a mini whyte house.

i have been wanting to get emily a doll house for as

long as i can remember.

i'd look at small houses for her age and think about

purchasing them,

then decide to hold off and get something she

could grow into.

i don't know if you've seen how much houses cost,

but those mini houses are anywhere from $100-$200.

we are on an extremely tight budget,

so that's just not an option.

i mean, i could buy new curtains for my whole house with

that money.

and i need new curtains, people.

so after staring at one of my favorite antiques for

months, contemplating what i could do

with it, i decided to turn it into a mini whyte house.

 [the before's.  this is a 1928 radio...still works, but with some super scary ratted wiring.
i just took out the heavy contraptions in the back (i kept it all, mom) and went to work sanding and painting it.  did i mention my palm sander broke before this??  sanded by hand.  ugh.  i removed the partition board, which was a task and a half and filled the cut in from it w wood filler.  i also took off the screen for the speaker. ]

do you see all of the grooves on this thing??  i dreaded painting this so much.  i used KILZ oil based spray paint primer to get in all of the crazy little holes.

last night i was up til 1am hanging up photos and finishing wall paper to the upstairs room.  i was on the phone w my mom through part of it and she said, "when you get to heaven, don't mention what you did to the radio to your dad".  haha.  my dad was a picker before picking was cool. back then, it was just known as 'hoarding'.  ha.  he kept everything...and while i wanted to keep this radio from him(it has my teeth marks on the front from when i was a toddler), i didn't want to have it in my house if it didn't have a purpose.  now it has a purpose. 

[excuse my mobile upload...i took more photos on my blackberry during the process to post straight to fb]

during the makeover.

i'm a big fan of the cartoon & books, 'charlie & lola'.  i'll admit, the accents pull me in straight away, but i love the illustrations. 
i knew right away that i wanted to craft something with the same bright colors and with lots of different patterns mixed in.

photo frames were made from a starbucks coffee sleeve and two match boxes. 

i don't sew, so all the fabrics put together for this house were hand stitched.  i made sleeping beauty a new blanket out of an old dress of emily's.

my awesome niece, famie, talked me through photoshop and showed me how to make a collage of mini photos. 

i will forever be thankful for that tutorial!!

the family photo frame is made from a party favor lid.

i'm not completely done with the bench. it will have a pillow on top, as well.

the reason i used emily's dress for this blanket was that the fabric that lined the dress inside had shrunk and was much shorter than the ruffled front.  i cut apart the inside, cut off some of the ruffled front and stitched it to one piece of the inside material, then turned them to the back side and stitched the 3 pieces together.  i seriously can't work a machine to save my life and hand stitching is kind of therapeutic, so i didn't mind.

[documenting aurora's hair length in case there's a recap of the hair cutting incident of 2010]

i picked out some of my favorite photos and glued them all onto their frames, hot glued the frames on the wall.  i really wanted to velcro them on so that i could change them out, but the velcro made them stick off the wall too far.

the kitchen has a 'yum' sign(i didn't have the letters to do 'free food' like i wanted to), a cork board with more photos(the black & white shot is on the kid's bedroom wall) and has a twig for a curtain rod. :)  the food/containers on the counter are all from scrapbook paper.  i just cut the little things out and glued them on.  i'm thankful to be an excellent paper cutter. :)  i painted on the farm sink and there will be a dishwasher painted on the opposite bottom section.  i don't care if the house is fake, everyone needs a dishwasher. :)

the living room has a fireplace, stockings, framed photo

and a christmas tree.  a very glittery one, at that.

i haven't done any papering to the floor yet(that's a loose sheet), but it'll be done, too.

i cut the stockings out from em's old tights.  they were her favorite and she was so sad she couldn't wear them again this year.  i cut these from the top and made socks out of the remainder of the tights.  she wears them all of the time now. :)

i also painted a gold mini frame pink, put some fireplace paper in it for a mat and placed em's 5 year photo with all of her 5 year old 'LOVES'.  it's one of my favorite photos from our photo shoot last december.  she'll be having a 6 year old shoot in 11 days!  agh!!

i'm extremely cheap and always use what i already have lying around the house.

what i spent:

$10 on 2 cans of KILZ oil based primer

$7 on latex white paint

scrapbook paper from hobby lobby & michaels--

maybe $5.  maybe.

mod podge--i ran out midway--$4

tree $2--wal-mart

the photos i put on a 10x10 collage on photoshop and made

them mini sized. the 10x10 sheet at picture perfect (new market square) was $4.

i already had all of the fabric scraps, acrylic paint

used, brushes for it, and most of the "frames".

i bought the pink one(gold) frame was .99 cents.

starbucks sleeve was free--i got free hot chocolate

for taking my brother-in-laws photos last week. :)

oh, and my BIL gave me free labor--

he cut the bottom shelf for me(while on vacation)

before our photo session.

sleeping beauty was more expensive than everything for the house...

she came w a book, fairies and bed for $34 at target.

it was the only thing em asked for for christmas..

and i couldn't find a bed i liked.

it was perfect. :)

i won't lie and say this hasn't been time consuming, but it's been the best time consuming project to date.  for the first time i'm glad that her dad will be gone[with the blasted navy]for christmas...it means we get to have christmas a week early and i don't have to wait 25 more days to show it to her!!! ;)


********************************************************************************

the girl received some more furniture for her house, so we had to take more photos. :)
the boy's new star wars toys came to visit the new home, too.