New Addition!!!

I found the *coolest* thing today at Bo-mar Hall Antiques in Wells, ME. I took my parents there today, as they are visiting from PA this week. My dad loves trains and they have a ton of train stuff. My mom has varied interests and she found lots of things to look at and buy. Well I was walking through the store with Jason and we turned the corner and saw this:


Yes, a 1:12 scale general store. It looks handmade and one-of-a-kind. It's also very solidly built. And get this...according to the tag, it was 45 dollars. At that price, it was a steal, right??? Well when Jason and I carried it to the front to buy it, it cost 33.08 w/tax, because it was on sale!!!!

I know, right?

So now it's sitting in my living room, waiting for a place to live, and to be cleaned and touched up. :) Here are some more pics:








As you can see, the front panel comes off, and Jason said he could put it on hinges. I want to take out the paper on the second floor. I am not sure if I will repaper it or just paint/stain it. We'll see what it says to me. :) This is going to be such an exciting project! I might put a lot of the stuff from the "Chic Boutique" in here to fill up the shelves.

Better Late than Never, Right???

I've been downright deadbeat on posting about the lovely item I won from Dale of Dale's Dreams.

She had a raffle to celebrate having 50 followers, and I won! I was able to choose any pillow from her etsy shop and she sent it so quickly, I feel awful about taking so long to post!

I'll blame it on my day job, because, well, that's exactly why I haven't been posting or mini-ing much lately, for that matter. That, and I couldn't find my camera card for a couple days...yikes!

I will be back once I get a lull in the schedule of experiments, conferences (going to Oregon this month!), and the start of a new semester. If I know how my schedule works, I know there will be some downtime in there somewhere, where I can relax and work on minis. So don't give up on me yet! :)

Enough about me! Look at the pretty:


Thank you, Dale! :) I am thinking about having a contest soon...but I have to make something first...hmmmm. :)

!

YAY! I finished most of the kitchen. :) There's a few pieces I want to fill in with stained wood at the top of the front wall, in between the brackets.

But the rest of it is done! (Except for the windows, but I'll do those all at once.)

One wall done!

woo-hoo! It looks better than I thought!

Kitchen update!

So our New Hampshire weather went from sunny and early fall-like yesterday to rainy and awfully dreary today. *sigh* I am spending the afternoon with a cup of tea, listening to music, and working on the kitchen of the Glencroft.

Here's what I came up with so far.



As you can see, the paneling is in. :) It's actually stained cardstock (I use Olympic Wood Stain in Early American) and cut into strips (using an X-acto and a ruler on a cutting mat). I glued them in with tacky glue and did one more stain job of the whole thing.

I sprayed shellac on the wallpaper I printed out. (This was fun as I was trying to stand in the doorway on the porch, trying to avoid getting shellac in the house, while also trying to avoid getting wallpaper wet with rain.)

Next, I am going to cut the wallpaper to fit the walls, and then install it. After that, I plan to put the trim in for the windows and doors, and then add the chair rail to cover up the raw edges between the wallpaper and the panels. :) Can't wait to see how this is going to look!

YAY!

The weather here in NH is strangely like that of early September, when the summer weather becomes less humid and the air is crisp and clean. It's my favorite weather, but unexpected for July. *shrugs* Oh well.

Anyway, I am getting a new addition to the dollhouse family.

YAY! I just won it on eBay. I am very excited as this is pretty hard to find and definitely one of the cutest houses on my wishlist. :)

Plan of action: Glencroft Kitchen

As I mentioned earlier, I have yet to do the windows and doors on my Glencroft. But first, I want to touch up and redecorate the rooms, one at a time.

I am starting with the kitchen. I was looking online yesterday for some wallpaper ideas and found a few I really like. While I am not a huge fan of wallpaper in general, I did find a great wine-country style with wine labels all over it. This lead me into imagining the kitchen with richly stained wainscoting below a chair rail, with the wallpaper above.

Here is a sample of the wallpaper. I took what I found on the wallpaper website, put it in Photoshop and repeated the design. I am going to print this out on heavier paper and spray it with fixative before I hang it up.
With the lower half of the walls stained and this wallpaper on the upper half, it shouldn't look too busy. :) Here's to hoping!

Here are some 'before' pics of the kitchen (as you can see, it dreadfully needs some help, at least it's primed already!!):


Here's the wallpaper inside the kitchen. I like the neutral tones that it adds to the kitchen. My house is loud enough on the outside as it is, so I'd like to tone it down a bit in the interior. LOL
Let's see how far along I get on this today.

Oh yeah: Happy July 4th to my fellow American readers!