We're all getting ready for the upcoming holidays. This vignette has become part of my decorations this year. I thought you'd like to take a peek.
One of my favorite things about this time of year is looking in the warmly lighted windows of the houses I pass. I love to see people's holiday decorations and decor. I am a little voyeuristic that way. Are you?
If so, this might be a bit of a treat for you.
Inside you will see a tiny festive scene.
The owner of this house has little Christmas trees propped everywhere.
And here she is herself, about to sit down to tea. Would you like to join her?
This is my smallest dollhouse. The furniture is a non-standard size, although I don't know what scale it is, smaller than 1:12. The dollhouse was made from an unfinished CD holder I got at Michaels.
The house's wee inhabitant was carved by Sara Cole from a clothespin and given to me as a gift. I treasure her. Her feet are fully carved, complete with wee toes. The house is just the perfect size for her.
"Black Friday Sale! Come in for the Black Friday Sale!"
"Hey Hitty Too, whatcha doin?" Alice asked.
"I am standing here trying to get people to go to the Black Friday Sale." She replied.
"What is it?" Butterbean asked.
"I am not sure. I found this sign and thought I it would be fun to help out, so I put on my only black dress and here I am." She replied.
"Well, I'd like to go, but that is not very helpful, and I am not really in the mood for black. I was hoping for something in red or green." Alice replied a little snootily before leaving.
"Come one, Come all to the Black Friday Sale!" Hitty Too shouted.
"That sounds like fun." Said Merry. "Where is the sale?"
"Harrumph...If you don't know, I am not going to tell you." Hitty Too replied, getting a little flustered and frustrated with her friends for their lack of imagination.
Just between you and me, I don't think she was helping much at all.
"What are you doing Hitty Too and why in the world are you wearing a Halloween dress. Halloween was almost a month ago."
"Well..." Said Hitty Too, now tipping perilously close to tears. "I found this sign for a Black Friday Sale and I thought I would let people know about it and I thought my black dress would be appropriate, but no one seems to know what I am talking about and they all keep leaving in a huff."
"Oh! I understand now, but sweetie, Black Friday sales are all about Christmas, not Halloween. The day after Thanksgiving, the stores put everything on sale and people go out shopping for electronics and Christmas presents." Said Hitty Dauphine gently.
"Oh...but then to what is this sign referring? We don't have electronics at our house" Asked Hitty Too.
"Well, I believe we are having a dress sale in the Hitty Merchantile. All of the dresses featured in the shop are being offered at 15% off the regular prices until Tuesday, November 29th at 11pm Eastern time." Hitty Dauphine replied.
"Wow! That's a pretty good deal!" Said Hitty Too. "Maybe we should go check it out!"
"Well, I think we have most of these dresses in our closet already, I think these are the extras, but maybe some of our Hitty friends out there will enjoy them. What do you think?
And she is right. If you go to the top right hand corner of the sidebar, you can click on the link for "Weathertop Merchantile" that will take you to the shop to see what dresses we have available. Once in the shop, just click on the thumbnail photos to see bigger versions. We have dresses for most of the seasons and holidays on sale now!
Each of these dresses is made from 100% cotton and is fastened in the back with a wee brass safety pin. Because of the scale of this sale, we will not be offering snap services at this time.
Please contact me at erinkleider@yahoo.com for details and availability. We would be happy to combine shipping on multiple orders.
One of the many exciting tasks in which the Weathertop girls engage in the fall is apple picking, pie-ing and freezing. This apple season, in Upstate New York, has been a little disappointing. The apples we picked were not as juicy or as flavorful, nor did they last as long as they have in the past before getting grainy, but we had an abundance with which the girls needed to deal and today they got to work peeling, slicing, baking and freezing.
Alice sorted the apples, while Hitty Dauphine busily peeled and sliced.
While Alice and Hitty Dauphine prepared the apples for their various destinies, Hitty Too and Butterbean started baking. They made pies to eat and pies to freeze and yummy caramel apples to put in their lunches for the next few days.
I am pretty sure we will be eating apple treats well into next September.
For this task, they decided to wear their cozy new flannel dresses of which we have extras to share with you. Aren't you lucky?
These dresses are made from 100% cotton quilting flannel and hand-dyed cotton lace trim at the neck.
We have two of each from which to choose, if you are interested in purchasing one of them, please identify which dress by the name of the Hitty who is wearing it.
Alice and Hitty Dauphine are modelling the first set. Alice has on the lighter sea foam green dress with circles and Hitty Dauphine is wearing the brown with flowers.
In the photos below, you will see Hitty Too sporting the sea foam green dress, while Butterbean is modelling the brown.
These dresses come fastened in back with a wee brass safety pin so that you can customize the fit of your dress, however if you would like me to install your snaps, I would be glad to do so for an additional fee.
If you are interested in purchasing one of these dresses, please contact me privately for details -- erinkleider@yahoo.com -- and specify if you would like me to install the snaps for you.
I am so glad you joined me today, for I have a story to tell, one which I think you will enjoy.
On my other blog, I often post photos of abandoned houses, of which there seem to be no end in rural New York. You may be familiar with my work if you visit me there. Interestingly enough, this story is exactly that kind of story, but on a whole new level...more precisely, a doll sized level, very appropriate for Weathertop, don't you think?
The Back Story:
As you well know, back in August, just before school started, much of the Northeast suffered flooding as a result of Hurricane Irene. Parts of Upstate New York, near where I live, were particularly hard hit. People lost their homes and are deciding not to rebuild. A bridge near our home, was completely swamped by the swollen creek bursting its banks and rushing onward. My husband caught some of this on video and posted it on YouTube.
Here is another view taken and posted by another local resident of the same river on the other side creating a sink hole next to one of our historic buildings:
The shocking thing is that in the summer, this creek is known to dry up enough that you can climb up the rocks under the falls. It is a favorite passtime of my children.
Now...If you go back to the video my husband took, you will see a garage with two trees standing behind it to the right side of the frame. Eventually (not in the video) the garage and those two trees were sucked into the raging river and dragged to their ultimate demise. The owner of that property lost over half of her yard. It was just eaten away by the torrent.
If you would like to see more still photos of the destruction, you can visit my blog post here.
But this is just the back story...given so that you will enjoy the bigger picture.
About a month ago, my children and I were picking up a pizza at the little store you can see to the left of the video. We got in the car and prepared to make the long trek to our house. I, (you will be glad to know), looked into my rear view mirror to check my blind spots before backing out, and what do you think I saw but a wee abandoned house.
I did a double take. I was like Alice gazing through the looking glass. I could not believe my eyes, right there in my rear view mirror was the abandoned dollhouse of my dreams with delicious sherbert colored chippy, faded paint. At first I stared in incredulity and then I strained to see where it was sitting, convinced that it existed not on a plane where I could see and touch it in real life, but in some parallel universe into which I was being allowed just a glimpse.
Now, as you well know, I have a prediliction not only for abandoned houses, but also old dollhouses, and so I wasted no time locating that little house and giving it a full inspection in person. It was sitting on the bridge, apparently abandoned, with the look of a gift hand-selected for me eminating from it, the only thing missing was a hand-written tag tied to its roof with big scrawled letters "FREE" written across it. It's placement suggested that it might have been previously owned by the woman who had lost most of her yard, and since I knew that her basement had flooded and that she was cleaning up the damage from the storm, it took little to deduce that I might inquire about its availability from her.
With my heart beating excitedly in my chest, I knocked her front door. She confirmed that she had put it out on the bridge for someone to adopt. It had been her dollhouse when she was a little girl and though she'd kept it for all these years, she had decided that with all of the clean up she was facing due to the flood, it was time to let it go. She was tickled pink that I wanted take it and clean it up.
Needless to say, I was tickled pink to acquire it. I have found that the best treasures are often acquired in such a way and take on a richer quality for the history they carry.
That brings us to the present.
Yesterday, I decided it was time to sweep out my wee house and bring it inside from my front porch where it had been sitting since I brought it home. I started by sweeping out the debris with a wisk broom but quickly noticed that no matter how much I swept, dust kept coming out, so I decided to use the vacuum at which point I realized that there was mud caked on the back that needed to be washed off. What I didn't realize was just how much mud was caked on the walls of that dollhouse.
What attracted me to this particular dollhouse in the first place was that each room had been painted a different pastel color -- yellow, blue, pink -- but the paint was old and faded. Using Murphy's Oil Soap, I cleaned the outside of the house and quickly moved on to the lower left hand corner room. Within just a few swipes of my sponge, it became clear that what I had taken for faded, chipping paint, was really cracking mud about 3 mm thick.
You can see the blue room here after its first scrubbing. It is my opinion that the house had been laying on its back during the flood, because the bulk of the mud was caked on the back wall of the house. At this point, I decided it might be fun to take some before and after shots of the house, so I paused in my cleaning to snaps some photos.
Pale pink room before...
...and after.
The yellow room before...
...and after.
The attic before (unfortunately, I don't have an after...however you can see it in the above shot).
In the middle of the house are very narrow little halls that were difficult to clean. I am not sure how I would use them if I decorated this house. They are too small for much furniture or a scene. I can only think of Halloweeny uses for them (of course, Halloween was just two days ago, so maybe that is affecting my thinking).
I am not entirely sure how I want to use this house. My first thought was that I wanted to keep it outside as a sort of nature installment, but Mr. MacGyver thinks this would ruin it really fast, so I don't think I will do that. I wish I had an enclosed porch where it could sit outside but protected from the elements.
Although I think it will require several scrubbings, you can see that it is cleaning up pretty nicely. Some of the paint is rubbing off, but I think that just adds to its charm.
You will have to stay tuned to learn what happens to this wee wooden abode.
