Five more days until I mark a year of lockdown. Perhaps we started it here a few days earlier, but I can’t remember. I think that the moment we officially hunkered down coincided with my decision to change the titles on my posts. Does it seem unreal that it’s been a year? Not one bit. It seems every bit as long as a year.

Today starts a warming trend here in the Hudson Valley. Baby steps today, but by tomorrow it will be in the mid-fifties and on one day this week – actually two – we will be in the mid-sixties! It won’t stay that way, of course, temperatures will drop down to the forties next week, but even that is welcome!

I’m going to cut my hair today. I cannot stand it any longer! Since it’s baby fine, it looks straggly when it gets too long and believe me, it’s too long. Don has promised to assist with evening out the initial cut. Fingers crossed!

I put the little wooden house from Helga on top of the desk. It probably won’t stay there, but maybe it will!

Thanks for all your thoughts on bathroom/no bathroom in the English Cottage. A reminder that though this is a period house, it has an eclectic mix of more modern and period pieces of furniture and it will be occupied by someone living in 2021. I don’t do period houses inhabited in times of yore. Many miniaturists do, but I don’t. So, any house of mine is living and breathing in the present day, just as Hummingbird Cottage, a Victorian house, is. So…no outhouses. In eliminating the bathroom, we will just imagine it just out of range of our eyes. I may put a little whimsical sign up, pointing to the loo, or I may just ignore it. Also, this is a very small house and all wall space is taken so I won’t be putting in false doors on the walls – besides, the bathroom would be somewhere just beyond the open back of the house, not in the side walls that are already established as exterior walls made of stone.

This is the kind of thinking and rethinking that goes into any dollhouse construction or renovation. The Beacon Hill, with 8 or 9 rooms, will definitely have a bathroom, as does Hummingbird Cottage. But I’m learning that bathrooms are expendable, if necessary, in my particular imaginary world.

In the meantime, the room won’t be a library. I’ve already purposely added a large shelf system in the living room and it’s filled with books. I do see a stack of books by the chair, however. A nice place to retreat and read in private, if necessary. I do think it will be more of a studio, an artist’s studio. I see an easel and art supplies. The rest of it will evolve as I work on it.

It’s sure more exciting than a bathroom!

Yesterday, Don mentioned that he’d like to work on a small house that functions as a guitar shop. Whoa! Needless to say, I was immediately on board. It would be his baby. Why not two floors, I suggested, and he can live above the shop? Yes. He’s already thought up a story for the owner who is gradually acquiring inventory for his shop. His 70th birthday is coming up, so a kit for the shop might be in order, don’t you think?

Okay. I have to pay a couple of bills, cut my hair, clean, etc.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.