The Jefferson was built to have the feel of my real house. The exterior is the same gray with cranberry door and shutters and the inside has similar colors to our home at the time I built the dollhouse. My dollhouse daughters had to share a room. I built this house in 1992 and some of the colors have faded a bit. It was my first big dollhouse and the only one I've electrified.
Here are my children, in dollhouse version, as they were in 1993. I built the house while pregnant for my youngest so the house represents his first Christmas. The crib and changing table were built from a kit, the dresser is a refinished dollar store purchase and the baby swing and rug were created from scratch as were the dolls. My mini family dolls were some of my first experiments - I've improved since then!
Since I made the headboard and quilt that I showed you in an earlier post, I added the aquarium as we always had fish when the kids were young.
The kitchen is obviously in need of dusting but the table is set, the turkey is thawing in the sink and the other meal fixings are on the counter. The bib on the Renwal high chair (for some reason all of the Renwal baby furniture is 1:12 scale while the rest is 1:16!?) was made from a scrap of wrapping paper trimmed with embroidery floss.
And, finally, the living room with my first pipe cleaner tree, stockings hung on the mantel, nativity on the entertainment center(altered Michael's hutch). The paintings throughout the house were done by my mom. The quilt on the wall was a kit. Mini DH (on the left) and mini me (on the right) are enjoying pizza and coffee while the kids (supposedly) are sound asleep on Christmas Eve. Mini me has a wonderful knitted holiday sweater from Beepbeep on Etsy coming. I'll post photos when she's been re-dressed.
Since this house is always decorated for Christmas I look for things to add year round. I also look for things that remind me of our home, traditions, hobbies, etc.
Recreating your home or a room in it is really fun.
Here are our real stockings. Hubby and son have snowmen and the girls and I have angels. They are very oversized - about 2 1/2 feet long or so. One year my sisters-in-law and I got together and made stockings for our families. We all did different things but they all turned out really cute. :-)
This is the mini living room with stockings. I used felt to make the actual socks and scrapbook paper for the appliques. I'm having so much fun miniaturizing our special things.
In the mini version of my real home, my young daughters share a bedroom. They never have in real life and rather than choose one of their real rooms over the other as inspiration I just made a generic girls' room. Over the years the fabric I used for the bedspreads has faded and I was recently thinking I should at least make mini versions of the real comforters they had at those ages.
To keep things cohesive I used the same ribbon for dust ruffles and pillows for both. My oldest was five in 1993 and she had a Little Mermaid themed room. My middle was three and had a Sesame Street theme. They are now 23 and 21 so I couldn't find photos of their actual comforters online. Instead I used a card program and graphics from online to make approximate representations of theirs. I am quite happy with the results.
Here are the beds in the room complete with toys, books, and various little girl stuff. (Sorry for the blurry photo. It's really hard to get to the third floor of this house. Even my tall son had trouble getting a good picture, lol.)
The Jefferson was built to have the feel of my real house. The exterior is the same gray with cranberry door and shutters and the inside has similar colors to our home at the time I built the dollhouse. My dollhouse daughters had to share a room. I built this house in 1992 and some of the colors have faded a bit. It was my first big dollhouse and the only one I've electrified.
Here are my children, in dollhouse version, as they were in 1993. I built the house while pregnant for my youngest so the house represents his first Christmas. The crib and changing table were built from a kit, the dresser is a refinished dollar store purchase and the baby swing and rug were created from scratch as were the dolls. My mini family dolls were some of my first experiments - I've improved since then!
Since I made the headboard and quilt that I showed you in an earlier post, I added the aquarium as we always had fish when the kids were young.
The kitchen is obviously in need of dusting but the table is set, the turkey is thawing in the sink and the other meal fixings are on the counter. The bib on the Renwal high chair (for some reason all of the Renwal baby furniture is 1:12 scale while the rest is 1:16!?) was made from a scrap of wrapping paper trimmed with embroidery floss.
And, finally, the living room with my first pipe cleaner tree, stockings hung on the mantel, nativity on the entertainment center(altered Michael's hutch). The paintings throughout the house were done by my mom. The quilt on the wall was a kit. Mini DH (on the left) and mini me (on the right) are enjoying pizza and coffee while the kids (supposedly) are sound asleep on Christmas Eve. Mini me has a wonderful knitted holiday sweater from Beepbeep on Etsy coming. I'll post photos when she's been re-dressed.
