Filed under "I' for "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

When I was a little girl, when I wasn't wishing for a cedar chest of my very own, I wanted a doll house. We'd gone to Frankenmuth and visited the store that had all these different sizes and styles of wooden dollhouses with shingles and stiarcases and wallpapered rooms and themes, and teeny-tiny little magazine racks with teeny-tiny little magazines in the teeny-tiny little living rooms and...oh, it was WONDERFUL. They weren't necessarily dollhouses you played with, you built them and then decorated them and then furnished them, and then, when you were done, you started re-decorating and re-furnishing the one you already had. Or you got a whole new dollhouse and started all over again.

Wait a minute. I've met women who do that with REAL houses.

Anyway. I never got a dollhouse of that sort. I thought, at one point, that one could just be built! from scraps! because after all! I built a clubhouse in the backyard! from scraps! that stood on its own for two whole weeks!

So how hard could it be?

Thus learning at ten years old that while scraps were fine for clubhouses, where you didn't need to measure precisely, they were far less practical for dollhouses. Especially when the scraps at hand were some pieces of two-by-four and a sheet of panelling.

So. Never had a dollhouse. I had multiple variations of Barbie's Dream House, mind you, one with a yellow plastic elevator, that I redecorated using scraps of peel-n-stick carpet squares, but no dollhouse. And from time to time I would go to Frankenmuth and drool my way through the dollhouse store.

Never stopped wanting one, but realistically? Expensive hobby that requires ROOM to work on.

Last year, we took the kids to Frankenmuth. And the little one fell in love with the dollhouse store.

And, because I am who I am, I thought it would be wonderful to buy her a starter dollhouse for Christmas last year. I looked on the Internets but since I made my decision on December 20, I ended up at a local store where I bought the only one they had in stock. Luckily, it was a starter. And I thought of how lucky my little girl was to get a dollhouse, and wouldn't it be a wonderful project for her and her daddy to work on? This would be the BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER! I also bought a bottle of glue that was going to be especially for dollhouse building.

Did you know that hundreds of people on eBay are selling dollhouses that are "Brand New!" and "Never took it out of the box!" Also, I've seen them at garage sales, where the box was opened but the house never built. Countless times. And I always wondered: why would anyone be lucky enough to GET a dollhouse and then not ever get around to building it?

Hahahahahaha.

I'll tell you why. because there's no time and no room and when there IS time and maybe room, there's no interest.

Littlest is facing an extra week of Christmas vacation this year, and it occurs to me that this would be a good time to take the dollhouse out of the box. You know, BEFORE this Christmas. Which would be one year after she got the dollhouse. Except I think we've used up the glue.

Maybe when it's built, we can display it on the cedar chest.

Comments

[Kim]

I'd trade you the unused CSI reconstructive skull for your dollhouse except that a) I think it might frighten littlest and b) we live in a full-scale model of that dollhouse.

[Lisa]

I have a dollhouse fully assembled that the girl played with for about a week. She wanted the Barbie dreamhouse instead. Do you still have yours? We could trade.