Still here

Well it has been awhile since I've been on here but I am still around and still working on my minis. I have a few new pictures I'll be sharing soon plus a few more projects even though I made myself a resolution to not take on any more. My foot is almost completely healed, in fact I'm down to one crutch which I don't use when at home. Although I limp badly I have made some great progress. The pain I get is located on the right side of the foot and my ankle which is good since the surgery was more centered. My husband and myself have some plans for our real home, landscaping, decluttering and geneal fixing up. I look forward to go home for good but will content myself to spending this weekend at home. We recently rented a storage unit and I am itching to get home and box up all the stuff I don't want to get rid of but don't want cluttering up the house either. Our home doesn't have a place to store things like Holiday Decorations so this unit will be a life saver. Fingers crossed if all goes as planned we will be able to sell our home and move closer to our work. Currently it takes me close to 30 minutes to drive to work and hubby closer to an hour. Killing us with gas prices. I feel like I'm finally going to accomplish some major personal goals soon and it is a great feeling and it will be even better once I get at least one checked off my list.

Spring Cleaning Fever

Well I've come down with it and it's horrible timing as I can't actually accomplish anything. It's that time of year when I stop and assess my art room. I have come to the decision that I do not have the room to display anymore full scale houses and I have to decide which I will be keeping. My list of unfinished and unstarted houses is outrageous so I have narrowed it down to the following, the Gloucester because my son helped paint the windows, doors and other assorted trim and my dad helped with cutting and installing the base trim, the Holly Ann which I will be receiving as a Christmas gift from my parents and plan for this to be my heirloom dollhouse, and my Pickett Hill dollhouse are all on the keep list. I am trashing the Fairfield and have replaced it with the Sea-Side villa in half scale and I also will be receiving the landscaping kit for the Pickett Hill and the quarter scale This Olde Shoe. I purchased these with my allowance money from my tax refund this year. These are on the keeplist too. I will no longer be allowing myself to purchase any more full scale kits and the remaining 1/12 scale houses kits I have will be gotten rid of. My Arthur house is hanging in the balance. Because it's so small and I am dedicating it to memories of my childhood I'm leaning towards keeping it. Listing it out like this doesn't seem like I am giving up anything but the kits I will be giving up is at least double this size possibly triple. I will continue to build quarter and micro minis and will be putting them up for sale in my Etsy shop but I really want to focus on completing to the best of my ability the houses that truly having meaning to me. The Orchard House is still on the someday list but it will be someday way in the future. Making this list and putting it out there at least makes me feel better and I'm sure my husband will be thrilled to realize I am going to stop hoarding kits and focusing on only a few. I think he'd be even happier if I only kept one but that's not going to happen LOL. Cutting back to 1 or 2 per scale is a huge jump to me. Each scale is so different and you have to approach them in different ways as to what works that to me they don't count as the same hobby but each scale is separate to itself. Hubby and others may not see it that way and it's even hard to explain in writing but there it is. now that this decision is made and my list of what needs to be done is started I feel like a huge relief has settled over me. Sorry there were no pictures to post and this was a total babble post but I have made progress on the Gingerbread Mansion 1/144 scale so I'll be taking photos soon to share and this will be going up for sale. As I work I have the thoughts of lavender and lace so she will be done up in total Victorian Painted Lady style.

Recovering...

Well I had the surgery on the 13 th of February. It was an outpatient procedure that took a little over an hour and a half to complete. They did cuterage and removed the lesion and replaced the bone with a calcium supplement. The foot is very sore but with the painkillers they gave me I feel fine. Currently it wrapped like a huge mummy and I am stuck wearing HUGE legged sweats just to get the leg part over my foot, I refer to them as my clown pants LOL. The doctor office called this morning with the pathology report . All she was told was it was a benign lesion and he would discuss everything in more detail Tuesday at my follow up appointment. I have my fingers crossed that I will graduate from the mummy cast to a boot. At least so I can wear some different clothes : ) typical female right? I will also need a refill on the pills. I' m rationing them out to cover the next week, I always feel like a complainer when I say I need painkillers. Silly I know. Here is a picture of my foot wrap, and some of the completed furniture kits for my Lydia Pickett House that have been keeping me busy as I heal.

Pickett Hill Furniture

I am loving working on these little kits. I'm planning on saving most of these for if I need surgery on my foot, which is most likely going to happen. There is quite a stash collecting for that time, of little projects I'll be able to do while recovering, things that won't require me to stand. I've got 3 Betterly Secret Book kits, a Christmas tree kit, and a whole lot more furniture for the Lydia Pickett, as well as 3 plastic Star Trek models I'll be making up for my brother. As of right now I only need Emma's Bedroom, Robbie's Bedroom, Artist Wall cupboard and the kitchen for this tiny house and it will be complete. I still want to get the landscaping kit that goes to this but that will be sometime in the future as it's quite expensive and I'll need to save up for it.

As a present for next Christmas my mom has gotten me the 1/12th scale Holly Ann by The House that Jack Built. I'm super excited about this house. It was on sale through Tuesday Morning at an amazing price. It will be my "heirloom" dollhouse. I will be taking my time and doing it up properly. The design is so much like the Fairfield which is the main reason I fell in love with it but being so large it will definitly take some planning on where it will be displayed. I'll also be measuring my doorways to make sure once built I'll be able to move it if I had to. LOL I'd love to fit it up with as many Ray Storey lights as possible. His work is absolutely amazing.

At this same sale, before my mom surprised me with the purchase of the Holly Ann, I had bought myself an early birthday present of the Kotton Kandy also by The House That Jack Built. I'm planning on making it a small shop. I've been reading some books by Gil McNeil where the main character owns and runs a knit shop and has a knitting group that meet once a week to knit and gossip. She's titled the group the Stitch and Bitch. Which is the main inspiration for this little shop. The novels are very nice and I have devoured the first two and just started the third. I'm not too sure why I like them so much as there doesn't seem to be much action/excitment going on, but more of a chronicle of a single mother trying to move on with her 2 boys after her husband gets a promotion, tells her he wants a divorce because he's been having an affair for the past year, and then is killed in a car accident right after disclosing all of this to her. I read the first one free through Amazon's Kindle Lender's Library program. After all that rambling here are some photos of the progress I've made on the furniture kits.

Onward march!

Well today has been super productive! I got the posts cut for the "support" kitchen counter posts, painted and shellaced. The kitchen flooring installed and I used siding strips cut down, installed on a cardstock, stained and varnished all ready to glue in place. I also cut the buffet counter and have it ready to stain, ran out of my golden oak stain though. I think that would be the closest match to original counter tops but we'll see. The seam of old and new counter will be concealed with a short tile back splash once I figure out how to do it. Also, the risers for the stairs have been corrected, glued in and are currently drying before I give a final coat of white paint to them. Because of the color of the floor I restained the treads in Early American stain to match better. Originally I wanted all the wood work to match the kitchen counters but I didn't have enough stain for that and was too impatient to wait till I could go pick some up. Soooo new plan. I think it's better this way now. Not so matchy-matchy and gives more seperation between living room and kitchen. The holes that were in the front wall from the porch installation have been filled and textured. Hopefully, I'll be able to paint all of the downstairs walls. That'll leave the interior window trim, baseboards and crown moulding left to do. For a few hours of work not too bad.

Bringing in the New Year....

With a nice clean artroom. Here is couple views of that room. This took all day yesterday to get to this point. Trust me this is much better now, for one thing you can see the floor! I almost forgot there was one in this room. The first picture is my little helper sorting pieces to the low table I got for Christmas I need to put together. I think it will fit where the folding table is and it matches the bookshelves. The Arthur will get finished and then moved to a different table in the other corner of the room and then the Harrison will sit on this table. It's almost a perfect fit in that place, just have to move the white drawers and the desk over about an inch. I know having a dollhouse directly in front of a window is a no-no but it's not forever so I can live with it for awhile.

This picture (don't know why it's sideways) shows the bookshelf with all my mini books on the second and third bottom shelves. The room on the top is the first of a Plastic Canvas Barbie dollhouse I've been working on.

Overall shot, notice the floor? That's a relief.

And here are two shots of Christmas morning. Here's Elora with a chocolate-y face. We gave her one piece of Chocolate from her stocking. Turned our backs for a second to get more presents from under the tree and the little buggar had five empty wrappers on the floor and was shoving the fith piece into her already packed mouth LOL. Talk about a sugar high!

This is one of my favorites. Aidan emptying his stocking while his sister cheered him on. I love Christmas!

$50....For a phone number?!

Well, today I had my appointment with the specialist, who actually seemed to know what he was talking about. However, where my problem is he wouldn't be able to work on it and reffered me to an Orthopedic Surgeon. So there went $50.o0 for a phone number. At least he was honest. So tomorrow I will give this other guy a call and see what he says. This doctor said if it wasn't hurting these types of things they'd put under observation but since it does hurt and has for quite some time he thinks they will suggest cuterage. We'll see I guess. He did seem very optimistic that it is just a benign bone cyst so that's a good thing.