dollhouse — Page 55

Miniature Trees & More Lights

November 30, 2018 at 10:40 am by Claudia

Well, I didn’t get to the antique shop because I looked for the porch Christmas lights and couldn’t find them anywhere, which leads me to believe they’re tucked away under the stairs with the other decorations. As I’m not ready to move the egg cup cabinet yet, I decided to go to Target and buy some more. Why not? They’re inexpensive and it’s probably time to get some new ones because, as you know, some bulbs are almost guaranteed not to work.

So I headed out and stopped at Target and Michael’s.

The lights are currently hanging from this cabinet and the stair railing so they lose the kinks in the cords. I’m going to drape them on the porch railing later this morning.

I found this guy in the china cabinet in the office, so he’s now on display.

But basically, the rest of the decorating will happen at the end of next week. Except for the dollhouses. They get done first.

I bought some trim at Michael’s.

They were marked 50% off. My idea is to clip off the little balls and hang them on my mini Christmas tree. I’ve never been totally happy with the way I’ve decorated that tree and I’m going to try to step it up this year.

If you’re new to the blog, you might not know that I made this tree several years ago. The branches are a preserved pine called lycopodium. My memory of that day is of glue covering every inch of my fingers and hands. I love it, though – it was worth it. It looks very realistic. But the pine is dark and it needs some colorful ornaments. I added one little ball last night just to see how it looks.

I also bought some battery operated lights there.

But now that I look at the box more clearly, I realize that the string is 8 feet long! Way too long for my little tree. Hmmm. I’ll have to come up with something else.

I also want to try to do something with this silver tree. My thought it to put it in the more modern dollhouse that I bought last year. It’s too tall, so I’ll have to cut it down somehow. I’d like to eliminate some branches so it looks less like a bottle brush tree and more like an artificial mid-century silver tree. Either that, or lots of ornaments to hide its bottle brush origins. Or, I might go with the smaller gold tree that you can see on the right and put it on a table.

Fingers crossed.

I like decorating the dollhouses. Even Don’s mini studio gets some holiday touches!

I’m off to eat some oatmeal, take a shower, and hang those porch lights. Don and I are going to Rick and Doug’s tonight for a movie night – Rear Window, one of my favorites. When we head back home after the movie, we’ll see our pretty lights as we come down the street.

I’m going to reiterate a couple of things I’ve shared with you in the past. Even though I have a Blogger blog and Google account, it has become impossible for me to leave comments on other Blogger blogs. I know others are having the same problem. So, even if it appears I’m not reading your blogs, I am!

The other reminder is this: when you choose to respond to a post by replying to the email version of the post, I have absolutely no way of responding to you. I can read your reply, but as it comes from a separate email address meant only for sending out the post each day, I can’t write you back from that address. Even though I’ve been clear about this several times in the past, the occasional reader gets ticked off at me because they think I’m ignoring them. I’m not. I’d much rather you respond in the comments section on the blog, but if you’re not comfortable with that for some reason, send your response to my email address which you can find by clicking on the envelope icon at the top of the sidebar. If you’re fine with me not responding, that’s okay, too.

Happy Friday.

In the Meantime…

November 9, 2018 at 10:08 am by Claudia

Since all of my posts have been about our trip to France and the British Isles of late, I thought I’d do a little catching up today. Some of these photos have been on Instagram, so if you follow me there, you’ve most likely already seen them.

I did some antiquing and treasure hunting over the past couple of weeks.

I was hoping to find one of these well-known marmalade crocks in England, but I never had the time to do any antique shopping. Darn! I had a feeling that the same woman I purchased the cubby cabinet from would have some in at least one of her locations. I gambled on my pick of the locations and it paid off, as she had several. This is the one I chose. It’s old, has lovely crazing and makes me happy. I also got a round ironstone butter pat as well as a set of six Noritake butter pats.

Yes. Another collection. I like them. And they’re small, which is now a necessity in this tiny house, already jam-packed with collections.

The other day, I stopped at a local antique shop and found these:

Another Fiesta/Harlequin egg cup in a dusty rose.

And a tiny little pitcher/creamer from England.

It’s been warm enough this week that I was able to open the front door and let the sun shine into the living room. But that’s changed as of last night. A hard freeze, with all the catalpa leaves on the ground. My porch plants look like they’re hanging in there so far, but it’s only a matter of time.

Sigh. Both Don and I remarked this morning that it seems like a big change happened last night and we’re heading into winter. This is always a hard transition for me and it gets harder every year.

The bush that I wish was elsewhere always wins me over at this time of year. This is a shot of our burning bush taken from upstairs in our bedroom.

I cleaned up my desk the other day, which had become completely covered with paperwork and things I gathered on our trip. Then I sat in my chair, did some work on my laptop and listened to some bossa nova music. Occasionally, I would turn the chair toward the dollhouse and eventually, I found myself looking for my rubber mallet. The result:

I demoed the staircase and the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. I cut some dowels to hold the ceiling up until I come up with some pillars, perhaps flanking a kitchen island.

It looks a lot roomier, which is what I wanted.

Here it is with some furniture so you can get an idea of where I’m headed.

The island would probably be right behind that chair. I’m thinking of beams on the ceiling. We’ll see.

Finally, I was sitting here in the den on election night with my back to the window, which faces west. It had rained hard all day long. Don wasn’t here, he was headed home on the bus from NYC. Suddenly, the room turned orange and I turned and looked out the window, grabbed my phone and ran outside. The entire sky was this color:

I’ve never seen anything like it. As I turned back to the house, I gasped.

A rainbow spanning the sky behind our house.

A double rainbow:

On one horizon was a glorious sunset. On the other was a huge rainbow.

Then the sunset turned to this:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so spectacular in our 13 years here. Yes, great sunsets. Yes, the occasional rainbow. But both at the same time? Never. It was incredible. I called Don, who was on the bus, and told him to look out the window and he managed to see the rainbow and the orange sky.

I took it as a good omen. Turns out it was.

Happy Friday.

Percolating

September 30, 2018 at 9:39 am by Claudia

Surprise rose in the midst of an increasingly fall-like landscape.

Three new babies on my monstera. I was thrilled to see them as there had been no new growth during the summer. I know many of you think I have a green thumb and I guess I do, but I’ve had problems with certain houseplants this summer. My schefflera keeps dropping lower leaves – lots of them – but there is new growth as well. I can’t tell whether this is some sort of natural shedding or if something’s wrong. This particular plant has always been a bit touchy, but over the winter it did really well. I also have a few succulents that have bit the dust. So – I have my successes and my failures, just like everyone else.

Dollhouse renovation idea:

This is a small dollhouse. The rooms are not spacious and the kitchen is downright tiny. The stair placement is troublesome because it takes up so much room in the center of the house.

Not much can happen in this area. So now, we have an even smaller living room.

When I put the hutch in the kitchen, I realized how little space I would have there. One of the things I dislike about Hummingbird Cottage is the narrow, dark kitchen. Impossible to photograph, I did everything I could to lighten it up, but wasn’t very successful. In retrospect, I wish I had opened the wall up in some way.

So….

That’s what I’m going to do with the downstairs. I’m going to take the wall out, put a couple of columns in to support the floor above, take out the stairs and add something I found in a miniature catalogue – set of pull-down attic stairs. If this is a funky English stone cottage, why not? I thought about a spiral staircase, but they take up a lot of real estate.

Or, since it’s my dollhouse and dollhouses can be anything, maybe I’ll dispense with stairs altogether. I’d really like to open up this floor with a kitchen island where the wall is.

Those are my thoughts at the moment. I’ll let them percolate a bit while I’m off on my European adventure.

Your thoughts, my friends?

Happy Sunday.

Miniature Trees & More Lights

In the Meantime…

Percolating

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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