Blockwarts turns 6…

It is that time of year again – it is time to celebrate! As all true Harry Potter fans know, 31 July is Harry Potter’s birthday, a day he shares with his creator JK Rowling. Not so coincidentally, it is also the date I started Blockwarts, which means a day of celebration for me as well. Not that there’s that much activity the last year to celebrate, but my love for Harry Potter and LEGO is still there…

Today it is six years ago, I posted the very first post on Blockwarts. It has been a great experience and really rewarding. I normally use the birthday to reflect on the past year and think about what is up for the coming year.

How did the year go?

This has been year of low activity, at least when it comes to writing blog posts. But a couple of video clips I posted of some of my Harry Potter MOCs on Facebook in September got almost 100,000 views combined. This is (for me at least) rather exceptional. And I’ve done plenty of non-Harry Potter LEGO builds (you can follow those here).

When it comes to Blockwarts posts, my daily reviews of the advent calendar were the most notable highlight for me, with almost as many readers as normal – which was awesome given I was very quiet in the period leading up to this. Actually, I don’t think I did any posts from August through to November.

Riding on that high, I did manage to get a few reviews out in January (of the 2023 sets). But January did unfortunately also reach an absolutely low for the blog, with the passing of my great friend Russell Bates, who I had collaborated with building the big Hogwarts display that got me started writing this blog. You can find the post I did in memory of him here.

Along with a (late as usual) post of my predictions of 2024 Harry Potter sets in February, that pretty much sums up the year.

What’s coming up?

So, what about the coming year? Firstly, I should mention that Hogwarts will be displayed again (Russell would really have wanted that to continue). So if you are in Brisbane around 7-8 September, come to Brisbricks BBX 2024 LEGO Fan Expo (see details here). It is probably the only time it will be displayed in 2024.

In terms of blog posts, I do have a few Harry Potter MOCs I would like to present – one of those I started writing a post about years ago, so I better get it done soon.

And I also think I’ll be doing the daily advent calendar review once again, as I really enjoy doing those. But generally, for set reviews I’ll let other sites cover them as they will do it quicker than I can.

But who knows, I might get inspired to do a lot more Harry Potter stuff…

Thank you!

Finally, I will say a big thank to you all for (still) reading/following this blog. If you do find value in what I have on the blog, consider buying me a coffee. The “Buy me a coffee” button on the blog is probably the only new feature added in the last year – and I’m yet to see it used.

I am hoping that the positive vibe from displaying Hogwarts again will give me a bit of boost to get a bit more content out (coffee may help too). Time will tell…

Till then, Build the Magic!