Snow Village

More people request that I design Mid-Century Modern houses than any other kind of building. For the 2025 Great Halloween Spooktacular I designed a Halloween themed MCM creepy house. I recently decided I wanted to update it for Christmas. Besides a new Christmas party scene, I wanted to add a chimney for Santa!

If you are looking for your own scene for the inside of the house, you can search for ones using Google, FreePik, Pixabay, or Creative Fabrica, or you can make your own. I started with an empty room decorated for Christmas and used my paint program to add clipart presents, animals, people and other elements I found on Creative Fabrica and Pixabay.

I had plans for a different design this month, but my friend Lucy Foxworth emailed me while I was on vacation to ask if I would make a barn pattern for her June Challenge. Of course I didn’t realize that I would be so busy on my vacation that I wouldn’t find a minute to design, but I have been working on it since I got home. Like with my pattern for my Detached Garage, I wanted operable barn doors.

For this month’s design, I set myself a challenge: I needed to make a house that was easy enough that children could build it as I am teaching another class in December. At the same time, I wanted to design a building that could look quite different depending upon how you decorated it. I also wanted a building that made me think of Christmas. When mentioning all of this to a friend, she suggested I design a classic half-timber Tudor style building.

When I started this house I thought to use two of the Tim Holtz village dies I had bought but almost never used – the bay windows of the Village Fixer Upper, and the side addition of the Village Addition. I didn’t get very far before I decided that I wanted taller walls and front stairs, which made the side additions too short, so they had to be replaced. And then I wanted a different window frame style, so decided to replace the bay windows too. Best laid plans and all that. Some day I will use those dies. If you own the Village Fixer Upper and want to use the die, I left the window cutout the size to fit the die, though then the window frames will not match the rest of the house. You could cut off the crossbars of my windows and use the original Tim Holtz window frames if you would prefer. My door, however, I believe is bigger than the one on the Tim Holtz die.

So my simple house became more complex, which is one of the problems I have found with my creations now that I have learned how to design. I may need someone to tap me on the shoulder now and then and rein me back in.