abloom

In the middle of another dollhouse build, I fell under the spell of two little dolls and the story of Hansel and Gretel. So I'm going with the magic ... dropped everything, and I'm making the witch's enchanted gingerbread house. 

Getting waaay ahead of myself, but ... I recently posted about an improbable idea to make a newspaper office and print shop out of a Brimbles kit. My husband and I have been publishing small-town newspapers for years, and it kind of gets in your blood. We don't print the papers ourselves, but I've spent a lot of time in the greasy, noisy shops where they're printed, and it's pretty cool. So my idea was that the first floor of the Brimbles is an old-time newspaper office with editors' and reporters' desks and all their chaotic papers and deadline mess, and upstairs is the print shop. But not knowing how I could ever make an old printing press, it would probably never happen. But then I googled some vintage presses, and they're just big contraptions of gears and wheels and metal rods. I went to Michael's and found some steam punk jewelry with some perfect wheels and parts, and tiny dowels that could be painted to look like metal rods. Then at an antique shop I found a jar of old cardboard thread bobbins that look like the big spools of twine that printers use to bundle the papers. So even though I have 2 current dollhouse projects that may take me years to finish, I think this one might happen someday. I'm just starting an album to keep ideas for now. But I've got that feeling of excitement like I really want to do this project!   

The Orchid has a lovely big gable over the porch that's great for a window seat, bed nook, etc. But the floor of the gable area is higher than the rest of the upstairs floor, and I wanted to make it flush with the rest of the upstairs floor so I could place a bed with the head in the gable and the foot extending out into the bedroom. I planned to make a simple platform to raise the floor in the bedroom to the level of the gable floor. But then, for other reasons, I decided it would be better to lower the porch ceiling/gable floor to the level of the upstairs floor. I already had the platform almost finished when I changed my mind and did it the other way, lowering the gable floor. Here are pictures of both ways to make the gable floor flush with the upstairs floor.