The days continue to fly by….

• I spent 2 days at a workshop for school. Enjoyed it.
• We have almost cleaned up from the tree. Almost.. the largest chunks have been moved.
• We have staked out the outline of the new house.. and restaked, and staked again.. and now we think we have it in the right place for the surveyor to come and stake.
• And packing continues. And old sofa left the house for a new home, and boxes continue to be filled and taken to the inlaws for storage. Sort, pack, clean, repair… means the house is in a constant cycle of mess, but things are being gathered to donate, sell, give to neighbors etc… and in fact, are leaving the house.

Which brings me to a couple of new posts about my childhood toys. My mother and her mother were very crafty.. and they loved to paint. So my childhood was full of lovely handmade things, and my grandfather and dad usually got roped into helping.

For my entry today, I will show you my dollhouse. Now, my grandmother made an entire colonial village for my sister and I – exquisite and very detailed… a colonial house, a general store, a one room school house and a fabric store. But for my first, I could touch and move everything house, my mom and dad made a lovely basic house and it was my 5th birthday surprise. My friends loved it so much that my dad went into production and selling thse doll houses for quite some time.

Dad made the basic house. Mom painted the outside, and decorated the inside with material from decorator samples. She would get sample carpet and wallpaper books, and use those to decorate the interior.

Front

Somewhere there are a set of front stairs to get to the door.

My mother loved to paint.

Fireplace

The house had a fireplace and a chimney. Now, I grew up in Texas, in hot, steamy Texas, where noone had a fireplace because…it was hot and steamy. But my mom was enamored of them, so my house had a chimney. Our real house eventually had a fireplace as well, when they added on a family room.

Snow covered house

My dad was a model railroader, and knew all sorts of scenery tricks. At one point, we decided the house had to have a snowy roof… so the roof got this treatment.

The inside

The house was as tall as I was when I was five. We could sit or stand and play.

Furniture from Germany

The inside furniture came from lots of sources.. including some from a trip my grandmother made to Germany to visit family.

We had the house up for a few days and the little one played in it with his playmobile.  But now it is packed up again.. maybe someday I will have granddaughters to enjoy it? Or maybe in my second childhood, I will redecorate it.