My Christmas House, part 1

 

Hi All, I know it's been quiet here lately.  I've been up to my eyeballs in various projects, some of which are completed, and some of which are still in progress.  Many of the projects were related to getting the house decorated for Christmas!  I've spent the last several days working non-stop on getting it all done, and today, I'm going to share part of it with you!  I took so many photos, I decided I'd split things up into two posts.  Today will be my front room, and my next post will show the great room.

 

 

So, welcome!  The wreaths on our doors are ones I made last year- they're up all year, and I just added the silver glitter words on for the season. 

 

 

Above is the view you see as you enter.

 

 

 Just to the left is a little wall where this is hanging.  I found this large barnwood piece on clearance at Marshall's a few weeks ago.  I'm still determining how to use it permanently (it has a cut-out hole behind some of those Santa pictures, which I'm trying to work around!).  But for now, I put up all our Santa photos, a few vintage book pages, and a vintage stocking.  The empty space at the bottom will be for this year's photo, which we haven't had taken yet.

 

 To the right is our big Christmas tree.  There's another smaller one in the great room (the "kid's" tree), which I'll show you in my next post.

 

Another shot of the tree...

 

 This year, I changed up all my colors.  I used to have maroon and gold accents on the tree, but this year I changed to turquoise, aged silver, and red, with touches of burlap.  I love the way it turned out!

 

 I put all the more muted ornaments on this tree and left the brighter-colored ones for the "kid's tree".

 

 In the background, you an see my computer desk with this year's Christmas dollhouse on top!

 

 Every year, I seem to have a different dollhouse to decorate for Christmas.  This is the one I chose this year, since it was out in this room already!

 

 It's an FAO Schwarz Keystone house with Erna Meyer dolls as the owners.  Everyone's waving "Hello" to us, even Santa!

 

 Over on the main wall is this cabinet which I always decorate. 

 

 This year, I decided to keep things a little more low-key in here, leaving some of my regular furnishings inside, and just accenting with Christmas décor.  (I actually went through and purged a lot of my vintage Christmas décor and put it on Ebay this morning!  Take a look if you'd like!)

 

 First, I'll show you the top of the cabinet.  Those two mannequin figures are from Ballard Designs- I love them!!  I got the church at HomeGoods, and I made the ornament wreath a few years ago.

 

 It's so hard taking photos of the shelves in this cabinet because of the glass doors!  So I pushed them aside when I could to show you the insides.

 

As you can see, the doll furniture has even crept its way into my Christmas décor!

 

 Dang reflections!

 

 Those little Santa mugs fit perfectly in the old soda crate- wouldn't it be cute to be able to fill the whole crate with them?

 

 Here is a nice reflection of our kitty, Sushi!

 

 And over in another corner is a table with nativity sets on it.  This is the first year I've had them in a place where little hands can reach- it will be fun to see the kids play with them- gently, of course!

 

 

Well, that about covers my front room!  Here is a sneak peek at my next post, our great room- that's where the real fun begins!!

 

(If you'd like to see photos of my past Christmas décor, you can look here, here, here, or here...)

 

Peach & Green Rich Dollhouse

 If you'll remember, I recently showed you this picture of my latest project.  A sweet Rich dollhouse that had seen better days, but had potential! 

 

When I purchased the house, I was encouraged by the fact that the previous owner had removed some of the green paint from the roof, and hoped I'd be able to do the same.  I emailed her and asked what she had used to remove it.   She told me she'd used acetone fingernail polish remover.  I promptly went and bought some, and was horrified when this was the result:

 

 No matter how little or how much I used, it completely ate away all the paint, including the original paint!  I felt awful!  I had completely ruined the roof pieces, and it just made me sick, thinking that if I had used the correct paint-remover, I would have had the original finish to show. 

 

I was determined to make things right by this house, because the cream-colored roof is part of its charm, I think.  So I decided to make a new roof!

 

 I made a stencil with acetate, and used spraypaint to stencil the new brickwork onto masonite (the original roof was made from masonite as well).

 

 I took a picture of the roof in process, but my computer has decided to eat that photo for some reason, so here you can see the new roof completed!  While it's definitely not perfect, I think it feels enough like the original roof to pass.

 

Glennda was kind enough to send me a photo of her (immaculate) house of the same design.  From here, I was able to work on the rest of the house. 

 

 And here is the completed product!  I still need to create a door, but everything else is done- new windows, repainted trim, and repainted chimneys and front step. 

 

Here's a closer shot of the front step- it had been painted over brown, so I handpainted the stones to look like the original.

 

 I didn't take a picture of what the inside looked like before, but it was completely painted with the dark green like on the floor here.  I repainted it to the minty green like the outside of the house.

 

 The floors were also painted over by the previous owner, but I decided to leave them, because the colors are pretty, and match with the house.

 

And here she is again!  I really love this house- although it may not be in mint condition, it is so pretty, and has such character!

 

Happy Birthday, 8 Year Old!

 This handsome guy turned eight over the weekend! 

 

 He's becoming so smart and mature and wonderful!

 

We brought him sub sandwiches for lunch, and he wasn't a bit embarrassed to eat with us!  I'm holding on tight to these days, because I know the embarrassment is coming soon!

 

This year was all about the Legos.  Quite suddenly, all my kids have become obsessed with them, which is fine with me, because at least they're easy to store (we've got a color-coding system).

 

 I saw a few versions of this style of Lego cake on Pinterest, and I tried making my own. (Actually, the cake is a store bought one, but I "Lego-fied" it myself).  It's supposed to look like the cake is made from Legos with frosting on top- I think it sort of works, although the ones on Pinterest were much better!

 

 No complaints here though!

 

 Then we finished off the weekend by going to LEGOLAND, which was of course a big hit!

 

  Driving his own Lego car!

 

All in all, it was a fun birthday weekend with this awesome kid!  Happy Birthday, Riley!

 

One I Haven't Shown You Yet

 Well, yes, there's one here that I haven't shown you yet...  

 

I got this one a couple months ago from a sweet woman named Phyllis.  My husband was taking a road trip for work, so I checked out the Craigslistings on his route (I'm shameless, I know!), and found this lovely Keystone dollhouse!  He kindly agreed to pick it up for me, amidst much eye-rolling, I assure you...!

 

 It came to me looking like this.  A door which I was pretty sure wasn't original (although it is very nice),...

 

 ... and newer wallpapers covering the originals, unfortunately.  There were also wooden mouldings applied around doorframes and windows, which isn't characteristic of one of these houses.

 

 I promptly took the whole thing apart to begin my restoration.  Some of the walls had wallpaper on them, while some had been painted over.  I spent many hours trying to remove the newer additions, but didn't have a lot of luck.  Above you see my best efforts on the kitchen walls- the design is certainly visible, but a lot of masonite is showing through, and this looked good compared to the other rooms.  I finally decided I wasn't going to be able to salvage the original wall coverings, unfortunately. 

 

So my next step was to try and find photos of this style house in its original state, and duplicate the wall coverings as well as I could.

 

 I found photos of Florine's house (above), but as you can see, her roof is a little different than mine, and I could also tell that some of her wallpapers didn't match what I had uncovered in my house.  I emailed her to ask her about it, and she referred me to Glennda, whom she knew had another version of the house.

 

 Glennda was a real sweetheart, and sent me bunches of photos of her (then unassembled) house.  (If you click over to her blog, she has a photo of her now assembled house, and it is absolutely pristine- so bright and new!)

 

Between her photos, and what I was able to uncover myself, I chose scrapbook papers that looked closest.  Above you can see each piece of scrapbook paper behind the room which will be repapered.

 

 Here was Glennda's bathroom and kitchen.

 

And above is mine (sorry for the sideways photo- Blogger's having issues today...!)

 

And here's the finished inside of the house!  While I would have much preferred to have the original wall coverings, this is the next best thing, I guess.

 

Glennda also sent a photo of the original door-isn't it adorable??

 

If you remember, my original door was white with extra moulding on it.  I was able to remove some of the extra moulding, but not the outside pieces.  I just decided to paint the door blue and add a pink knob.  I think it works fairly well.

 

And here it is up on a piece of furniture in my front room.  Another dollhouse sneaking its way out of my studio because there's no more room!  I've already got some real cute furniture to go inside it-I'll give you a tour once it's all complete!

 

 

I've also been working on putting together and fixing up the dollhouse I showed you in my last post, so I'll show you the finished product soon!