Christmas Present from Friends

Lotta, Ritva, Katariina and Pellervo from Sulkava gave me a really pretty Christmas present! A telephone table, that they bought from their Austria trip. Just perfect for the doll house! Thank you so much!

The last two days

The day before the Christmas Eve Riikka gave me these packages and two cards for my dollhouse. Aren't they so cute!!


On the last day, the Christmas Eve, I got this very cute cradle!!!!! Just perfect for Kristiina (Kirsty)!! And a picture of it.

So this is Christmas!

I wish all of you a Very Merry Gingerbready Christmas!!

Have you done already your gingerbread house ??!!

Many more surprises!

Riikka has given me so many cute surprises over these days. Here she has made tiny Christmas cards. The bookmark she bought from a market.

Oh, these tiny dolls are just perfect for Eliza and Tom to play with! I am so happy for them!

I just love this necklace Riikka gave me the other day. I wear it everyday now!

This notebook is handmade and absolutely wonderful! Riikka bought this and the necklace from the Christmas market.

The pages of the notebook are made to look kind of olden. Look at the edges!!

This joyful flower was made just for me! ;)

Yummy!

Today Riikka gave me this surprise! A gingerbread church for the doll house family! She said she bought it from the doll and teddy bear market a while ago.

The 10 days of Christmas surprises!

Riikka decided to make me a 10-day Christmas surprise calendar. It started on the 14th day of December. On the first day I got this little knitting basket with cute yarns in it. The basket found its place right away in the living room.


On the next day, I got this very decorative thing where I can put some Fimo candles in. I am very excited to see what comes next!!!

The Doll and Teddybear Market

Today at ten a.m. we went the Doll and Teddy Bear Market. It was soooooo wonderful! Stall after stall it was filled with lovely, cute, awesome doll, teddybear and doll house stuff!!!!! Most of the stuff was hand made by skilled people.

And these are what we bought! On the right side there are the stuff Riikka bought (real shopping-spree...) and on the left hand side is my stuff (the red spot is a pretty candle).
The thingies in the bags are materials for making mirrors. (I'll take better pictures on a day we have more light....it is sooo pitch dark today).


But this is what I am REALLY happy about:

I found an vintage Lundby doll house from the seventies... with some furniture in there already. This is perfect for tuning!!! And I'm going to do everything myself. I might even create a new blog about it... Perhaps the main language will be Finnish, because many Finns are tuning their Lundbys. But of course I will put in some English, too.

The Mini Club

Have I told you about our Mini Club? In the Mini Club there are several participants: me, Riikka, our mom Outi, my friends Saara and Iines and their moms Susanna and Susan, and sometimes Saara's little sister Niina and Iines' little brother Matias.

Yesterday we had Christmas theme and these are what we did: candles, carlands, wreaths, ornaments in their storage boxes, ginger breads... We had so much fun!

The Christmas Calendar!!!

The Christmas Calendar starts today!!

I made a calendar for my dear sister, Riikka. As you can see there are 24 tiny boxes, which Riikka will open one at a time. I have filled every box with something little for her doll house, most of them I have made myself. Some are from the store. The Chistmas calendars are very typical in Finland.

Here is the link to Riikka´s blog, which tells you every day in December, what will Riikka find from the boxes! Check it out often!!

Laura

Staircase off, part III

I have been changing the room order in the third floor. First, I thought that I would put the bedroom in this little room and the living-room (family room) in the bigger room, but then I changed it around, like in this picture.



After a while I noticed the living-room was very crowded when the whole family was gathered in there. And here is the picture of the parent's bedroom without the staircase. So much more space! (well, at least a little...)



Michael and Rachelle (the parents) like the new order a lot.



Here are the two rooms in the third floor. I love it...

And the family loves it, too.

Staircase off! Part II

Well, this is how the dining room looked like before... As you can see, the staircase took so much space... The room did not have any wallpaper, and the rug was very old. The family did not like it at all.



So, again we took the stairs off... This is the hole what is left after removing the staircase. The wood you can see there is the kitchen cabinets... So, we need to figure out a suitable cover for the hole and do something for the floor.



Here is the new dining-room! The family is very happy about the large room, they could even have more furniture.

Tom, watch out for the hole!

Staircase off!

I have always hated the stairs in my dollhouse (Sorry, Caitlin!), because they take too much space and they are located in a place that it is really difficult for the dolls to use them.



So, I wanted to take them off, and mommy refused at first to help me with it, but finally she agreed (after all, this is my dollhouse!).



Then I thought that the floor of the kitchen looked very odd, so I wanted to change that also.



And look now at this beautiful new kitchen - I love it!!!!!
And the family does too. Now the family is having a good time in big open-space kitchen.

And another thing popped into my head: I'd like to buy a fridge for the family!

The Elegant Bathroom II

It so happened that Susanna made changes in Mary's House kitchen and then she had extra cabinets. So I thought I could buy them and try them in my dollhouse bathroom. One was enough for my bathroom, so the other went to my sister's dollhouse kitchen. I just love the bathroom now!

The Gazebo!

I bought a gazebo for the kids of the dollhouse, Elisa and Tom and Kirsty. They are very excited about it! Their mom and dad like it very much, too.

The family is enjoying the gazebo with their pets, May, Spike and Cotton. They just love it!

Dollhouse Day!

Yesterday we went to the Season Opening of the Finnish Dollhouse Society.
There were two workshops - one for making a bread basket and one for building a kitchen stool. I will show the pictures later. But it was such a fun to make them! The occasion was held in one doll shop and there were lots to look at and buy.

Or just take with you free of charge, like those floor papers and wooden pieces.
















We bought these ministuff, although Riikka got those flowers free of charge when she was hanging around the table persistently enough. When Riikka bought that cute little blue doll bed, she got two miniature coca-cola bottles as a gift. And when I was buying the round piece of knitwork in the middle of the picture, the seller said it was one hundred-years old and it cost only 50 cents!!















I bought these mini printables, the other sheet has those little boxes and cans - and the other sheet has a mini teddy-time calendar. It is going to be so cute!

A Little Visit

Grace and Greta (Riikka's dollhouse owners) came to visit Tom and Elisa. They have had such a fun time playing together. But Elisa got bored and went inside. But then mom asked them to pose for a photo and that made Elisa to peek out from the window. In the picture Greta is playing with Cotton and Spike, May's puppies. And Grace is just resting from all the running around. And Tom is peeking into mom's veggie basket, which she just picked from the garden.

Mini-stuff!!

On summer holiday when we were visiting Tallinn, we were looking for dollhouse shops in the old town, we did eventually find one. Not really a dollhouse shop, but a toy/doll shop called Nuku Pood. There I could find some ministuff, these cups and plates. Mom and dad really loved them and I think they are adorable!



I bought this mini dollhouse on my birthday. It looked very plain, just wooden. So I thought I'll tune it a bit. So, here it is!



Well, I thought I'll paint it blue, because my mom had bought for me little paint jars, one white, one blue and one terra color - and I LOVE blue!

Renovation continues...

Just wanted to show you all the new wallpapers in the dollhouse! I am not happy with the kitchen floor, so it will change, too. Now when I look closely, some of the rooms seem very small, so I am thinking of removing the stairs totally! But my mom is not so sure about it. So, we need to talk more...



Mom and Dad are checking if workmen did well when they were putting the wallpapers on. They especially wanted to check that there were no rumbles or bumbs on the walls. The workmen did a very good job!



If you look carefully enough, you'll see that I have done some painting too on the edges. I thought they looked very plain as such and wanted to give the house some color!

My Birthday!!!!!

Yesterday (31.7.) was my birthday!!! We did so many things that I did not have time to blog about my wonderful day. I got many presents...

... for instance, two great books about dollhouses, one about Finnish dollhouses (Nukkekotielämää) and one was about making miniature food for the dollhouses (Making Miniature Food and Market Stalls)! I also got loads and loads of beads (in the box) and from my sister I got pocket puppies (which are so cute!!!). And then of course I got money from Grandma and from my Godfather. 100 Euros together!!! And from my sister I also got a little sister book, but it doesn't show in the picture...

We went shopping to Indiska, Hobby Point, and Tiimari, because it was my birthday and I had the money! And this is what I bought... two pillows from Indiska, a basket and Fimos from Hobby Point and scrap book thingies and the journal from Tiimari.

And because it was raining cats and dogs - and it was my birthday!!! - the whole family went to see the SIMPSONS MOVIE!!! It was just brilliant and so funny!

Later in the evening my Dad gave me these beautiful flowers - and my Mom and my sister made me this delicious cake with twelve candles on it! I am soo-oo happy!