Mockingbird Hill Cottage — Page 1255 — Mockingbird Hill Cottage

On the Road: More of Chautauqua

June 20, 2014 at 8:09 am by Claudia

Chautauqua isn’t only charming cottages and a beautiful lake. It is also music, art, theater, dance buildings, studios and practice rooms. It is performance spaces and halls. And it is far more even than that, but this is what I have discovered so far. Soon, when the season opens on Sunday, there will be scores of music, art, theater and dance students. There will be the sounds of music wafting up from practice rooms. There will be lectures and events in the amphitheater and other venues. There will be even more that I have yet to discover.

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Music studios. There are also art studios that look much like this, as well as dance studios.

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One of the performance venues.

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More music buildings.

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The famous amphitheater, complete with organ.

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That sign reads: The oldest continuous book club in America. Hey fellow readers, these guys have us all beat in terms of longevity.

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I had to include this, the sweetest little church I’ve ever seen. Episcopal, by the way.

The rain that has been a part of almost every day I’ve been here, along with big old crackling thunderstorms, has disappeared. Truly lovely weather has taken its place. We have two more long days of rehearsal in the rehearsal room. Sunday will consist of Opening Day festivities. And on Tuesday, we will start teching the show. (I just had a fight with auto correct, which wanted to make ‘teching’ into ‘etching.’)

My roommates arrive today. One is the costume designer and the other is the lighting designer. It will be strange having to suddenly adapt to two others in this apartment. I’m a solitary person, remember? I sort of dread it and look forward to it at the same time. We’ll all be busy, so I expect we won’t be spending a whole lot of time hanging around the apartment. Wish me luck!

Happy Friday.

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Evolution of the Dollhouse – Part Six

June 19, 2014 at 9:08 am by Claudia

I’ve been so busy with the garden and Spring and working on the road that I have neglected my little series. I believe I owe you one more segment, right? Since I plan to visit Chautauqua Miniatures on Monday, let’s get back into a dollhouse kind of mood.

dhevolutiongraphic All through the renovation, there was one room that I totally ignored. You can see it at the very top of the house on the left. On occasion, I would stop and wonder what the heck I was going to do with it, but the main house was my priority. So I thought of it as a potential attic and figured I’d artfully stash some minis up there and call it a day.

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Have I ever told you how creative my husband is? One day we were looking at the dollhouse and I was going on and on about my ideas for it and I mentioned my lack of inspiration for that space. My husband knows what a devoted gardener I am, so, to him, having it be some sort of potting shed or greenhouse made sense and he told me so.

Brilliant. (It had never occurred to me.)

Well, that got me going and I suddenly found myself excited about the possibilities for that room and for the roof itself (the roof will eventually be Part Seven of the Renovation Series.)

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One day, I just went for it. I grabbed some aqua colored paint and painted the walls. Since the texture of the walls was already uneven, I went with that and rubbed some of the paint off, adding some antiquing gel to age them further. I wanted the room to look shabbily aged, like an attic room that has been repurposed for very little money.

At this point, I wasn’t in the mood to lay a wood floor made out of popsicle sticks, so I grabbed some leftover beadboard, cut it to fit the floor space, and painted it red. It was a time saving move, but it ended up being one of my favorite things about this room.

I had a bathroom vanity that someone had given me, but I wasn’t going to use it because it was out of scale – it was too tall. But you have to think outside the box and I realized I could definitely use the sink. So I took it apart and made some legs from trim that I had on hand, put it together and, what do you know? It worked!

The cherub on the wall came from my stash of all sorts of stuff that I keep in the cupboard in the studio. I thought it would be the perfect architectural artifact for the room. I had the big white pitcher and the flowers and basket in my stash.

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Next on the agenda was some sort of potting bench. I made this from some shutters in my stash. The legs were made from some newel posts that I had on hand and I cut them down to work with the table top. I ordered the pots and the potting soil from miniatures.com.

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The watering can and large pot on the left also came from miniatures.com.

So far so good, but not quite there yet.

There was one idea that kept percolating in my brain. I measured the space and ordered the necessary element. It arrived. But I was a little hesitant and I didn’t do anything until I was in one of those What the heck? kind of moods and then I went for it. Out came my keyhole saw. I traced the opening. I drilled a starter hole. And then I sawed. And sawed.

It worked.

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Behold, my skylight! I love, love it. And it’s one of the tweaks I made to the dollhouse that I am proudest of. After all, the owner needs some natural light in her potting space, don’t you think?

I keep adding things here and there:

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The internet is an amazing source for dollhouse printables. That’s where I found the seed packets and the botanical poster on the wall.

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And these. I love the butterflies. I got that crate from Weston Miniatures (on Etsy.) It inspired the crates I made for the Miniature Swap. (By the way the minis from that swap have arrived, but I have to wait until I get home to open the box!)

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The trowel also came from Weston Miniatures.

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The latest addition is the green stool, which I ordered from miniatures.com and painted and aged. (That hinge, by the way, was added by the dollhouse’s original owners. I’ve managed to cover most of them up. I’m plotting what to do to hide this one. To Be Determined.)

Next up, when I have the time and the funds, will be the rooftop garden. Oh, do I have plans for that space!

The winner of a copy of Moving Day is Linda from A La Carte! Congratulations, Linda!

Happy Thursday.

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The Lake

June 18, 2014 at 8:32 am by Claudia

I grew up spending time at my aunt’s cottage on a lake in Michigan, my home state.

That particular lake was named Silver Lake and it was about an hour or so from our house. The cottage itself was built by my grandfather in the early part of the twentieth century. In fact, it was the very first cottage on that lake. My parents spent their honeymoon there.

The family cottage was owned by all six Hill siblings after the death of my grandparents and eventually, my aunt became sole owner. The lake was another world for me, a place to sit on the dock, or sleep on the sleeping porch with the gentle sounds of waves lapping against the shore as my lullaby. It was a place where screen doors slammed, where we played with inner tubes or swam out to the raft. It’s where I learned to water ski. There was a little store just down the dirt road where we would walk to get a cold 7-up and some candy. The adults would play cards at night – usually a spirited game of ’31.’

Very different from my life in suburbia.

It’s no wonder that I’ve always loved lakes and have always wanted to live on a lake. The lake here, Chautauqua Lake, is 17 miles long and 2 miles wide. There are several communities on the lake, one of which is the Chautauqua Institution. On Sunday, I grabbed the opportunity to spend some time there – before the influx of summer visitors that will start on June 22nd.

It’s gorgeous.

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