Holiday Hand Crafted Clay Gingerbread Village and a few added pieces 2023

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I've had a few inquiries about my old village posts, so I tried another round of photos and a shaky, but cute video. I only put up the village when we don't host Christmas Eve or Day..as I need the buffet for serving. So this is an UP year, enjoy!

Now I will do a few closeups---and explanations. I started building the gingerbread houses from terra cotta clay in the early 1980's. They were all cut out from slabs, dried and decorated with 'icing' which was a 'snow' glaze I added my own colorants to. The houses were assembled with tub caulk--supported by canned goods on my kitchen table. I would do maybe 10 houses at a time. 

Buildings I made not in my own collection include: Farm buildings, silo, school, post office, various stores and a lot of custom houses (from photos of people's homes). Each building was then decorated with greens, wreaths, minis and yellow plastic glued into the windows. The homes were all lit by a bulb and cord with a turn switch. I can't tell you how many I made in the 25 years or so I made them. 

I currently safely plug my own village into two breaker boxes.

Sometimes the stories are more interesting than the photos.  I'll try and follow the path of the video.

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The flower shop was added in the early 2000's.  My first job outside of the family business was a flower shop---throughout my art career I often worked in flower shops or ran flower departments in big box stores. 

Sometimes it's a bit like a Christmas Movie with all the stories hidden in the buildings and the people inhabiting buildings surround by the snow covered grounds.

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Inside, I'm working late into the night on a special order---definitely something that happened more often than not.

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This is from a very early memory ---on a relative's farm on Christmas Eve were were taken on a hay ride around the farm...it was cold but magical with a full moon sparkling on the snow! 

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My parents had a cottage, as did my husband's parents. Rural Wisconsin can be very beautiful in the winter... I loved this little piece for the back corner of my buffet.

My sister-in-laws property is very much like this----with a lovely little 'crick' as we called it on their acres and acres of land.

In the video you go past the Sports shop---made for my boys in their youth to celebrate their sports.

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At the end of the street are these three buildings---the Sports shop made for my boys. The Bakery---and the Mercantile. The only new addition to the village this year is the Ooompah-pah band---in honor of Hubby's Great-Great-Grandfather who played coronet in the Municipal Band in Prague. You can just imagine them strolling through the city/village and filling the air with music!

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This is adorable and the uniforms are spot on from the photographs we have found.

 Across from the flower shop---is another commercial piece I couldn't resist the Fishmarket. My family's fresh Fish market was started in 1922 here in the USA, but in Denmark they fished back at least five generations.

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I even see some family resemblance ---the one on the left, looks like my grandfather in his youth, the guy on the right is a dead ringer for my great-great grandfather. 

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Next to the Fish Market of course is a Bait shop---made for my husband, an avid sport fisherman. Oddly this guy looks exactly like my great-grandfather, who fished the North Sea as well as Lake Michigan commercially.

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By the Bait shop aren these two old Codgers ice fishing, it's my husband and his buddy Bob. The pond represents the small lake that is two blocks from our home. Lots of great fishing there!

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Up on the street is the Mercantile---that little store in the neighborhood that was like today's 7/11's with a little bit of everything. 

Behind that is the Chicken Coop Produce building. I had a ChickenCoop art studio as a teen on my parent's vacation property. I cleaned it out, installed screens on the coop doors, and glazed all the windows, and put new tar paper on the roof. Painted all the walls with 3 coats of white-wash and bought a grass rug for the cement floor.  It was my refuge---so I couldn't pass up this Coop to add to our collection.

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Back behind all these buildings are sledders, kids doing what they do---playing in the snow! We had a huge hill one block from our house where sledding was a career for all of the kids who lived in the valley!

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Back down to the pond---is my Sailor representing my oldest son who was a NUKE. 

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The pond represents the Zoo pond in my home town where we skated, and met nour friends. Just saw the stray water pump---lol...it needs to go to the farm store!

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Next to the pond is the park---playground---and the band shell. Our hometown had bandshell concerts every Sunday afternoon in the summer time. My boyfriend played in the band, so I was there most weekends. We live not far from Woodstock Illinois where the bandshell in the square was the one from the movie, 'Groundhogs' Day', really the epitome of the town square type town.

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Across the pond is the Church. Churches were the first buildings I made. I made a Danish Kirke (Church) for my gramma  and this one for my mother. Gramma's is currently still packed somewhere from the damage we had last Spring. This one is reminiscent of our family church in my hometown. I think of the Pastor as my second cousin Pastor Peter. The Caroler is me---I sang in two choirs as teen, though I never solo'd, but often sang in duets for services.

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The church sits on an rise, not far from the river....and the bridge---just like in my hometown.

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The water supply for the pond is an ode to my childhood favorite place...the Root River and it's little 'crick' tributaries. Even in the center of city we had wildlife since we were a couple of blocks from the river.

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Where we live now, well we are allowed to live at the will of the squirrels, chippies, foxes, geese, hawks,  woodchucks, wandering deer and even a few coyotes are spotted regularly. Once we discovered a possum under decking we were repairing, he was quite perturbed at my husband ripping up his 'roof'. 

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The building to the right is the candy shop---reminiscent of the one across from my grade school. Remember Mary Jane's were 2 cents...and dots on a paper were a penny---!! this was my most popular shop to sell. Over the years the candies have disappeared, I will have to make some new ones and add them.

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The Farm Market is reminiscent of all the wonderful farm markets we have visited, and all the produce we grow ourselves. In front, are our USA Service persons : Army, Nurses(2 of my Aunts) and my cousins in the Navy.

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The big fancy house very close to our first home---yes, a three story stone Victorian with a porch and a turret infested with pigeons. It had three apartments and sat on a 1/4 of a city block. OMG...we were insane. We bought it on land contract---fresh out of college--and it was a money pit...eventually we moved from N. Wisconsin to Chicagoland, but I still have dreams of what the house 'could have been' if we could have afforded to finish restoring it. Fifty-four windows and thirteen 

were stained- glass....oh,  it was the Munsters' Nightmare.

In the back of the property which was a carriage house, the upstairs became my clay studio for 10 years.

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More hills and more sledders! Yes, that is an outhouse! 

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Little paths to follow---out into the oblivion of miniature land...of course I wish the buffet was even longer!

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Across the street is a small house...the old guy lives there alone, but he has toys he made on his roof, so he is a kid at heart (as was my Dad a proficient toymaker). 

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Our house is a bit cramped, here---made to match the house as it was in 1984. Updated with the two old farts kissing on the walk.(US)

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I can't duplicate all the stuff we have in the front lawn now--but a nutcracker, snowman and the bird feeder with of course a bunny underneath...lol.

So welcome to our nvillage in 2023. It was with mixed feelings I put this up this year, recognizing my age and limitations. How time has flown since 1980! Our boys have grown up with families of their own,  parents and grandparents no longer with us. 

Also, thoughts of the customers for whom I built so many houses for, where are they now? Are they treasured and full of memories like ours?

Have a Merry Christmas and

Bring Joy into all you do 

and experience this year! 

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I will try and respond to every comment and answer every question.

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The photos in thisblog are my own or have permission to using them from family.

I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions, posts or any products shown. Please do not use photos without linking back to this blog 

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Thank you for your cooperation, 

Sandi

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WE THE PEOPLE

Signed in convention September 17, 1787. Ratified June 21, 1788

A Post on Family, History, Immigration and OUR Constitution (Originally posted in 2019)

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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The above words are from the Preamble for the Constitution 

 from Constitution Center

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 None of these institutions of government, created or recognized by the Constitution, is superior to the Constitution itself. None is superior to the ultimate power of the people to adopt, amend, and interpret what is, after all, the Constitution ordained and established by “We the People of the United States.” 

from Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law. 

Read the full discussion here.

This is why three branches of government protect and defend the WE.

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James Madison, one of the leading architects of the Constitution, put it best in The Federalist No. 49: The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived . . . .  Constitution Center

 So who are WE THE PEOPLE?

In..."1492: Christopher Columbus lands on a Caribbean Island after three months of traveling. Believing at first that he had reached the East Indies, he describes the natives he meets as “Indians.” On his first day, he orders six natives to be seized as servants." Native American History  

Native American History  

"There are three main sources of controversy involving Columbus’s interactions with the indigenous people he labeled “Indians”: the use of violence and slavery, the forced conversion of native peoples to Christianity and the introduction of a host of new diseases that would have dramatic long-term effects on native people in the Americas." Columbus Controversy

The above sites gives every American a condensed version with many links to our ancestors abominable treatment of the indigenous peoples inhabiting this FREE land. Today the 570 tribes still existing under our 'spacious skies' are truly members of WE THE PEOPLE.

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"O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!...

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America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!"

Source for lyrics

We the People... 

and more and more, We came....

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From sea to shining sea.

 WE came on journeys long and hard.

America's first waves of immigration during the 16th to 18th centuries were from the British Isles. WE came for economic opportunities and religious freedom, most often as Protestants. WE were well-to-do with land grants, organized communities, and indentured servants. 

The Spanish settled Florida, what is now our Southern border, and the far western coast, the French up the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and while trappers explored the 'purple mountain' majesties of the Rocky Mountains. 

 Later, during the 1840-50's huge European populations fled famine, religious persecution. and the ever changing map of political conflicts.

And still, WE came... the Irish, German, Scandinavians and more with many Catholics. So many were from poorer backgrounds and less skilled, WE arrived with the clothes on our backs, 

 calloused hands, and with souls full of dreams.

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My husband's great-great-great grandparents arrived from Bohemia/Czechslovakia, today it's the Czech Republic, in 1851. In the photo above are the sons and daughters of his family grown and their spouses.

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Political turmoil in Czechoslovakia was most likely the reason for  leaving. My hubby's family (both sides) became farmers in Wisconsin. My husband's parents both descended from this Joseph-Father who appears in both family trees six generations back.

Arable lands in Europe were worn out from centuries of cultivation. Inheritance laws left lands and property to the oldest male---leaving the rest to find other ways to feed their families. 

The opportunity to farm in the America was more than attractive.

Starting a new life was a necessity.

And, so WE came to a new country, needing all sorts of laborers with skills and determination. 

But, WE were also SLAVE LABOR.

"Slavery in America started in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African slaves ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia.  See Black History and Slavery.

Slavery in Georgia.

Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million black slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone,...." 

We fought a long and bloody Civil War

  to abolish this abomination.

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Lincoln from a 1911 print once in my position.

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State…in rebellion,…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

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In the name of  WE THE PEOPLE, 

Congress adopted the

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...13th Amendment on December 18, 1865, and officially abolished slavery. But freed blacks’ status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.

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WE moved on,  

and a new Patchwork of our Nation sewed the 

colors from old homeland flags 

combined with the shades of OUR skins. 

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Still, laborers were needed for our growing nation. 

Chinese came to work on the railroads, Hispanics from below our southern borders for farming and ranching, followed by more Western and Eastern Europeans from every corner of the continent to build our cities, roads, man our mills, and dig deep in our mines. 

Free source

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. 

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,...

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...The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/about-the-statue-of-liberty

How many of your ancestors passed through Ellis Island?

My parents' families came from Lithuania and Denmark, 

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escaping failing fishing villages on the North Sea and the devastated farmlands of Lithuania. Constant wars continually changed the map of Europe causing upheaval and economic chaos. 

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Half of all my great-grandparents' extended family left Denmark for the United States. The same for the Lithuanian side. Our last contact with my father's family was in 1953 when the

 Iron Curtain closed tightly on Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

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My Danish great-grandfather on the right was torn between two lands, and moved back and forth several times, finally settling in Wisconsin and fishing the Great Lakes. 

He and Grandfather (left) opened a Fishmarket in 1921.

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My grandfather at age 14 had a photo taken to look older. He wore a larger suit with layers under it, and the cigar. A hat, and an expression that denied the fact he had just been confirmed, 

and then he joined the Merchant Marines. 

George was over six-foot and definitely a character.

WWI loomed and since not yet a citizen, he wanted to see the world and be a part of the conflict.

He became naturalized and one of

WE the PEOPLE 

in Portland Oregon in 1919, aged 21 between sailings.

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My father enlisted in the Army in January 1940 at age 18. We were still in the Depression and despite a partial scholarship to a state college, he could not afford to go. Hubby's dad also served in the South Pacific and fought at Okinawa.

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After almost six years in the Army stationed in the Philippines, New Guinea, Australia with a Medical Surgical Unit, Dad came home the first time, without a fanfare or welcome. 

He was proud to be an American and to serve and WE of him, and all the generations who served in our military to keep us free.

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Honor Flight and Welcome HOME!

RIP Staff Sargent 

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WE...

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FLY the Flag!

WE

Children of Immigrants

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or immigrants ourselves. I have two foreign born daughter-in-laws, bless them. They are my loves and will be added to the WE of our United States. 

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WE come from every religious expression,

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and every corner of this earth..

 all tightly stitched and woven into this 

PATCHWORK OF HUMANITY Called...  

WE THE PEOPLE.

If you comment please list your ancestors' homelands 

and when they arrived on our shores if you can.

I think it would be interesting to see how diverse we are.

I will try and respond to every comment and answer every question. 

Join me at these fine blog parties:

All Things Patriotic:Grammys Grid

Friendship Friday

Friday Favorites

Anything Goes Saturday

Metamorphisis Monday

Wonderful Wednesday

Vintage Charm

 Please do not use photos without linking back to this blog without my permission. 

Thank you for your cooperation, 
Sandi