WAUKESHA — A Waukesha couple's Christmas village puts all other Christmas villages to rest. In reality, it's more of a Christmas city. Welcome to Lake Dianne.
“From the very beginning, we bought Dianne five houses as a possible collection thing in 1995 at Christmas. It spiraled way out of control way too fast," Ken Obermann, Dianne's husband said.
From that moment in 1995, Dianne took on the role of mayor and Ken became the director of the department of public works of Lake Dianne.
"We got possessed with it," Dianne Obermann said.
Lake Dianne has 101 houses and a population of about 300 people. There are more than 1,000 trees, a school, city hall, downtown, a tavern, a lake, ice fishers, frosty the snowman, a general store, skiers, tubers, a gondola, and I have to give a shoutout to my fellow journalists at the Colonial Village News.
It takes Dianne and Ken about one month to assemble and a few months to design it. They generally start building in October or November, to be done by Thanksgiving.
Lake Dianne is arranged in a new way each year. Dianne takes care of the assembly and artistic design.
“Where can I put roads? Where can I put the farm, and then I start putting the ski hills, the lakes, the ice skating rinks.”
She even hides a Where's Waldo figurine in the display. There is one hidden for her children and another hidden for the grandchildren. They are the ones the Christmas village is made for. Lake Dianne is a way of ushering in the holiday season and spreading cheer within the family. Dianne also places one bench for each of her grandchildren and children. Everyone always rushes to find theirs whenever the display is finished.
It all started with just five homes. It was a fun and cute hobby. Then it grew little by little. Until one day, as they were building their new home in Waukesha, they decided to have a space built specifically to display Lake Dianne. They even built a closet right next to the display area just for all the village decorations. There are tons of labeled boxes to store everything.
Ken, as the head of DPW, is in charge of the dirty work. The village is beautiful but if you look underneath it you’ll see tons of wires and cords keeping the lights on in the village.
“400 sets of lights, and 175 sets of transformers, about 150 extension cords," he said.
Don’t worry, they said it's not a fire hazard. Ken and Dianne said it wasn't worth burning their house down for the display.
The display will be up until about March. Ken and Dianne want as many of their friends to be able to see it as possible.
