Dollhouse

By Becca

Everything is cuter when it's tiny isn't it?

I'm mean, really, if this little guy looked more like this…

Not so endearing, is he?

But, this post isn't about toads, as you probably can tell by the title. How'd we get here anyway?

Oh yes, tiny things :) 

Something that my sister and are becoming rather well acquainted with.  

It all started at a garage sale.  Wonderful things garage sales, never quite know what treasures you will find :)  We were innocently admiring a large and beautiful dollhouse at one such place, it looked (for all you who were wondering) like this -

Lovely house, don't you think?

The lady who owned the house approached us, we chatted a bit. Told her how nice we thought the house was and then we wandered off to other sales.

Shortly after, she contacted us, and asked if we would be willing to decorate the house for her.

Of course we said yes, excited to exercise our interior decorating skills.

We went to her house to pick up the dollhouse, and she told us her terms.

The house should be decorated in victorian style, she wanted and piano and a family.

There was no deadline and she would reimburse us for our time and money.

Her max budget was $100.

That all sounded great to us, we loaded it into the back of our vehicle and headed home.

However, soon as we discovered that a pleasant looking victorian family cost $100+ we realized how challenging this project was.

It would require, creativity, ingenuity, and a lot of thriftiness. 

Are we the type to back down from a challenge?

Not a chance! :)

It was fairly easy at first, the house came sparsely furnished. 

We stained, painted and upholstered the appropriate pieces of furniture all using materials we had at home.  We found little things at thrift stores and salvaged a few trinkets. Actually we didn't spend any considerable amount of money on the house untill we went to Michigan, there we bought a darling crib and found a adorable specialty shop called "Wee Dollhouse".

It was overwhelming.

It was there where we saw the full potential of doll house decorating, and we knew that we wouldn't even be close with our project's budget.

But we oohed and ahhed over the delicate minuscule details, and were slightly shocked at price tags.

But we left there with a piano, four sheets of wallpaper and a complementary dollhouse magazine from the nice lady who owns the shop.

That day we also found the same kind of rugs in "Wee Dollhouse" that were priced at $6 in a thrift store for only 25 cents! 

We were very excited!

Beth and I have spent $79.14 of our $100 budget, you would't believe how fast money can fly.

We still are lacking a master bed, and miscellaneous items to make the house look homey.

We'll manage, somehow… 

To be continued...