My husband and I have returned from a wonderful vacation in Boston and Maine. We spent a week on the east coast visiting with my husbands family and then just the two of us drove up the coast through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine for a couple days during the week.
I will get more into detail about the trip a little later this week but right now I wanted to talk about my new project.
I have been trying to encourage myself to be more creative and recently I pledged to do something “out-of-the-box” creative once a year. Last year, I worked on a really neat avocation called The Sketchbook Project. This year I didn’t have anything quite like The Sketchbook Project (I did start this blog which has been quite a creative endeavor) but then Laura from Lolalina posted about Design Star Emily Henderson’s I’m…a…Giant…Blog Challenge and I knew that this was what my “creative out-of-the-box project” would be for this year. I was and am so excited about this! I’ve always wanted to work on a doll house of my own but always felt too old to do so. I thought that when I had kids I would be all over something like this, but kids have not yet happened and after reading Emily’s reasons why one should take on this challenge I thought these reasons were the perfect excuse for someone like me to do this. So today I woke up early and headed out to the Long Beach Antique Market in hopes of finding my dollhouse so that I could begin this fantastic project. Lo and Behold, there sitting in the first little stall was a pretty basic, perfectly priced dollhouse. It was in fact fate and I snatched it up quickly, took it home and started immediately dreaming up how I would fashion and furnish this doll house of my very own.
I’m hoping to make as much as I can for the furniture and details as well as scouring next month’s flea markets for additions to my doll house. I will post my progress as often as I can (shooting for weekly, but we will see) but as for tonight, I will be using last years creative project ideas with this project and start sketching out my plans for the dollhouse. A good quote to encourage work on my project (that I have hanging in my preschool classroom) is ” Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn’t taste good.” – Lucia Cappocchione
So here I go… let’s play!
summerplayshouse 
That is a cool looking dollhouse, I can’t wait to see what you do with it! I’m joining in the challenge too x
How did you find the perfect “blank canvas” dollhouse? I’m really looking forward to seeing where your creativity will lead you.
Please don’t think I’m a crazy person but the dollhouse you have is an amazing vintage Lundby from around 1969/1970. The wallpaper is in perfect condition and it is so rare to find those patterns. Please don’t change it. If you cover it, do it so that you can remove it. The house alone is worth about $100. It looks like the only thing missing is one window sill.
Check out some sites:
http://www.peppesdollhousepage.com/
http://www.swedish-dollshouses.com/ (click on chronicle for pics)
I have one of these from 1971 but I’m remodeling our old iMac for this challenge. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Beth Lemon,
Thank you for all the neat information about my dollhouse. I really had no idea. However, now I am torn between wanting to redo the whole thing like I had planned to and not touching a thing because of its history. I’ve been going crazy all day. It’s going to be a much different project now, but I will attempt to save as much originality as I can through this process, hopefully also appeasing “my vision” as well.
I actually visited your blog the other day and saw your imac work. So cool! I can’t wait to see what you come up with as well!!! Good luck and thank you for all the links and info!
Summer
I hope I didn’t give you a lot of grief! I wonder if there is a way to re-do wall without hurting the wallpaper. I just got one and decided to rip up the original carpet as it is just gross. Oh well!
No no, don’t worry. It put this whole challenge in another light is all. As a previous Barbie collector, I do know the value of having something vintage and in such great shape. I just had no idea this was one of those things. Already did some work on it this weekend and trying to very carefully design while saving the vintage details. Putty instead of glue. 🙂
I had that exact dollhouse growing up! I wonder if my parents still have it. I’ll have to check in the attic the next time I visit.
That’s so neat. I never had one growing up (except for a Barbie luggage case that turned into a sort of dollhouse) and didn’t realize how special the one that I bought was. Trying to very carefully spruce it up for the design challenge but save the vintage details as well. Thanks for visiting my blog!