Damian's Christmas Village: The Results!

Our 9-night run of Damian's Christmas Village has concluded and with that, 2025 is coming to a close!

Our latest fundraiser event was SO magical! I didn't quite get everything built that I had planned on, but we definitely succeeded in "plussing it up" from last year's version and that was my main goal!

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What was NEW this Year

• Peppermint Mickey

Unfortunately last year's Peppermint Mickey (a painted bedsheet tightly wrapped around my Pumpkin Mickey sculpture) didn't make it through the storage process so I had to remake it, but it all worked out because I like this year's paint job much better than last year!

And one - ok, technically two things - that really stepped up our game with this photo op were the solar-powered lampposts that we added back in October. There is something so stately (and Disneyland-esque) about lampposts and filling the planter base with flowers that fit the theme instantly makes everything look more "professional!" I love that these lampposts have 2 light color options: in October I had them set to the moody amber color that perfectly went with our Pumpkin Mickey and for Peppermint Mickey they were set to a bright white setting which looked so festively frosty!

I absolutely love how you can see Peppermint Mickey from the end of our street - it's the perfect people-magnet (the industry term for this is a "weanie") and I was very pleased to see families making sure they got a photo with it! I just need to figure out how I can remove and store the Peppermint painting itself so it can be used again next year... fingers crossed I can make it work!

• Christmas Village

Thanks to some of YOU, we were able to enlarge our miniature Christmas Village this year! A majority of the pieces came from a local friend's personal collection and then several of the pieces came from the Amazon registries from this year and when we did it last year. THANK YOU for adding to the magic of this display! There is something so enchanting about miniature displays and watching kids and adults alike slow down and search through the village is so fun. This year I printed out short lists of things to look for and I noticed it really helped everyone enjoy it even more. What do you think I should add for next year?

• Train Display

As always, the crown jewel of our miniature Christmas Village was the Bachmann "G" Scale model train (which I'm happy to report ran smoothly every night this year thanks to wiping the tracks down with Goo Gone -not water- every few days). And all our train-loving visitors were doubly excited about the new display I added this year featuring our BIG parade float locomotive! (By the way, we really should come up with a name for our train!)

Where to put our big train was something I was stewing over for weeks while I was building everything. I had SO wanted to open our backyard to visitors and envisioned it decked out in lights from grass to treetop. I was going to put the bake sale in our covered back patio and it was going to be SO charming! Ultimately though, I had to make the tough decision to either spread holiday magic sparsely over our entire property (or spend a thousand dollars on lights I didn't already have) or condense all I did have into a powerful punch just on our front yard. I picked the latter, and it was the right choice. The front yard looked full and complete and worth getting out of the car for, and much of that had to do with our big train display.

Brock wasn't sure making the train look like it was coming out of a tunnel in the middle of our driveway made sense, but I knew it would look great and it DID! (And Brock thought it looked great in the end). I finished building the tunnel literally minutes before our first guests arrived on night 1 and it looked great until the end, even after the big rain and wind storm we had! I especially loved that after every "snowfall" moment, a small pile of the snow from our awesome snow machine (2 years in and it still works perfectly!) would collect on top of the tunnel and the train and it would stick for a long time afterwards! It looked so natural that lots of guests asked me how I made the snow for the display, haha!

• Christmas Tree Farm "Theater"

Turning "Pluto's pumpkin patch" from Halloween into a Christmas Tree Farm photo op was a relatively quick flipover thanks to some friends who were getting rid of a handful of artificial trees they had. Because of my late decision to not extend lights into the backyard I was so conflicted about where to have Brock do his storytelling performance - that is, until we realized the tree farm area created the perfect theater space!

Opposite the photo op, we lined our garage wall with chairs and it became such a perfect little performance area! We even had guests come to see Brock's performance armed with their own warm blankets, and most stocked up on bake sale goods and cocoa to sip and snack on while they sat in the chairs and watched the show. How cozy and memorable!

• "A Christmas Carol" Live Storytelling

Oh my goodness, BROCK OUTDID HIMSELF with his live storytelling performance of "A Christmas Carol!" He wrote and memorized the script, put together a prop and costume collection, choreographed his performance and everything all just two weeks before opening night. A true professional! My only contribution was finding the perfect bell for him to ring at key points in his performance, but I have to say I was blown away by the whole thing! Damian and I watched one rehearsal a day or two before opening night and I loved how much Damian loved it - he was totally captivated and even squealed his rare happy squeals a couple of times! (Damian loves watching people perform and he really loves his daddy!)

More than all the other additions, offering a live show made Damian's Christmas Village an extra-special experience and so much more than just another Christmas light display. It got such a great response from guests, and the last night of Brock's performances were so full that we added another show! I think we should book Brock for more of our events, don't you??

In case you missed it, I did a full video tour of Damian's Christmas Village, including a full video of Brock's performance. You can watch it here!! (and special shoutout to one of my favorite local teens, Miley DelHoyo, who helped me shoot some of the footage for this!)

How We Did

This year's bake sale was full of the cutest cookies and cake pops I've ever seen - and of course the breads were so popular! Our first guests of the season ran up to the bake sale tent at 4:59:59pm (we opened at 5) asking if they could get some treats! We are so lucky to have SUCH talented baking friends - these incredible goods are such a draw and are starting to form a die-hard following in their own right!

In total, I counted 286 guests throughout our 9-night run, with the vast majority of guests coming to see Brock's storytelling performance during his 4-night run. For those who are comparing this to our Halloween event (which attracted well over 1,000 people), I think there are a lot of reasons why this event doesn't yet have the same popularity (and I will go over some of that in an upcoming post). Still, the event was fiscally successful and performed even better than last year's Christmas event, raising a total of $3,219.40! I am SO grateful to all who helped us put on this event and for everyone who CAME to it and supported us!! People are SO good!!

What's Next!?

2026 is going to be full of more creative fundraising and I cannot wait to share what I've got planned for the new year! At this moment though, all I can think about is closing out 2025 with a bang and reaching our year-end goal of $1.16 million for our campaign. We are SO CLOSE! At the time of this writing, we are just $2,658 away from that milestone. That's just 133 donations of $20 each!

See where we are at in real-time HERE!

I know so many of you are helping us in this last push of 2025, whether through being one of the final donors yourself and/or through sharing our reels and posts on social media. THANK YOU so so much!! I know we can do this!! It's these moments that prove how lots of small actions really DO make a difference. Someone donated $4 yesterday and it made my heart melt! YES, IT HELPS!! IT ALL HELPS!!! Thank you so so SO much!!

I love you all!!

<3