The tiniest love story you’ve ever seen

For years, Mike and Dorn Moore spent their winter nights sitting in their Haven basement, admiring their children’s handiwork.

Little handpainted clay houses, shops and churches glowing in miniature, alongside dozens of other handpainted miniature people, pets and even raccoons in the Moores’ tiny Christmas village.

For the first time, the village has moved out of their basement and is on public display at Botanica’s Illuminations.

But it’s more than just pretty.

In the village, there’s an abridged history of the Moore family – a little love story. You just have to look close and have a little imagination.

Mike Moore, in his cowboy hat and shirt, launches into the full, rehearsed story he tells multiple times a night at Botanica whenever he’s asked, and he never seems to get tired of it.

“This is our family history in 21 years,” Mike Moore said. “We had four or five houses on a fireplace mantel, went to sleep one night and woke up with six grandkids and this.”

A miniature love story

Before visions of a tiny Christmas village crossed Dorn Moore’s mind, she was fascinated by the holiday miniatures she would see in store windows at Macy’s in New York and at Stats, a Christmas store in Pasadena, Calif.

She began searching for intricate miniature Victorian, Queen Anne and other houses that – maybe one day – she could use in her own miniature Christmas display.

Then she met Mike.

It was at InCahoots, a dance club on East Kellogg now known as Club Rodeo.

The two danced together, and Mike Moore says Dorn was the only girl who’d ever made him feel dizzy while dancing. In a good way, he means.

They went on many dates, including skiing in Colorado and ice skating.

The two were married on March 7, 1998.

If you look, you can see all of these events in miniature.

There’s a fancy ballroom in the corner – complete with a chandelier and people dancing.

There are people ice skating, and there’s an animated miniature of people bringing home a cut Christmas tree – which the family used to do for years.

And, of course, there are skiers all over the Christmas town, including a little animated ski village.

Mike Moore jokes that a couple of his miniature street lights are burned out.

Adds to the authenticity, he says.

It takes a village

All 64 of the houses in the Christmas village were handpainted by the Moores, their children and grandchildren.

When Dorn and Mike first met, it was a way for Dorn to bond with Mike’s children, a 7-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter.

“We have a strong bond, and this is just one of the ways we can show it,” Dorn Moore said. “It was very rewarding in the beginning with his children. We had no idea starting with three, then five, then 10 pieces that it would ever turn out to be this. It just grew and grew.”

Throughout the years, a lot of hot cocoa has been sipped at the Moores’ card table, and a lot of miniature houses and figurines have been painted there.

With 40 different paint colors and “brushes of all kinds,” Dorn Moore lets her children paint the houses however they’d like.

Sometimes that leads to houses with messages scribbled on them or with ladybug-print roofs – “I don’t think you could get your contractor to do that,” she quipped.

But lay down some fake snow and turn on the lights, and it makes for one unique Christmas village.

“It builds really wonderful memories,” Dorn Moore said. “(The miniatures) are really family treasures.”

You can see the Christmas village inside the Foshee Party Barn at Botanica’s Downing Children’s Garden every night of Illuminations, which runs through New Year’s Eve.

Mike and Dorn Moore will be there every night, answering questions and beaming over their family’s creation.

Maybe it does take a village to raise a child – or, in this case, raise the Moore family.

“We’re a little proud of it,” Mike Moore said with a grin.

This story was originally published December 22, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "The tiniest love story you’ve ever seen."