Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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Little Projects

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Today will be the last day of the heat wave. It’s been very, very hot. We ended up putting in the kitchen A/C unit. Very grateful for it saving my sanity the last few days. The bedroom unit has not been installed yet, because temperatures will be much cooler for a while after today.

We’ve been hunkering down inside the house, and I’ve been grabbing time in the morning hours to work on the dollhouse. It’s not air conditioned, so the morning is the only time I can work there. I’m waiting for more wallpaper – “Waiting for Wallpaper” should be the title of my autobiography – so I have been building little pieces from kits. I’ve had a couple of these kits for many years and I was holding on to them for this house.

This is a little table from Arjen Spinhoven, who lives in the Netherlands. It was quite well designed and easy to put together and stain. I love the detail. It will most likely sit next to the sofa in the living room.

And I made these two base cabinets from kits that I ordered from miniatures (dot) com when they went out of business. The yellow sink unit has been living in the Lake House. I brought it upstairs to the Beacon Hill to see how it might look in the kitchen. I like the idea of a kitchen that isn’t matchy-matchy – a mixture of cabinet styles that have been put together over time. I don’t know if it will work, but I’m going to try it.

Don’t you just love seeing the real-sized paint brushes outside the window?

And then I realized that the other fireplace had been assembled incorrectly. It actually leaned forward and would never be flush with the wall, so I took it apart and figured out how to realign everything.

Wish I had a before picture! This is the after picture.

I’m waiting until tomorrow to mow the corral and the back forty. The grass is very long but it’s been too hot to tackle that job.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

 

Mini Tramp Art and Work Outside

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Lots of work was done outside yesterday. I dug up a big outcropping of some wild plant that was taking over the area right in front of the big garden bed. I pruned, as best I could and there’s more to be done today, as well as mowing. Mowing has popped up on the to do list because I looked at the forecast and after today – it will be in the high 80s  to the mid 90s for about 4 days. Not the kind of weather for mowing. No rain for a while, so that’s good. I was so tired after yesterday’s work, but needs must!

It is a lovely, beautifully sunny day, so that will help.

My teeny little budget is keeping me from ordering more mini wallpaper at the moment, so I’m in an in-between stage in the renovation. Just dreaming up ideas at the moment. And I’m still determined to figure out how to tackle the wallpapering of the bedroom. What a glutton for punishment I am!

Here’s a little something that arrived in yesterday’s mail.

A painting (real) surrounded by a wooden mat and tramp art/victorian frame. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on my Instagram mini feed. She has a few more tramp art frames and I covet them. Re-hanging our tramp art framed angel a few months back reminded me of how much I love this form of creative expression.

Also, sheep!!

Isn’t this exquisite?

It will most likely go in the Beacon Hill living room, but I’m holding off on hanging anything until the room is closer to being finished.

It took a long, long time, but my love of dollhouse miniatures has come back and for that I am grateful.

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.

Wildflowers and Frustration

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Wildflowers are popping up everywhere on the property.

Fleabane with its pale pink buds that turn into delicate little flowers.

Wild phlox or Dame’s Rocket is just starting to bloom.

I have to do some major garden clean up starting today. With all the rain, things have become out of control. Today, I’m going to dig out a bunch of what I think is comfrey that has popped up just outside the big garden bed. I used google lens to identify the leaves. There’s quite a lot of it and it has to go.

Bushes need to be pruned, weeds need to be pulled, and poison ivy has to be yanked, as well.

I’ll work on all of this throughout the weekend. It’s actually not going to rain for several days, so we can do some chores outside, including mowing the front lawn.

The Beacon Hill. I had a very frustrating two days trying to wallpaper the bedroom. I just couldn’t get it right and I had to rip it out – twice. I finally figured out why. Usually when you wallpaper a dollhouse room, there is either a basic window in place with no trim as yet, or no windows at all. Hummingbird Cottage had the windows, but I eventually added the trim after I wallpapered. Dove Cottage was in such bad shape that I removed whatever trim was there before I wallpapered. In the case of the Beacon Hill, all the windows have the trim attached and it is rather ornate. So wallpapering is a challenge. I usually build a paper template with marks where the window and trim are and eventually transfer that to the wallpaper. I did that yesterday but I could never get it right. One wallpaper design was on paper that was way too thick and hard to manipulate. The other design on thinner paper was also a fail. I was so damn frustrated that I ended up painting the wall a pale yellow. There’s nothing wrong with just painting a wall instead of wallpapering. But I find I miss the wallpaper because it gives the room such personality.

If I’d removed all of the windows first this wouldn’t be an issue but trying to do that with an already built house is tricky. I’m not going to paint all of the rooms. I think the bedroom windows were a specific challenge. The others I think (hope) I can handle.

But, what is telling is the fact that I immediately thought, “Am I too old for this???”

I’m not, of course, and after reasoning out why I was having problems, I was let that idea go.

Anyway, this ‘buttermilk’ yellow is nice, but not necessarily what I would have chosen. I simply had more of it on hand than any other paint color and it took several coats to cover up the original brown walls. Let’s see if I can eventually make it work.

Sigh.

Okay. I’m off to make a second cup of coffee and head outside.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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