4th of July at the Farmhouse

Thanks to Real Good Toys for making their high quality and easy-to-build dollhouse kits that helped us create this wonderful Vermont Jr. Farmhouse and its adorable additions. :) My health hasn't been the greatest lately...so I dropped out of "mini-world" again for a while for much needed rest. In the meantime my daughters helped put together some lovely decorations I just had to share with all my fellow bloggers.

Click on the pics to enlarge. Have a wonderful summer everyone!

 The "Ross" resin doll from the amazing Houseworks collection, available at Hobby Builder's Supply. The girls love these dolls, they said they aren't "scary" looking like some of the dollhouse dolls they've seen, LOL. They are very handsomely made and realistic. Awesome! The charcoal grill came from Hobby Builder's Supply too, and the Adirondack chairs came from Manor House Miniatures, so did the mini flags. The side tables were handmade, so was the blue bench along the wall. And of course, the mini barbecue food too!

This darling little lady doll doesn't exactly fit in with the time period, but she's so lovely we just had to include her. :) Isn't that garden hose terrific? Thanks Hobby Builder's Supply!

 Another wonderful outdoor chair - from Manor House Miniatures!

The handmade white porch swing - took 2 months to create and line up the links in the chain just right so the swing sat evenly. But we like the end result.

Wait for guests to arrive for the barbecue - more Houseworks collection resin dolls from Hobby Builder's Supply, helped create a welcoming front porch scene.

Handcrafted green porch chairs - some balsa wood strips and spray paint, and voila! Porch chairs!

Close ups of polymer clay mini foods - banana split sundaes, lemonade, and a salty margarita!

Food's almost done!

Happy 4th of July! Thanks for following! :D

Mixing it Up Some More

Hi everyone! It's finally starting to look like spring here in the U.S. Not only did we add a fabulous little mixer to our growing collection (it was white, but I painted it a fabulous bright orange), but there's lots of landscaping going on at the Vermont farm house. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I just had to share. :)

Mixers mixers everywhere! We added the orange mixer, and, I found a darling unique antique looking hand crank mixer on eBay! See that red one in the back? A word about the orange mixer - this one is 1 1/4 inch tall, as compared to the ones that look exactly like this model, but are only 1 inch tall. I think the 1 1/4 inch tall mixers are much closer to 1:12 scale, so we're going to stick with those from now on.

Click on the pics to enlarge for detail. :)

And the tiny hand crank on the red one really turns the paddles! Awesome!!

The landscaping and the two-story and conservatory additions make this look like one heck of a hot property in Dollhouseville! :D Real Good Toys makes amazing dollhouse kits! And they're so simple to put together. The flowers in the flower boxes at the top windows are tiny flowers we stripped from larger silk flower bouquets and glued onto the boxes. The hanging baskets and the wreath on the door are made from polymer clay roses and seashells, glued onto clumps of Woodland Scenics artificial grass.

The fence is nothing more than balsa wood and craft sticks glued together and painted white. :) The gate works because we put 2 tiny hinges on it. You can find packs of these tiny brass hinges at Michael's Crafts.

The sidewalk is made from Premo granite polymer clay and Woodland Scenics white sand for filler. The tiny white stones that frame the sidewalk are also made from polymer clay - white granite Premo. All the little flowers tucked into the Woodland Scenics grass along the borders are made from polymer clay too.

What's a front door without a welcome mat? :) Thanks to Joanne's Minis amazing blog this door mat was a breeze! I modified it a little by using paint pens instead of rubber stamps, but the effect is almost as good. She makes amazing tutorials and uses really clever ideas to make awesome dollhouse minis. Check out her blog! The step by step videos are very cool.

The pots for the flowers are made from polymer clay too - Premo sweet potato color. ;)

One of my friends suggested we needed a bird feeder. I whipped this one up using a dollhouse drinking glass, odds and ends from leftover jewelry findings, and sprinkled some poppy seeds, sand, and crushed spices from the spice cabinet in our kitchen into the bowl of the bird feeder. Does it look like bird seed? Close enough?

Wind chimes! Nothing more than old jewelry beads and findings, and wire. :)

The bird bath is made from one of the same old jewelry findings we used for the bird feeder bowl. The post is made from some old scrap wood shapes, and spray painted white. Of course, our dollhouse birds are a little messy, they left little bits of bird seed and dirt behind. The water is hardened Triple Thick Gloss.

Polymer clay rocks, Woodland Scenics grass, and some hardened Triple Thick, and now we have a pond! With tiny orange polymer clay goldfish swimming around! :D

Future site of a raised bed vegetable garden - that will take a while to create. 

A happy home! 

Thanks so much for stopping by. :) I love reading your wonderful comments. Have a fantastic weekend everyone, and enjoy the weather if it's spring wherever you are.

Mixer Mania

First of all I want to thank all my lovely followers and welcome the newbies and all those who entered my recent Easter giveaway. We had so much fun and now the minis are on their way to the far away lands of Finland and Russia! I'm so psyched thinking that minis made by little ole me here in the States are now going to have a new home in amazing locales across the globe! Un-freaking-believable! Yay!!! :D

For a while now my daughters and I have been on the lookout for unique little mixers for their dollhouse kitchens. We are HUGE bakers (in real life) and mixers completely fascinate us. Especially miniature ones! And boy did we find some cuties! eBay sellers had adorable ACME mixer magnets in playscale size that we bought and repainted in vibrant metallic and primary colors. The ACME mixers are a little big for our 1:12 scale dollhouses, but we just pretend that the dolls do a lot of baking and these are large commercial size mixers. :) Then we found another tiny little mixer on eBay that was rather drab in color (but had an awesome round wire beater attachment and a clear mixing bowl) so we repainted that one pink, and we also found a wooden mixer we repainted and replaced the really tiny dough hook with an eye hook from the hardware store. And then there are a few of the typical dollhouse mixers you find online, which we also repainted. Just for fun. :)

This post was inspired by Kim Saulter's wonderful blog, It's a Miniature Life, which features many little 1:12 scale Kitchen Aid-type mixers in lots of delicious colors, and Roxanne Fern's Baking in Miniature blog post on Playscale Mixers. Head on over and check out their blogs if you haven't already, these two women are amazing miniature artists, their kitchens are the most fabulous mini kitchens I've ever seen! They look so darn real! And I believe that Kim has a new book out that really showcases her fabulous work with mini kitchens. :) I'm going to have to definitely buy that book from her.

I also changed the design of my blog. Trying to make it very "reader friendly" and easy on the eyes, but still splashed with color. Let me know what you think of the new design, did you like the old design better? I love comments and read them all! ;)

Click on the pics below to supersize and view in gallery mode. And thanks for following! :D

All the little mixers, all lined up. (And Angie Scarr's wonderful books on mini making in the background.) 

The light green mixer on the left is the tiny wooden mixer we purchased from  Manor House Miniatures, and repainted and added the eye hook. The pink mixer next to it we found on eBay and repainted it. That one was particularly unique in design. The yellow mixer came from Hobby Builder's Supply, it came in silver and we repainted it yellow, and the red and blue mixers we've had for a while, purchased online (they were white) from an eBay seller. :)

Love this unique little gem! :)

Another Hobby Builder's Supply mixer. This one is really tiny, and it doesn't have a cord (the cord you see is attached to the blue mixer next to it.)

Sans bowls! So you can see the paddle attachments better. :)

I really liked the wire whip attachment on the pink one (which was a very dull shade of brown and tan when we purchased it). 

This is how some of the mixers are displayed in the dollhouse. :)

Thanks for stopping by! Have a merry mini day! :D