Living in Glass Houses

 It's hard to believe that the Holiday Season is upon us. My friend reminded me last night (Thank You, Sherry) that Christmas is only 20 days away--of course, that is her time table since she will celebrating with her family on the 23rd, but I have an extra day since we celebrate with both daughters' families Christmas Eve, youngest daughter Jennifer's birthday. When I worked, I didn't begin decorating until after I had graded my last essay and posted grades; only then could I concentrate on holiday decorating, so here I sit blogging, knowing that I have time and I need the Mr. to haul decorations out of the basement.

It's been a busy month with projects that kept me from roofing the Manchester, so that tedious chore will be on hold until after the first of the year. My Daughters of the American Revolution chapter makes greeting cards for the veterans at the Cheyenne, WY VA nursing home. 

The first batch goes out for Vetern's Day and then we make cards for them for Christmas. I host the card workshops and this year we generated another 112 cards to be included in our DAR chapter project, Project Patriot that ships care packages to military serving over seas. Our current soldiers will receive a card of appreciation for their service and a holiday card in their care packages that will be sent to Eastern Europe. 

In between card making, I returned my Barbies to their class house. I have quite a collection of Barbies that had to be stored while we put new carpet in the bedroom where they live. I finally got them put back in their their glass home. While I have not seen the Barbie movie, I thought I'd pay a bit of a tribute to her here. I was too old to receive the fist Barbie, so late in life I binged Barbie. 

As I placed each one back in the cabinet, I begin to wonder if I really still loved my dolls--the answer came quickly: YES. So I kept putting them back in the cabinet.  And then I got the bright idea to photograph them.

Here we have the Nutcracker Collection, along with Swan Lake Princess in the back.

I used my iPhone to take the photos. I love how this one turned out: Snow's jealous stepmother conjuring up her evil plant. 

 To use that feature on your iPhone, open the camera; select Portrait; select Stage Light to get this unique exposure. I use it flowers and butterflies in the garden, too. 

This lovely lady belongs to the Decades Collection, reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. The entire collection begins with 1890s Victorian and ends with who else but the 1960s Hippy Chick.

I loved fairytales as a child, so I have all of my princesses as interpreted by Barbie with that vintage Disney influence. I have the entire Oz cast, another childhood favorite, Alice, not a Barbie, and the Native American Barbies. 

The top shelf has Romeo and Juliet up front, but in their boxes and not visible are Morgan LeFey and Merlin and Arthur and Guinevere.

I played this morning with the miniatures, decorating the newest structure, the greenhouse.

I've been bingeing "The Santa Clause." I love Tim Allen and enjoyed the original movies, so here is my interpretation of how Santa might be preparing for the Big Delivery. He's relaxing in his polar (and most likely solar, too) greenhouse checking the list to make sure he has good things for all the good little girls and boys. 

The greenhouse will be partnered with the Manchester behind the garage--which is taped in place for the dry fitting, another project pending until after the first of the year.

Never mind the mess. The basement will soon look like Christmas exploded all over it--I've got a good start as I began dragging out decorations from underneath the stairs this morning.

I dug through my stash to find a short string of colorful lights that I attached on the outside of green house to give it a more festive look. The Pink Farm House will be ready for Christmas--since I didn't put any of its decorations away last year and I think this year I'll decorate the toy store. Stay tuned. 

The poinsettias are not hand made; I purchased them from Tuesday Morning years ago. Still they look festive and certainly would love the warmth of the green house and the tree is a live potted one serving as Christmas Tree and will be planted outside next year. 

I'm so glad you stopped by today. What are you mini holiday projects? Do you decorate your mini houses for the holidays? It would be fun to see them. 

Have a great week. 

Pink Makes a Friend

October comes packed with events, most notably the change in season. As the fall colors begin to appear, my love for Spring as my favorite season fades away and Autumn wins over my heart with all of her glorious color. October is also our anniversary month. We met on Friday the 13th way back in 1972 and have never been apart since that impromptu date--well, except for the seasonal hunting and fishing trips He takes and my few little excursions now and then. So here are we are 49 years later. We had dinner at a favorite steak house where the wait staff surprised us with a complementary desert and card signed by all the staff. Now that was special. 

    

 

My Daughters of the Revolution Chapter is back in full swing after having the summer off. I've been working a major project for the chapter to designate a little country church on a lonely highway in Northern Colorado on the way to the Wyoming border  as a DAR historical site. The application required a great deal of research, but it is now ready to be submitted. 

Next, October brings the DAR chapter's card making project where members gather in my basement to create hand made greeting cards for the veterans. We send Veterans Day cards to the veterans at the Cheyenne, WY VA nursing home and we will collect small gift items for them and make Christmas cards. We set our goal at 100 cards, though at last count last year there were only 17 residents in Cheyenne. The remainder of the cards are sent to an organization Cards for Soldiers in Michigan and those ladies ship thousands of hand made cards to US military serving over seas--for some their only source for greeting cards to send home.

Thus the mini workshop is converted to a card making workshop for the season. I'll pop in here maybe with some roofing progress and I'll be making dozens of mini flowers for the Manchester garden, so stay tuned.

In the mean time, Pink insisted on a photo shoot for the greenhouse. She is so proud of it--I don't know why she needs all the glory because I did all the work, but she does have that glorious head of pink hair, while I'm slightly gray. And she invited her Bee friend, who appears to be a bit reluctant to be photographed, so here is the grand tour: Scale wise, the lemon tree seems to fit nicely. The leaves are a bit larger than scale, but who's measuring?

Pink had to dress it up a bit with a hat. I purchased her basket at the Denver miniature show last month along with the butterfly house.

Bee was saved when I found her at my favorite potpourri gift store. She begged to get out of the dreadful sales display. She and Pink are just getting to know one another and I'm afraid the poor creature didn't know what she was singing up for when she teamed up with Pink, but they both put the lemon tree in scale. I ordered to pot from Molly Sue Miniatures, one of my favorite website artists who sells very unique miniature accessories. I always order a handful of little things since they are shipped from the UK. 

Heather and I flew out to San Jose last October where I found this birdhouse shelf, one of my favorite pieces. I gritted my teeth and glued it in place so that it would stay put, but photographed the back so that I could recall the artist. I have some small figurines to add.

I made the second birdhouse: very easy. a 1/2 inch square dowel with some holes drilled in and a couple toothpick perches. The clock is a wooden disk with an image collected for the web modgepodged in place; same with the posters. I ordered the shelf brackets from ministers.com and the fern comes artwork from Minatymama on Etsy. She is also on InstaGram as Lenakarin66. Makes beautiful, stylish minis.

I finally got brave and glued all the pieces in place, then glued the back wall to the sides and the floor. The brick wall is a piece of scrapbook paper from my paper stash, so the wall decor pieces are actually glue to paper so the wood won't be damaged if I ever decide to redo the wall.  For some reason, l've been very reluctant to permanently attach things for fear that I'll make a mistake, but if you don't glue items in place, things fall apart--don't they!

Buntings seem to be an English thing. As I follow my Birtish friends' blogs, they celebrate with elaborate buntings, even decorate their green houses with them, so I downloaded some bunting images from Pinterest and made my own. 

My favorite item has to be my violets that I made both from kits and from scratch. You can see the tutorial here: African Violets (you have scroll down some.) Originally the greenhouse was going to be dedicated to African Violet and orchids, but then I bought that little butterfly terrarium--there is only limited space. 

I had a couple of option for the floor. One was the black white checked faux tile floor that is Hobby Lobby offers, which looked nice, but in the end I opted for a rougher look by painting the floor cement gray and stippling it a bit to rough it up.

Some of my pots came from Molly Sue in an earlier order. 

I have always had a love for butterflies. My dad taught me to love them and he was a collector, mounting them in boxes, often cigar boxes. Now he didn't smoke cigars, but he collected the boxes and used them as storage. This little printable cigar box is a little tribute to my dad fashioned just as he would have: some cotton ball (that's what they had back then as his mounted butterflies were placed on top with a bit of glass cut to fit to protect them. Only I used clear plexiglas. Tiny butterflies can be sourced from a number of places: Search Pinterest for downloadable butterfly images at scale. I download the images then import them into Microsoft Word and scale them down to "tiny."

They do required hand cutting, so use short bladed, short scissors, there are  Etsy shops that sell precut 1:12 scale butterfly collections or printable ones that you can download and cut out like LDelaney that has beautiful butterfly collections, even a download option.

Often I purchase kits first to figure out how they are assembled--like flowers--then I can work out a way to fashion my own from scratch. The kits always are more authentic looking professionally cut and colored. Often the question is do I buy the more expensive kits or do I invest in the punches and other tools to create my own. Well, only you can answer that. For a one time project, the kits are best, but if you are mini nuts and want to make your own will make a lot of flowers then invest in good tools.

I tried to figure out lighting, but with the plexiglass covering the roof, it was just too cumbersome to add an electric light. A fan would have been nice, too, but I decided to pass on that. The greenhouse is now officially finished. I may add or take out items. I haven't decided about gluing the roof and /or the front in place. I'm thinking not incase I  might want to redesign it, I should leave at least one panel un attached so that I can easily move items in and out.

Here are some additional links. You can poke through my recent posts (this year) to find posts on how I made different things, including assembling the greenhouse. It's a fun project, easy and satisfying with so many possibilities. 

 The Cultured Dollhouse: Green House Kit

My Mini Front Porch:  tiny seedling trays

Factory Directory Crafts: Metal Chair: not currently available 

Minatymama: the fern wall art and others; group of six plants; she's on break now. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

 

Too Many Projects

 I seem to be having a hard time focusing these days, jumping from one thing to the next. The speed shingles from Green Leaf arrived several days ago, but I've not tackled that roofing job yet, but it really must be the next project. I must get the Manchester house itself finished. 

Along with these good intentions, real life gets in the way. It's time to host the fall greeting card making parties for my DAR chapter. We make Veteran's Day cards and Christmas cards for the residents at the the Cheyenne, WY, so I went downstairs this morning to begin cleaning and organizing for the worship next week, but, of course, I got side tracked.

Last week I stopped at ARC, a local thrift store and found bags of dollhouse furniture. I didn't buy them because the time because the items that  were jammed in plastic bags looked pretty rough, but the next morning, I just had to go back to buy two bags. Of course, it was pretty much sight unseen and I was pretty disappointed when I got the bags home and opened them up, but I did manage to salvage one table, but it had to be rebuilt. 

This was my first attempt at piecing the table back together, using toothpicks and painting all the legs silver. But it didn't work.

The toothpicks didn't work, so I cut down some spindles to the correct length to make wooden legs: 

Well that didn't look very good either. The mid century (1970s) table with a glass top and chrome legs didn't work with wooden  spindle legs. I was about to give up.

I returned to the container where I put all the bits and pieces and found another leg, so I needed only one toothpick to put all the pieces back in place. I cleaned off all the silver paint that I had covered the chrome with to blend with the wood toothpick pieces, removed the old, excess glue, and drilled a tiny hole in the toothpick so that the counter part piece would fit.

Now with all but one of the original pieces, I was able to salvage the cool little table. I was beginning to really like it.  I used the LocTite glue so that it would set quickly, though I can't seem to keep it off my fingers. 

The tiny pieces have a bit of flange on one end that fits into a tiny whole on the other piece to create T-shaped legs, which the wooden leg doesn't have, but the LocTite seems to hold it in place.

Can you spot the toothpick replacement?

The Manchester Country Home now has a a mid century modern dining table that compliments the mid-century living room furniture. I like it. It's a departure from my real life decorating preferences. 

The bum leg doesn't show. 

I think I need new rug, though. This one went nicely with the French Country wood dining table and chairs, but not so much with this more modern look. 

What do you think? Certainly not a bargain for thrift store find. I left a bag behind. There are some other chairs that I'll be able salvage, too, but it certainly was not worth the the money I spent, but, gee, I like this little table.

The Manchester will have a garage, I decided. I ordered this kt from miniatures.com and couldn't wait to get it un boxed. The Houseworks kits are so well made and nicely packaged.

No pictures, though, with the the instructions.

The door and window are already assemble, but the working garage door will require some assembling. 

The dry fit reveals how big the structure really is. The Tesla and vintage Chevy pick-up fit nicely.

But where to put the garage?

The house will live on this 8 ft. table, so I have to decide where the garage will look the best.

It will be a fun project to build. I'm trying to decide what will go in the garage loft. 

We can't help but think in real life terms, so where would a garage logically go? Next the the living room side of the house? That's a long way to have to carry groceries!

Maybe on the other side of the house next to the kitchen. I like it there, but that's where the greenhouse was going to be. 

Looks a bit crowded here.

Nope.

Well, I'm not going to worry about it now. I'll build it first.

And yet another distraction

The Lemon Tree is coming along nicely. What a work intensive project, but a fun one and the tree will look great in the green house when I get it finished.

Taking a break from cleaning, sorting, organizing, and fiddling with a table repair, I worked on my lemon tree. I introduced you to the tutorial that I purchased online to learn how to make tiny trees. Here's the link:  Honey Thistle: Tiny Fruiting Citrus Tree Tutorial

After working with the tutorial, the lemon and orange trees are easily crafted, using readily available tools and supplies. Step by step, I fashioned my own lemon tree. 

Here are the first three branches, the main part of the tree. Lying next to the core tree is the next main branch. I'll make two of them.

These next branches are easily assembled.

Now the main branches of the tree have been combined, shaped, and fixed in place.

I've learned how to use floral tape to hold cover up the glued joints and create a smooth foundation for the next step: a realistic looking trunk.

The tutorial calls for air dry porcelain clay, but the package is very large and expensive, so I substituted this inexpensive air dry clay that I really like. It's a very moist clay that is easily molded.

I've textured the trunk; now I'll let it air dry over night and paint it. I will add the lemons and use glaze on the leaves to make them shiny and more life-like.

I'm so glad that you dropped by. Share your thoughts. I'd like to know what you are thinking.