This Is My Dollhouse

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I grabbed this book at the library a while ago and it is so cute.  It's all about a little girl who builds her own dollhouse out of a cardboard box and other random bits of this and that and then compares her experience to that of her friend who has a "perfect" plastic store-bought dollhouse.  Spoiler alert:  they have more fun playing and creating things in the cardboard house.  It reminds me of my own dollhouse as a little girl and how I was always making things for it out of odds and ends.  Of course mine was not made of cardboard, but a lovely three story wooden Victorian but the sentiment was similar.  It's so much more fun to make things for your dollhouse than to just buy it all.

The kids love the book so much I think I may have to add it to Margaret's birthday list.  John just about burst into tears when I told him this is our last week with it from the library--we only have an eight week max before they make you bring things back :)

Now Margaret's new dollhouse isn't exactly made from cardboard either but I thought I'd share an update on the renovations in case you haven't been following along on her dollhouse's Instagram account.*

I wanted to giver her a dollhouse for her birthday, because clearly two is the perfect age for a first dollhouse, so I grabbed this little beauty on Craigslist for $15 without any of the furniture or people.  And by "I grabbed" I mean I sent Chris on a three and a half hour journey to pick it up along with the amazing patio furniture I also found for a steal that same day.  Both things needed a little sprucing up.  I tackled the dollhouse and Chris handled the actual furniture which in his words "was not in the best condition" to which I responded, "that's why it's in our price range."  It was all worth it.    I'm sure Chris would agree.

I might have gotten a little carried away with my sprucing.  Obviously the dollhouse needed paint and shingles, and a brick chimney, and wallpaper.....and popsicle stick shiplap,  I mean, what would you have done?  I did have to order some specially sized furniture on Etsy because apparently Melissa and Doug decided to make these fold and go dollhouses a completely different size than any other toddler dollhouse in existence.  The beds and little chair I found are adorable though and fit the little chipmunk family perfectly. I even went ahead and ordered the "diy special" so I could do all the bedding and upholstering myself.  Sewing dollhouse bedding is surprisingly satisfying.  Well, dollhouse crafting in general is satisfying.  I would do it all day if these children didn't keep needing things like being fed and bathed and homeschooled.

I'm almost done but I'm still trying to decide if it's lame to have a dollhouse with no kitchen in it.  I could make something out of wooden blocks, or order an actual wooden kitchen and just use the parts that fit, or I could do no kitchen and put in a cute little fireplace I saw at the craft store for three dollars. I was also considering making a felt play mat similar to this to go with it since I have a giant sheet of green felt in my basement that someone passed on to me a while back.  That might be a bit ambitious though.  Ambitious but adorable.

Besides the great kitchen decision of 2016, I have a few little things I still want to put together before the little miss is presented with my masterpiece and I have to give over control of my house to a newly minted two year old.  Every time I pull it out to work on it though, the boys immediately swoop in and commandeer it for their own.  It would be precious if I didn't have things that need to be done.  Those tiny pictures aren't going to frame themselves, am I right?

I think the main draw is the stash of dollhouse accessories from my childhood that I've managed to save.  They love to put them all in and rearrange and rearrange and rearrange some more.  I totally understand the appeal but I'm going to simplify what very tiny things are in the dollhouse anyway and pack most of them up for when Margaret is old enough to have an actual, real, hopefully three story Victorian, dollhouse of her own to work on--with me--you know, if she's into that sort of thing, which I may or may not be desperately hoping that she is.

No pressure sweetie.

What do you think?  Kitchen, no kitchen?  Play mat?  She might really need the play mat.  And don't fret, I'm sure I'll have at least one more update with the whole completed work of art once it's totally finished.  Well, as finished as a diy dollhouse ever is.


*Don't judge me, making dollhouse Instagram accounts is a completely normal thing to spend my time doing.

On Lego Pouches and Useful Crafting

I try to teach the big kids handicrafts during their lessons, but I've been having a really hard time coming up with interesting projects to work on that are actually teaching some kind of skill.  Then I had an epiphany--pouches.

I think it was the women we saw at Colonial Williamsburg with their exterior pocket pouches combined with my burning desire for the children to stop stuffing random bits of life and legos in the pockets of every pair of pants that they own (with the ensuing dumping of every pair out of the drawer in a desperate attempt to find that-which-they-cannot-live-without).  Originally I thought about little knitted pouches I had seen somewhere before but once I started looking for ideas I found this tutorial for weaving pouches and I knew I had a winner.

I took the kids to the craft store and let them each pick a couple skeins of yarn from the dollar bucket.  John wanted sparkly green yarn because he "loves it so much" and David and Henry wanted camo yarn because that's who they are.  Margaret got mostly pink because her vocabulary is limited so I had to decipher the deepest wishes of her heart for her :)

I ended up making John and Margaret's (obviously) and I ended up doing most of Henry's too because he's grumpy and a bit of a quitter (poor Henry).  But David, David wove his whole pouch on his own with a bit of help on the flap and button and sewing on the cord.  He had so much fun he's been begging to make another, even longer, pouch.  He originally said he wanted it long enough to hold his baseball bat but I think I've convinced him that that is a really bad idea.  Also I don't have cardboard long enough to make him a bat sized loom.  We'll see.

I didn't put a flap on Margaret's pouch for ease of use since the flaps are a little difficult for little hands to work as there isn't a button hole--you're just supposed to push the button through the weaving.  They really liked picking out which button they were going to use from my stash though so there might have been a revolt if I hadn't made the button flaps on the boys'.

If you're looking for a handicraft I would definitely give this a go.  It may or may not help with the legos in the pocket situation at your house.  Sadly, it hasn't made much of a difference here.

What about you?  Do you have any favorite handicrafts at your house?

{p,h,f,r} My Grandmother's Quilt Edition

I don't have my photos properly divided into categories, but I've been linking up my progress on this quilt for so long that it seemed wrong not to link up the finished piece. You'll just have to forgive me this time.*

My grandmother had several of these quilt tops tucked away in a trunk in her room for as long as I can remember.  She had hand pieced them with an array of fabric scraps--it looks to be mostly old clothing and maybe, flour sacks?  She never told me the story of them--when she made them, why they were never finished--and I never thought to ask until it was too late.  Isn't that the way it always goes.  You think there will be plenty of time later, and then your time is up.

It took a long time to finish hand-quilting it since it's a queen sized quilt and I am a slow quilter but I didn't mind.  It's relaxing to have a project you can pull out and work on a bit in the evenings without making a huge mess--although it did take up a fair bit of space and I think Chris was glad to not be constantly shifting it around the living room anymore.

My goal had originally been to finish it by Thanksgiving so that I would be able to work on a baby quilt once we found out what we were having.  Obviously that timetable changed when it turned out that little Frances wouldn't be needing a quilt after all.  When I called Chris to let him know we had lost her and that he needed to meet me at the hospital for my induction the one thing I asked him to bring was the quilt.  I knew it would be a comfort and that I needed something to do with my hands while I labored.

When you're experiencing a typical labor you can distract yourself with something like binge watching Gilmore Girls while you eat as much as you can before you head to the hospital where you know they won't give you so much as a popsicle, not that you'd have time to eat one once you arrived anyway.  But when you're laboring for hours and hours to bring a child into the world who you know you've already lost you need a different sort of distraction.  One that you can pore all your grief and prayers and tears into.  That's what this quilt became for me, at the hospital and then at home as well.  I was almost sorry to finish it.

I suppose Frances got her quilt after all.

...

*I guess this post could still be considered pretty and real, but I really veered off the happy and funny once I started writing didn't I?  I'm going to link up to Like Mother, Like Daughter anyway because I do want to share the finished quilt, and the quilt does make me happy, if not actually upbeat.

On Turning Three and Rolling to the Rescue

John John turned three today and he was pretty excited.

Partly because he's obviously a big boy now, but mostly because there was a Rescue Bot explosion in our house.  And what three year old doesn't enjoy an explosion of his favorite plastic monstrosity?  I kid, I kid.  Kind of ;)

Chris stayed home for breakfast and we gave John his gifts in the morning so he would have all day to play with them.  I spent the last couple of weeks crafting him a cardboard Rescue Bots fire station and making peg dolls of all the human characters.  They were a pretty big hit.  And since he's the reigning 'cutest grandchild/nephew in the history of grandchildren/nephews' the actual Rescue Bots also came pouring in.  Because that's what he needs.  More Rescue Bots.  No one can resist his adorable smile and sweet requests for just one more bot.

Well I can, but I'm his hard-hearted mother so I suppose I don't count.

After all the presents were unwrapped and daddy was sent off to work, we had some of John's friends over for two separate playdates that involved lots of Rescue Bots and also chocolate chip cookies.  Once Chris came home again we had the obligatory cake and special birthday dinner.  John requested fish sticks and a chocolate cake with blue sprinkles and a Rescue Bot on top.  Fancy.

The icing was not my best work.  Note to self:  don't attempt to make complicated icing while simultaneously monitoring multiple three year olds fighting over who gets to land which Rescue Bot where.   John didn't notice.  A frosting connoisseur he is not.

He had major second thoughts after he decided this was the bot he wanted to put on his cake but I wouldn't let him switch and frosting-ify more toys.  He got over it.  And licked his treasure clean once it was reclaimed.

Happy Birthday little man!  You are the sweetest, cutest, best hug giver in the family--and don't you know it :)  Roll to the rescue honey.  Roll to the rescue.

On Making a Fall Leaf Garland

Well, we finally made a garland with all the pretty leaves we dipped in wax, and by "we" I really mean "I"--I made a garland out of the leaves on Sunday when I wasn't feeling well enough to go to mass so I camped out on the couch and tried to do sitting still things while Chris took the boys with him and Margaret napped.  It turned out better than I expected and really adds a little extra something to our unseasonally decorated house.

David and I really did dip the leaves together and it was so much less complicated than it sounded when I was looking up instructions. A lot of people said to use "an old pot" to melt the wax in but if you are anything like me, while your pots may be "old" they are still just "your pots" so you might not want to melt wax in any of them which, I'm pretty certain, would be obnoxious to get back out once you were done.  I just melted our wax on a stove burner in a disposable pie pan which worked beautifully and then was just.....disposed of.  I realized later that I should have saved the whole thing, hardened wax and all, so we could use it again to dip more leaves later but alas--my desire for clear countertops overcame my better sense and I just chucked it out.  Luckily I have a cabinet full so the loss isn't exactly devastating.

To make your own wax dipped leaves you just need to collect some pretty leaves and bring them home to flatten under something heavy.  Get some wax (I just used some white beeswax I found on Amazon--I'm pretty sure yellow would be fine too but Martha Stewart said bleached so I figured that she meant white) and melt some of it on low in a disposable pan on your stove--or use that "old pan" that you've been dying to clean hardened wax bits out of, I won't judge you.  Then put some wax paper nearby and then, holding onto the stem carefully, dip the leaves into the wax and lay them on the wax paper to harden.  So easy!  Nature study and handicrafts in one easy step :)

Our fall foliage is even prettier now than it was when we first went collecting so I think we may go out and get more for a second round of leaf dipping.  Maybe we'll hang them in front of the windows--or maybe we'll just leave them sitting around in giant neglected piles until we realize it's time to put up the Christmas decorations.  It's hard to predict these things.

Also, don't mind the random over-the-fireplace-decorating we have going on over here.  We originally put up the salvaged window to balance out the TV that was sitting in front of it, but when we moved the TV off of the mantle we just left it there because we realized that we have plaster walls here and they are so obnoxious to repair holes in that we didn't want to deal with taking it down.  And by that I mean Chris didn't want to deal with taking it down.  He just made a giant hole in Margaret's wall last week though, so maybe the time has finally come to buy the repair supplies and figure out what to do with that spot.  Lower the salvage window, just take the whole thing out, finally actually hang up the mirror?  Give up in a fit of indecisiveness and wait until next year?  It's hard to predict these things too.

On Fairy Houses

David loves fairies.  Books about fairies, pictures of fairies, but mostly he loves fairy houses.  When left alone his fairy houses are mostly piles of bricks and rocks and he's always asking me to make something a little more fancy with him.  I usually decline, not because I don't also love fairy houses, but because his ideas tend to get the better of him and then he turns grumpy when I can't/won't make them come to life.

"No David, we can't turn the cooler into a giant fairy mansion."

"No David, I can't make that six story fairy log castle you saw on Pinterest that probably took a thousand dollars and two years to complete."

Well, he's been asking for such a long time and he did sit in front of the azalea bushes for twenty minutes straight trying to catch an azalea fairy and we have dabbled in fairy houses successfully before so I thought now might be the time to give it another go.  After all, what's more fun than trying to wield a hot glue gun while not letting your toddler burn himself and unsuccessfully calming your baby by giving her random things you find on the patio to chew on?

It's kind of amazing, right?

We used an old log that Chris and the boys had been chopping with an axe and that I wouldn't let them throw on the fire because I knew it would be perfect for this kind of thing.  I gave it a shell roof patio and David scavenged the yard to find bark pieces for the doors and sticks for the supports/decorative elements.  He also found a random wind chime that previous renters must have left behind that would clearly help entice fairies into their new abode.

What's that?  You wanted a close up of the button bistro set?  It's my favorite part and also the most likely to meet an untimely end.

The whole project went much better than I expected.  Even Henry got into the action and didn't once scream "I don't believe in fairies" to force David to clap furiously in order to save whichever fairy might have just fallen down dead.

All afternoon David kept thanking me for making fairy houses with him.  It was really sweet.  Of course he's also now got a list of all the other fairy houses we need to make in order to complete his fairy village.

That boy.  He's got big ideas.

Now if someone could just give me a preemptive intervention before I hop on over to Etsy to find specially made fairy garden materials that would be great.......