Worth the work

Amazon had by far the best price on this kit. The instructions were fairly easy to follow but you want to make sure you understand and it looks right before gluing and nailing as it’s very difficult to undo mistakes afterward. Set is made with real plywood so very durable and pieces went together without any sanding though I did need to use masking tape to hold pieces while the glue dried since a few pieces were slightly bowed. The house looks great assembled and was worth the time and effort! I

Product Features for Melissa & Doug The House That Jack Built – Katherine

• Cabinet grade, birched-faced Plywood
• Pre-assembled components (doors, windows, stairs, railings)
• Precut trim with period details
• Milled clapboard siding
• Grooved construction for easy assembly and precise fit

Doll House Rave Review

Product Features for Melissa and Doug 3701 Fold & Go Mini Dollhouse

• Melissa & Doug Toys

Great unisex Toy

Cute but . . .

My son loves it!

Great design, cute, well thought out.
My 2 year old son spends hours with it. So great to have an androgynous toy house that’s not crappy plastic!
Great for imagination. The figures are poseable and much cuter than pictured.
High quality! It’s been abused and looks great.
This would also work great with little people people.
My son uses his plastic animals, little people, toy soldiers… Everybody lives in the house. Or the barn. We have that too…
All the kids prefer it to our actual dollhouse

Product Features for Melissa & Doug Fold & Go Woodland Treehouse

• Furnished with two beds, a table, two chairs, and a ladder
• Open-and-close doors and a convenient built-in carry handle
• Includes adorable and posable plush bear and bunny
• Opens wide for easy access
• Exceptional quality and value

My daughter was delighted when this came in the mail!

Simple and Sturdy

Great First Dollhouse

I bought this when my granddaughter was 2 1/2. Until I upgraded her to a larger stationary Melissa & Doug dollhouse at age 5 she played with this set a lot. In fact, her cousin who just turned 2 has just inherited thisi dollhouse and she loves it, too.
This is a sturdy and portable toy that is made from wood. It has a handle that allows it to be carried when closed. All the basic furniture and two dolls are included in the set. Its educational value is debatable, but it is a toy that keeps a chi

Product Features for Fold & Go Dollhouse – Melissa & Doug’s Wooden Dollhouse

• Top Quality Children’s Item.
• Made with the Best Quality Material with your child in mind.

Perfect for on-the-go

We’ve had this doll house for 4 years or so. It is very durable, point proven once my 3 year old discovered it. And despite it’s compact concept, there is a lot of room inside to play with dolls. It has handles for easy carrying; we take it to the grandparents’ often, with minimal effort. The furniture (not included) fits nicely inside when folded.

Our house came completely unpainted, which at first was a detraction for our kids. But I decided to decorate it, using my daughters’ guidance as to

Product Description for Fold & Go Dollhouse – Melissa & Doug’s Wooden Dollhouse

Dollhouses are so great for pretend play and with Fold & Go Dollhouse by Melissa & Doug; I can take one with me anywhere! Two wooden toy people live inside this house; they’re flexible so I can move them around, put them in bed and make them sit. Fold & Go Dollhouse looks just like a real home, with stairs and rooms and furniture! There are 11 pieces of toy furniture for me to place in different spots! I can set them up for a living room, a kitchen and more! I love how the toy wooden dollhouse o

Doll house beginner

Product Features for Melissa & Doug The House That Jack Built Dollhouse – Gum Drop

• Cabinet grade, birched-faced Plywood
• Pre-assembled components (doors, windows, stairs, railings)
• Precut trim with period details
• Milled clapboard siding
• Grooved construction for easy assembly and precise fit

Sturdy materials, clear directions

Perfect

Product Features for Melissa & Doug Fold and Go Mini Stable

• With a decorative green “shingled” roof, this wooden stable provides a happy home for 4 plastic horses
• When open, your little farmer or equestrian has easy access to the hayloft, with its wooden ladder, and 4 bales of “hay”
• There’s a stall for each horse, lots of sliding and swinging doors and a folding corral to keep the horses in the barnyard
• Sturdy wooden handles make it easy to take the fun along
• Exceptional Quality and Value

Medium Sized Stable

Horse loving 7 year old loves this stable.

A few “short” falls…

I love Melissa & Doug stuff. Their reputation in quality preceeds them, but do be aware: THIS DOLLHOUSE IS EXACTLY HALF THE SIZE OF THE STANDARD DOLLHOUSE!!! The pieces are VERY small, and luckily it comes with two dolls, because you will never find any more for this house any where. Normal dollhouse ratio is 1:12, and this one is 1:24. Amazon recommended a family set to buy with the house, and I purchased it, but the family is way too big to fit inside. The house itself is beautiful and the fur

Product Features for Melissa & Doug Self-Storing Fully Furnished Dollhouse

• Manufactured by a top-notch children’s company
• Great brand-name children’s item
• Safe, non-toxic, time tested
• Perfect gift for birthdays, holidays, & special occassions
• Satisfaction guaranteed

Excellence

A Teeny Tiny Christmas on Pinterest

This collaborative page features everything from tiny bundt cakes to mini cookies, to my personal favorite, this tiny truck with a tree on top:

Tiny truck, tiny tree. Photo credit: vintagejunky.blogspot.com

Quick and dirty snapshot of the installation in-progress.

My installation The Disobedient Dollhouse will pay a visit to the Art Gallery of Peterborough, starting this month. This exhibition will also screen my 2-minute stop-motion animation Domestikia: The Incident in the Nursery. Exhibition runs from November 9 – January 6, 2013. The opening reception will take place Friday November 16, 7 – 9 pm. Visit the web site of the AGP for details and/or directions.

In current dollhouses much more popular played by little girls, although not just that many of adults are loved to gather these mini houses because the arts and histories. Not less of these dollhouses has a high values amongst the mini residence enthusiasts. Based upon research year by years shows that the dollhouses  as one of products that a lot of individuals looking for, specifically by the parent. Typically they get it as a gift for their little girl on almost any events such as birthday time or Christmas year. The creative, great looking miniatures like a true, Educational functions pertaining for imagination and socials, makes the Dollhouses become considered one of beloved presents all the time. Other conveniences are a wonderful quality dollhouses was very strong and could go longer for a lots of years.

Dollhouses world the reality is a huge market. Proven with lots of producer these days that supplies many choices of dollhouses versions, large or small scale in various rate assortments. You could state Kidkraft, among huge manufacture which produce toys for kids featuring the dollhouses with many models. Right here are a few of the designs they make: Majestic Mansion Dollhouse, Savannah dollhouse, Chelsea dollhouse, My Dreamy Dollhouse, Dollhouse bookcase, City Light Dollhouse, and numerous others. Dollhouse from Kidkraft is just one of of my recommendation which has a terrific design and excellent. This options is arise from just single manufacture and there are many of them out there such as Fisher Price and Mellisa and Doug.

Kidkraft Dollhouses is primarily purposes as play set or toys for little girls and possibly totally different from dollhouses in previously. In the past dollhouses is made by hand and focus on outside. They develop the miniature residences which is like the real ones for the excitement and pastime on collectible.

No matter what the purposes is the dollhouses has been a part of our life. From children to adults every person adores this miniature houses. If you have interesting to dollhouses, you can find it on neighborhood toys stores or online stores. However one thing to bear in mind prior to you choose to purchase, you have to know which types do you prefer to select.

I am fortunate that my sunroom  affords me space for my dollhouse, plants and play room for me and the grandchildren when they visit. I am very aware that not everyone has the space that I have. Dollhouses come in so many sizes for just this reason. When Carmela and Sophia helped me select the houses that I would list on my website I suggested we look at both large and small for just this reason.

The little Orchid Dollhouse Kit is a sweet example of a small dollhouse for anyone with limited space and /or budget. It’s is not that hard to join the growing number of dollhouse collectors.

http://www.thedollhousegarden.com/The_Orchid_Dollhouse_Kit_p/gl-9301.htm

I’m continuing to work on my roof as time allows, as you can see by my shingles in the window. I’ll let you all know when this project is finished.   In the meantime ……  Happy Creating to all of you

Life is different as a kid…for some reason, that popsicle or that toy is everything dreams are made of. You cant imagine a bigger happiness. Fireworks exploded in your eyes as a kid when you knew you were getting something you really wanted. For some reason as adults its harder to be that ecstatically happy even when we get what we want. Sure, we’re happy, but I bet you looked happier when your mom said she would get you the cereal box that came with the toy inside.

Its nice to see a child’s face so full of happiness with the simplest of things.

Well except now’a'days I’m sure they’re asking for things like Iphones, Ipads, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, ect. Kids have gotten expensive…oh boy. I have no choice but to raise my kid in the boonies!! 

I mean seriously…otherwise she’ll never know what a real childhood is about. Its about adventure, freedom, somersaults, and fireflies. camping, climbing, playing, and underwater flips in the pool. The toy section in a big store, hopscotch and jumping rope. Sharing secrets with your best friend, rollerblading, bike riding, and going to sleep at night hopelessly happy after a warm bubble bath and a good bedtime story.

Sometimes though…theres still that ONE thing that you always wanted and never got.

For me, it was a dollhouse. God, how I wouldve died for a dollhouse. It wouldve been like hitting the jackpot for me as a kid. I wanted one sooooooo bad, but never dared to say a word.

We were middle class growing up. We lived in a cookie-cutter house in a nice quiet neighborhood, with more than  enough food in our fridge, and wore clothes from K-mart and Sears. My mom regularly bought me toys and dolls. I treasured each new doll I got. It seemed to make my mom happy to see how well I took care of my toys unlike my brothers who loved to break every new toy in a WWF wrestling match, or unscrew every thing apart just “to see what was inside.”

Still, I wasnt a spoiled brat. I couldnt get every toy or doll I wanted, unlike my “rich” best-friend. Her dad owned horses and they had a big pool in their backyard. Anytime a new barbie was out on commercials…Stacy already had it. I was glad she was my best friend though. She wasn’t stuck up, or mean. She was a nice girl with blonde hair and the slightest streak of freckles playing across the bridge of her nose. We would play “pony’s” and catch  butterfly’s together during recess. She always shared her snack bar money with me too (snack bar was open right before we got to go back to our classroom to watch a Disney movie on Friday’s.)

One of my fondest childhood memories is my dad surprising me with a new doll every so often when he would come home from work. I would light up with happiness unlike any other. He knew I loved dolls. When I was 10 he took me to Toys’R'Us because I had gotten good grades on my report card. He said I could pick out whatever I wanted. well…

I wanted a “boyfriend” for my barbie. 

He looked like he’d just realized his little girl wanted to date. He said NO. His face was a mixture of confusement and disgust. I looked at the handsome Ken Doll in the shiny box above me and pouted.

“Im sorry Barbie…I know youre lonely, but youll have a boyfriend soon, I promise,” I said to my barbie when I got home that night. I ran my hands down her long brown hair soothingly. I got the supermarket for barbie with a shopping cart and all the little canned food, as well as some new outfits for my barbies that day. My dad was surprised that was all I wanted. Really though, I wanted 5 Ken dolls for my barbies. But I knew there was no possibility in that happening. I would have to wait until my mom took me shopping. She would say yes, I was sure. After all, she knew the importance of having a man around!

Well I got the Ken dolls later.

However, I couldn’t bring myself to ask for was the dollhouse. In my mind it was too expensive to even think about asking for. I was a kid, and it just seemed outrageous to ask my parents for something above $100.  The thing is…my parents actually could’ve afforded it. When I grew up and told my mom about it, she just frowned and said, “I wish you would’ve told me how bad you wanted one as a kid. I would’ve bought you one.” GREAT. There’s something I wish I could go back in time and tell my dumb ten year old self.

Instead, I only dreamed. I would secretly go through my neighbors hallway closet and pull out her moms sewing book because in the front pages there was a big picture of a beautiful dollhouse and all its rooms majestically adorned. I would stare at that picture for as long as I could before I heard someone coming. For some reason I couldnt let anyone know how badly I wanted a dollhouse. It was my secret.

One summer, when I was around 10, my dad took me and my family into the Home Depot for a home purchase he needed to make. I walked around calmly without a care when suddenly, there they were before my eyes… the most beautiful Dollhouses sitting in a perfect row on display. My mouth slowly gaped in amazement as I walked up to them. There seemed to be glitter and stars floating around those dollhouses. It was such a magical moment for me.  They were no longer in a picture book or in my neighbors sewing book. They were real and I could put my hand up and touch them. Some had house lights that worked and some had porches. They were…perfect.

Then I looked down at the prices. They were all over $100. My heart dropped. No way would I ever get one of those, I thought. I heard my parents calling me and I quickly left the dollhouses to go catch up to them.

Two years passed by. I was 12, and almost a teenager, but I was as innocent as a lamb and I still played with my barbies. So did my friends. Times were different back then. One day we were helping the librarian in our school clean out her library. She was getting rid of a lot of toys she had on display and my friends were scoring a lot of cool things. I looked around for something to ask her for since she was being so generous. I saw a Dollhouse book on display on a top shelf. It was a really tall book that unfolded into a doll house. It looked almost new and I didn’t really think she wanted to get rid of it, but I took my chances anyway and asked her for it. She looked down at it, and thought about it for a moment, her oval glasses hanging at the tip of her nose. I bit my lower lip and looked up at her with my pleading brown eyes. I wanted it more than anything in the world and I think she saw that. There was a pause. Then she tilted her head to one side and said, “OK, you can have it. But take care of it.” I smiled so big and held on to that dollhouse book so tight. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. For a whole year after, I spent countless hours playing with it. I would carefully open it all around, tie the strings together to hold it open, and let my imagination take over as I took my dolls inside the different rooms. It wasn’t a wooden Dollhouse, but it was the only Dollhouse I had, and even if it was a few years too late, it made me happy in my last year of childhood.

I think back on how badly I had wanted a Dollhouse and I pray my little girl will be as girly as I was. I will surprise her with the most beautifulest Dollhouse shes ever seen. I will handcraft it myself and adorn every room with as much detail as a real house. It might take me a few years, but I want it to be perfect for her. Im so happy Im having a girl. If she ends up being a Tom-boy Ill just have to keep the dollhouse thing as a hobby and join her in her mud races and tree climbing. (But Im crossing my fingers she’ll be into dolls and tutus haha.)

In my last blog I mentioned that I was working on finally shingling the roof of my dollhouse.  I had begun this job multiple times , but this time I am determined to complete it. We won’t get into the previous times, just suffice to say that I was not properly prepared with enough shingles the last couple of times. I thought I would get back to the stores and buy more shingles as I needed them. Not a good idea, as my oldest granddaughter used to say. That is why the job never did get finished before.

As I was happily shingling away one day I suddenly realized that perhaps I should finish the chimney before shingling around it.  How was I to get that done quickly, in an economical way ?

Time to let my ” fingers do the walking” as they used to say. Only now we do it on the internet !

I found a wonderful blog I’d like to share with you http://doreensminiatures.blogspot.com  On her blog she shares a technique using  egg carton pieces for the stones on a chimney that she had recently finished.  You should all know I love to reuse found items whenever possible and I was thrilled to find this suggestion. I tinted the last bit of paint left over from a job in my big house and added a bit of fine sand to give the appearance of cement and glued on torn bits of egg carton while the paint dried. My husband thought  I was crazy while I was working , but when the job was done he was  impressed. Carmela and Sophia also approved of the job when they stopped in after school.

I want to share with you one of  my favorite dollhouse accessories it has proven so helpful as I have worked on the chimney and my roofs. Our wonderful Turntable Base.

It has made the job of working on the roof so simple. I can turn my house however I want, to get the best light as I work. You can find it on our website .

https://www.thedollhousegarden.com/Assembled_turntable_Base_p/rg-t250.htm

Now that my chimney is done I have been able to proceed with finishing my roofs. My late father would have called this house a “roofer’s nightmare”. You’ll see why when I share the finished job with you. I’m having fun as I work away whenever my time allows. I wish the same to you…..Happy Creating !

Doorway to the Greene & Greene Miniature House by Noel and Pat Thomas, 1986-89

That October day in 1983, the warmth of the “ultimate bungalow” coaxed us through the doorway like an old friend. Muted light radiated through the stained glass entry doors, reflecting off the oak floors, lustrous teak and mahogany walls, tiled fireplaces, the Tiffany-style light fixtures and windows. The fireplace inglenook, large, airy rooms, deep chairs, and hand-loomed carpets promised comfort in the winter months, as well as shelter from summer’s heat. The house was a work of art designed for people. There was a tranquility about it that was palpable.

The house is the Gamble House, now a museum in Pasadena, CA. Designed by Charles & Henry Greene as a home for the Gambles (of Ivory Soap fame), right down to the carpets, it was completed in January, 1908, a mere 11 months after the start of construction. Grover Cleveland was President, and the first Hershey’s Kiss had just rolled off the production line. The Gamble House is dubbed the ultimate bungalow because it is considered their finest and most unified architectural statement. Our surrender to its charms marked the beginning of the love affair, and the ghost story, culminating in our completion of the Greene & Greene miniature house 6 years later. The ghosts would be Charles & Henry Greene, glowering or chortling over our shoulders as we worked, not telling us we were making mistakes until they were complete and staring us in the face. And it would be years before we understood the scope of their genius.

Like our full-scale predecessors 80 years before, history was propelling us away from Victorians, toward simpler and more horizontal lines, generous interior spaces, and details more functional than ornamental. In 1983-4, we dipped our toes in the Greene’s pond with the smaller house we called The Bungalow,

The Bungalow

and knew we wanted to wade in deeper. As fate would have it, a customer was waiting. At the 1985 NAME  National miniature show, Pat & Walter Arnell asked if we’d like to build another Greene & Greene, maybe even the Gamble House. We were elated, but also a little anxious about rekindling our affair with the Greenes. There had been so much trial and error on the first, so much hair-pulling, and we knew there would be more. Somehow we lulled ourselves into believing a second house would be easier.

In February 1986 we returned to the Gamble House, and discovered we were even more knocked out by it than before. It was the 20^th anniversary of the museum, and most of the visitors were architects and students–Greene devotees. We all padded around in our socks, speaking in hushed tones, as if in church or at a golf match, pointing out this scarf joint, or that cloud lift. Noel and I got so fired-up our brains went into overload–we vetoed continuing to the second and third floors and drove the 1000 miles home with more than enough food for thought and conversation.

   In October 1986, while Reagan was President, Noel began putting the Greene & Greene on paper. The house wouldn’t be complete for another 3 ½ years, just before George H. W. Bush was sworn in. We had come home from Pasadena armed with books, slides, and postcards, each providing us with more details, another look at the house 1000 miles away. We spent the ensuing months poring over them, deliberating, planning, juggling all the information. The original structure covered 8000 sq. ft. Noel’s most crucial job was to determine what the Greenes would have done if they’d made the house smaller—what would they have left out while still maintaining the integrity of the design? It was like trying to figure out what Shakespeare or Beethoven would have left out of their finest works. He let it all filter through, and what emerged was a design for a modified, condensed version of the Gamble House that most people never suspected was not a copy of the original. It didn’t fool Charles & Henry (as we had come to refer to them), who had returned to haunt our waking and sleeping hours.

Noel’s final drawing of the project

Skylight and Ladder
gelatin silver print
54.5 x 40 inches
2005

Eggs on Glass table
gelatin silver print
20 x 24 inches
2007

‘View of Blossoms from Basement’
gelatin silver print
40.5 x 55 inches
2008

‘Rocking Chair and Window’
gelatin silver print
40.5 x 55 inches
2005

‘View of Moon and Bottle ‘
gelatin silver print
20 x 24 inches
2007

There is a feeling of distinct absence about these spaces, a lingering absence, an intentional view of a reality that once existed, but has since disappeared. Terada’s photographs defer any rational sense of scale, lending a peculiar, less than ordinary, perspective to the rooms and an uncanny sense of proportion. Her practice is a composite of self-taught techniques that belong equally to sculpture, painting, architecture, and photography. Together they work to express a profound tension of time and space, emitting a mystery that purposely eludes our sensory perception. Terada constructs her dollhouse rooms from foam-core, cardboard, and wood, with tiny furnishings cut and glued from paper, fabrics, plastic, and metals. The end result is not these intimate constructions in themselves, but the black-and-white photograph that Terada makes of it, using only natural light. Like childhood doll’s play, Terada’s miniature sanctuaries are contemplative reflections that refer both directly and indirectly to the body. The conceptual aspect of her work oscillates between the virtual and tactile realities that underpin contemporary life. What is curious about these photographs is the extent to which their visual tensions depend on the coordination of hand and eye. [Extract : 'Mayumi Terada' by Robert C. Morgan]

Mayumi Terada : Robert Miller Gallery

Mayumi Terada : James Hyman Gallery

As I mentioned in my first Blog our much-loved dollhouse did not get “finished”, it got loved! When my youngest daughter asked to have a dollhouse she could play with I backed off and let her and her girlfriends just play.  Windowboxes aren’t necessary to use a dollhouse, after all they are just “windowdressing:.
While cleaning a closet before the holidays I brought out the box that our dollhouse came in. It had really gotten buried over the years. Last month my granddaughters , Carmela and Sophia , and I finally went thru it and, lo and behold, we found the windowboxes still in the original plywood. We were happy to punch them out and glue them together. Of course the original paint that was used on the house is long gone. The next question was how should we paint them? We had white paint left over from a project on our “big house” so white it was. The problem with the white paint was, the house is also white, they would just blend in and not be noticed. That problem was solved when Carmela suggested painting some vines and berries on the boxes. We “shopped the house” and found gold and red paint markers for the job. After consulting with Carmela in regards to how we should decorate the boxes  I played around on some scrap paper and came up with a design she approved. She decided to let me do the actual painting. We held the boxes in place with painters tape while the glue set up.

Thursday March first we had a “Snow Day” from school, first serious snow since Halloween. What a crazy winter we’ve had!  Anyway…  a snow day is a great day to plant flowers, don’t you think? We shopped the house again and found some lovely red flowers left over from some project and some cheery pink sprays of buds.

We found some styrofoam  to put inside our boxes to hold the flowers and Sophia and I had a fun few minutes planting our flowers. They do dress up the front of our house!

Greenleaf dollhouses still produces the same house that I purchased for my girls so many years ago. It truly has become our  “Family Heirloom”. We have fun personalizing it and making it our own. You can make one your own also. We offer it at a money saving discount and pay shipping on all orders over $100.00.

http://www.thedollhousegarden.com/The_Harrison_Dollhouse_Kit_p/gl-8006.htm

There are still things we need to get done to be able to call our house finished. These projects will be subjects I share with you in future blogs. In the mean time Carmela and Sophia will keep on playing and loving our house just as it is. After all the lack of those finishing touches will never impede a child’s imagination.

“Designer” Fudge

I guess Fudge is either petitioning for his own HGTV Home Crasher show, or he decided that it was time for me to dedicate a post to “cat capers” or something.

Yesterday I heard a distinct “wood” sound from upstairs.  It sounded like my son’s drum sticks rolling into each other.  I thought the cats were playing with them.  It got quiet.  I should have investigated.  You know, quiet children and all that.

I have a dollhouse that I built probably 25 years ago that is finished on the outside, but not on the inside sitting on a table upstairs.  I mentioned the noise to Alex, but then didn’t think about it anymore.

Today, we found the source of the noise.

I am quite sure that the designer is Fudge.  He was quite rambunctious as we were removing the pieces from the floor, and seemed to be very excited as we reviewed the handiwork.  It seems he didn’t like the placement of the handrails for the upstairs.  All little chewed up demolition pieces were thrown out before I realized I should document the process in case the filming crew needed it.

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Pansy pranced around the room, probably indicating that she was not a part of the process, and would not have made such a mess.  Or it could be she was rehearsing for her own series.

Fudge needs to be reminded at the end of the show, the home looks better, not worse!

The designer got kicked out of the room.  His big reveal will have to wait, the door to the room is closed.  Filming was shut down.

Fred Barnes went out to run an errand and returned to find his wife Robin dead on the kitchen floor. Image from the New York Times slideshow, “Visible Proofs: Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.”

She created the “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death” in the 1930s – 1950s (no one’s really precise about the dates) as teaching tools for police detectives. But why dollhouses? Well, you can’t schedule training sessions around real murders, after all. And you certainly don’t want an entire class of budding detectives tromping through a crime scene and disturbing the evidence.

Farmer Eben Wallace’s wife found him hanging in the barn. Image from the New York Times slideshow, “ Visible Proofs: Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.”

Lee’s interest in crime and medicine was sparked by a meeting with her brother’s college friend Dr. George Magrath, who later became Harvard’s first professor of legal medicine (his salary was underwritten by her fortune). She even established a library in his name. It’s nice to have money like that.

Ms. Wilby Jenks was found dead in the woodman’s shack that she shared with two men. Image from the New York Times slideshow, “Visible Proofs: Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.”

• For more photographs, a brief biography of Frances Gessner Lee, and further details about each murder scene, read The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by Corinne May Botz. We don’t have it in our county library system (yet), but it’s readily available through Interlibrary Loan. (Note: this book has the most awesome endpaper ever.)
• While you’re waiting for your Interlibrary Loan to come in, be sure to visit Corrine May Botz’s website, which contains pictures not featured in her book. Maggie Wilson’s corpse, found in the bathtub of her rooming house, is particularly creepy.
• Still need more pictures? Visit the Bellwether Gallery to see a 2004 exhibition of Botz’s photographs.
• We’ve also recently ordered a DVD called Of Dolls and Murder, which is all about the Nutshell Studies. It’s not available for checkout yet (alas), but you can still request it. You’ll have to get in line behind me, though. (Here’s the film’s website, if you can’t stand the suspense.)
• There’s a lengthy essay about Lee and her work in tru TV’s crime library. Not really a source that I’d quote in a research paper, but it does at least contain a pretty decent bibliography.
• For something a bit more concise (and probably a bit more accurate), try this piece from Harvard Magazine.
• Finally, you can visit the blog of the Glessner House Museum, Frances Glessner Lee’s childhood home. When you read through it, you’ll see many of the names and places that Corrine May Botz references in her book.

- Amy

With my oldest daughters I built and glued, painted and papered. Than one day my youngest daughter said “Mommy, when can I have a dollhouse I can play with?” That was the day I quit being fussy and backed away to let her and her friends play. Our dollhouse never did get “finished”, what it got was loved!

My oldest granddaughter and I shopped and decorated some more and she played with her new little family. Then a bunch of grandsons came along. They played also, just not as carefully. Eventually more little girls came along and we are having fun again with yet another doll family. Nothing stays the same in our house, busy young imaginations won’t stay still, but as we grow we are always creating.

On our website https://www.thedollhousegarden.com  we feature American made wooden dollhouses and accessories. With our blog we plan to share information regarding those houses as well as imaginative and creative ways for families to grow together. We look forward to sharing with you.

The Shelburne Kitchen Fragment

To round out 1986, we completed two house fragments–the Shelburne and Shoalwater Kitchens, named after two Seaview, WA inns.  These were smaller pieces than usual, but labor intensive—the women commissioning these projects were our two best and most supportive customers. While we toiled away in miniatures, the world at large was even busier—in 1986 the US bombed Libya, Reagan sold arms to our arch enemy Iran. We lulled ourselves with Magnum P.I. and the Cosby Show, and ached for the victims of the Space Challenger and Chernobyl disasters. We gassed up at .89 a gallon, sent our first emails, and took our first airline flights free of cigarette smoke.

Open end view

The Shelburne photos remind me how we were winding up our stint with Victorian architecture. Over the previous 12 years we had developed a vocabulary of elements that we moved around for each new project—the designs in the chimney brick, the inside/outside drawer for stove wood, bracketed, generous overhangs on the porch, drop siding, and aged cement foundations.  Each element became a word or phrase that formed the whole story of a structure and our signature style. I am pleased to see these kitchen are a prime example of our work, and don’t reflect our not-too-underlying desire to move on, to try out new dialects, and maybe a new language entirely.

Kitchen view through butler’s pantry

The customers, two collectors, who often carried on a friendly but ferocious competition at miniatures auctions, each wanted a kitchen fragment, an expanded version of our small kitchen fragment, the 1983 North Cove kitchen. They agreed to have similar smaller pieces built. So as not to have to design two different structures, Noel designed one, then flipped the design for the second, so as not to make exact duplicates.  We changed paint colors, in and out, and a few other details, but memory fails me as to the particulars.

There was a drawback in building two at once. The idea of ganging up our work to save time (twin houses presumably would go faster than two different designs) had never appealed to us. Our friend Jim Marcus believed in building what he called editions of houses—setting up jigs to use on 2, 3 or more of the same piece, and enjoying the process, but we weren’t cut out to be jig people. We did it with our chairs and garbage cans, and found the assembly line aspect bored us to tears. It just wasn’t worth the time saved. Plus, on a structure, we enjoyed the discovery of each piece of the puzzle, or at least how it fit in a new setting. Repeating ta puzzle once you know the answers is no fun. This time expediency won out over fun—we brushed off our Victorian vocabulary and started in.

Upstairs bedroom

But there is the good part–the payoff for building a fragment is that you get to put a few evocative rooms into a small structure. For me, this Reader’s Digest version of a dollhouse is much more intimate than a larger structure. In this case the fragment was a large kitchen, butler’s pantry, with a winding staircase, leading to  an attic room/maid’s quarters and tiny bath above. Functional, but reminiscent of kitchens past, cooking, and family gatherings. Your mind can get lost in it. Much of the design stemmed from a similar setup in my grandmother’s house—something I must have nudged forward unconsciously, or not. I remember being thrilled to reach an age where I got to spend the night in that tiny room over the kitchen.

Once we got into the work, the story developed, and we became totally involved. Thomas quirks like lots of plumbing pipes are evident, along with the break-away walls that would have been attached to the rest of the house. Noel loved making drains and vent pipes (dowels), with elbows (wrapped with narrow strips of masking tape and painted to look like connectors).  Our vocabulary for any style included the cobby dust (thank you dear resident flock of baby spiders) that gathers between interior and exterior walls. Such utilitarian but important details, or phrases, add to what we called the reality of illusion, and were always a hit with the men viewing our houses. Handymen or not, guys seem to like plumbing. Maybe a way to enjoy miniatures without feeling silly.

Looking for a location: Up on sawhorses in a beach parking at sunset

I‘ve combed our picture albums and boxes of slides, but can only find photos of the Shelburne. It’s mysterious–maybe we thought that with twins we could save film and only document the one? They weren’t exact twins, maybe fraternal, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. Today one resides in the Kansas City Miniature and Toy Museum, the other in a private collection.