2019 January meeting highlights

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday January 27, 2019

Organizing Committee:

• Ray & Yvette F.
• Jacqueline H.
• Darlene K.
• Bill & Marlene M.
• Don M.

1. Show and Tell: Which Department 56 piece started your collection?
   • a fun activity in which everyone was encouraged to show-and-tell the first piece in their Department 56 collection
   • Yvette started the activity by showing everyone her very first Department 56 village building: the New England Village’s Red School House; then few others joined in to show and talk about their very first purchases
   • this activity brought out interesting facts about collectors – that they always seemed to remember why they bought that first piece, from which store they bought their first piece and how much they paid for the piece
2. Themed Centerpiece Display
   • the theme of the display was winter clothing; everyone was asked to create a display that must include a piece of winter clothing item
   • as usual, our ingenious members faced the challenge with flying colours and came up with creative displays showing off their village buildings or Snowbaby items
3. Name that “puzzling” building or Snowbaby
   • a long while back, Hallmark manufactured a number of jigsaw puzzles using photographs of Department 56 village and Snowbaby displays
   • since one of Don’s favourite hobbies was putting together jigsaw puzzles, he decided to have a game with the club members by displaying his Department 56 puzzles that had been put together and asked members to identify the pieces appearing on each puzzle
   • that turned out to be quite challenging as there were quite a few pieces appearing in each puzzle and Don had 4 different puzzles depicting Dickens’ Village, North Pole Village, Snow Village and the Snowbabies
4. Winter clothing donation
   • as the meeting was held in the middle of a cold, cold winter, the meeting organizer decided to hold a collection of new or gently used winter clothing items for those in need
   • our members responded enthusiastically and donated a table full of items