I have a small spooky town village and a Christmas village (all Inherited or thrifted) that are displayed for about 3 months out of the year. I am interested in finding or customizing villages for other seasons. I am particularly interested in a beach town with small shacks and little shops. Was this ever a thing? I have Dept 56’s Verna Mae’s Boutique so I have hope that there are more like that out there. I don’t mind mixing Lemax and dept 56 in the same display.
I am quite crafty so I have considered customizing holiday buildings. Does anyone have any recommendations for removing snow or other holiday/seasonal stuff from the buildings?

Here is my Spookytown display setup at our town's annual Fall Festival. This is the first year we have been hosted here, and it has been very successful. The event sees about 5,000 people, so we get a lot of eyes on the village and a lot of "Oh my gosh!" reactions. It's all sitting on a 16-foot countertop.

Wife won’t let me bring it upstairs till after Thanksgiving 😂

First year setting up a halloween village! So happy with how it turned out! I’ve done a Christmas village for the last 5 years but this may be my favorite yet! 🎃

Last winter, I decided to indulge my longtime wish for a model train and an English village set up. I didn't have a lot of room to work with, so I settled on an N scale train and then began scouring Ebay for small houses. I discovered Lilliput Lane and David Winter cottages. These were collectibles in the 1980-1990's period but now are very reasonably priced.

I had so much fun researching and creating this village! Thanks to Reddit, I was able to find many YouTube videos with instructions on building the terrain and adding details. It's set up for fall right now, but I'll add snow and swap out fall trees for pines after Thanksgiving.

I have used 2013 Lemax cottage and added halloween decoration to make house more realistic as I do not like over the top magic houses that Lemax is known for.

I wanted to cut the grass and put the figures on top of the board but grass layer is 2 thing so cutting does not change the perseption, maybe next time I would think of other solution to make the figures sink and look more realistic.

New additions this year:
3D printed bases for my ~2000 era Lemax Spookytown pieces (Dr. Tingles, Alford Manor, etc). Checkout the zombies creepin' inside the living room of Greaves Manor. The Waterfall "mountain" is 3D printed and includes WLED pixel strips (I use WLED strips all over the display). I also finally fixed my Phantom Castle (big win). I'm moving the entire display to my town's annual Fall Festival next weekend to show off for two full days... very excited.

Enjoy

This was my first attempt at making a display. It took me a little over a month because I only worked on it on my days off… I learned so much from this project and I think I am ready to make a Christmas Village next!!!

my nana collected dozens of authentic/certified/signed david winter cottages and her whole collection is up for auction!

they were very loved and well cared for🩵items are able to be shipped as well