and even a cooler for ice cream treats during those summer months.  

Another challenge I had was figuring out a way to make the village "flow" from the old setup to the new addition. This required some remodeling of what I built last year, but luckily, it wasn't too bad once I came up with a plan to add a sidewalk to the new base plate around the backside of the toy shop building.

It was difficult to get my cell phone camera in position to take decent pictures (especially with the lights on) but here are a few more shots of my new Winter Village.

If a minifigure could take a plane over the Winter Village, this is what they might see:

As you can see, I blended the river across the two plates as well as the sidewalk.  I also used my head more this time around in case I ever decide to add a third plate - now there will be a road to work off of to easily connect this plate to whatever comes next! 

While the lights certainly look nice with the room's overhead lights on, the real charm I think comes when I turn the house lights off and simply use the tiny illuminated blocks!

Also worth mentioning is the fact that the traffic light actually changes colors!  

And a few shots of what I (mostly) did last year.  In the photo below, you can see the toy shop front as well as the side of the bakery that I built to connect to the toy shop building.

I had a lot of fun building this with my son (and I know he had a lot of fun building it as well).  It's quite likely I'll tackle adding a third base plate next year - though what exactly will go on that plate is currently a mystery to me!