Our Miniature Housewarming

I was a big fan of dolls when I was younger.  Specifically Barbie dolls.  In fact, I played with Barbies for a lot longer than I care to make public.

I loved going to my Grandma's house because she had big bins full of Barbies and clothes and we would confiscate a corner of the living room next to the piano and create beds and things with handkerchiefs and boxes.  I always wanted a dollhouse and, to his credit, my dad made me one for one Christmas.  It didn't have anything in it and I don't think I used it that long but I had one!  And I almost feel like it's a rite of passage for a little girl to have a dollhouse!!!

Chopper agrees and Megan and Abby do like to pretend with dolls -- just not Barbies.  So we bought a kit, Chopper painted and glued and tore things apart and glued again.  He spent a lot of hours putting this amazing dollhouse together for our girls!!

And after he finished it -- I got to decorate!!!  I think I did more than he expected -- we were going to leave it fairly bare bones -- but I couldn't help myself!!  Today I finished the last touches!  Although then I thought of a few more things . . . . but Christmas is coming and I have other things that need to be done so it's finished for now.  I'll add more later!!!  In the meantime, this has been too fun for Chopper and I.  And I can't wait to see their faces when they get it!!  So on to the house tour!

The whole house from the back -- 4 rooms and an attic space with partial walls so they're only somewhat separated.

Details!!!

Living Room

I LOVE red and white and tried to go for a more modern spin with the gray wall.  But as I got decorating I realized I am a girly girl and more traditional than I pretend to be.  Every window has lace curtains!!  This room I made all the furniture.  I used an online tutorial for the couch and chairs and the rug and the table is an empty thread spool with a wooden disk glued to the top and then of course the tablecloth!  The bird on the back wall is the art work of my very very talented sister-in-law Denise.  I kind've scaled it down and I hope that's ok with her . . . 

See that dark spot next to the door?  The doorknob came with tiny keys!!  But obviously they will be the first thing to disappear (probably in someone -- ahem Abby's -- mouth) so they're at the door.  And my crooked chair art from a piece of fabric I love.

Kitchen

I was not confident in my DIY skills for the kitchen so the only thing I did myself was the art on the right side -- just graphics printed off and matted with scrapbook paper.

The scrapbook section at Hobby Lobby has these vintage cards that were awesome!!  So there's baking ones in the kitchen, sewing ones in the attic, and a first aid one in the bathroom!  

Bedroom

bed quilt -- folded fabric star -- super easy to make and adorable!  I used a friends machine to embroider the flowers on the pillowcases to match.  I need one of those things . . . 

The bedroom furniture I also bought on clearance because you can't get better than that!

 

The artwork is mine and the clock is a Hobby Lobby charm.  I HAD to buy miniature books for every room in the house.  Every house needs books!!!

The art above the bed is from a thank you card -- there is so much cute stuff out there!

Bathroom

This is almost totally DIY!!!  Toilet is a shampoo cap glued to a dental floss container (with floss inside, I couldn't get it out) and the sink is the bottom half of a $1 hutch from Michaels with a polymer clay sink with random stuff making up faucets and toilet paper holders, etc.  Bathtub is some kind of dollar store ramekin.

The mirror is just tin foil glued to a wooden round.  I didn't want to use a mirror piece because of sharp edges. 

Attic

You have to have a mini-sewing room with a quit in progress and bolts of cloth!

And a Christmas tree. 

And that's it!!  Still room to grow and maybe decorate for the holidays but it turned out soooo cute!!!

A Little Post on Miracles

Forewarning -- it might not be little.  And there's no pictures -- how do you take pictures of a miracle?

This year we've been really regular about doing our advent calendar every night (miracle #1).  It's actually an alphabet advent from The Friend magazine about 3 years back so all I did was cut out the squares, put them in our calendar with treats (Hershey kisses) and the girls take turns each night saying the dinner prayer and opening a door.  Each letter stands for something related to Christ and the Nativity and we've had a lot of great discussions about those things in our home.  I really really love it.  So we've been telling lots of scripture stories and I've been thinking about miracles.

Side story that's really cute -- miracle related but not Christmas -- the other day Chopper lit something with his firestarter and Megan asked why the flame was blue.  My answer would have been because it's burning gas instead of wood but Chopper started into a spiel about the heat of different flames and the colors that different materials burn, etc. etc.  Very scouting of him.  Of course this also leads to the age-old admonishments about not touching fire.  So Abby jumps in with -- "but we can touch Jesus fire!!"  That took us back for a minute until we realized she was talking about Moses and the burning bush.  After about 10 minutes of us telling her not to touch fire and her insisting you can touch Jesus fire we finally specified that she will probably never see Jesus fire but she can touch it if it talks to her.  How else do you deviate a 3 year old from the idea that it's ok without killing her faith??

Anyway.  Yesterday Chopper and I had an echocardiogram with the attending pediatric cardiologist at Children's Hospital in Dallas and spent nearly 2 hours with her going over stuff and then seeing the hospital.  Quite frankly I am scared out of my wits.  The doctor kept emphasizing a few things:

1.  This is a marathon, not a sprint and not a fix.

2.  Single ventricle palliation surgeries give us the hope that our son will go to college.

3.  50% of children with infant heart transplants (and that's 50% of children who are able to get a heart) will live until they're about 15 years old.

4.  We will outlive our son, no question.  The question is how long?

5.  Methods that they use today are better than 5 years and 10 years ago and they are very good at Children's.

6.  Despite encouraging the parents to live at the hospital for at least 6 weeks during the initial hospital stay, it's not going to be very comfortable.

Despite all of this heavy news and fairly negative news (although nothing really new here), Chopper and I both came away from the visit feeling incredibly positive in many ways and I think that it's because the Lord provides miracles and tender mercies to buoy us up even when a complete healing is not in the plan (and it's really not).  And these are just little things I think but they are a big deal to me.

1.  I can have a normal, vaginal labor and delivery.  In fact, they want that.  It's better for the baby's lungs and they recover more quickly which we definitely want if we're headed into surgery or transplant.

2.  U.S. News and World Report ranks Children's as 19 in the nation.  That's above any hospital in Virginia, Maryland, or the DC metro area including Johns Hopkins.  I think the Lord has brought us to Dallas for a reason.

3.  Chopper's job.  Ok so he does not really like it and wants a new one and I can't blame him.  But his bosses are flexible about his hours, he can't bring work home, and he knows it so well that mentally he doesn't have to put a lot of energy into his work.  

4.  And we have amazing maternity insurance.  After he's born?  Well, we're still figuring that out.

5.  With the exception of some office staff (long horrible story), we have been very happy with all of the doctors that we've been directed to.  And they are the ones that matter.

6.  I am so grateful for expert doctors, compassionate nurses, and current medical advances.  We will have time with our son.

7.  My amazing family.  Not everyone has them and mine may not be here but they're doing everything they can.

8.  My friends.  So many have reached out to us just to tell us they're praying for us and that's the most important thing.  My friends here went in together to give Chopper and I babysitting and gift cards for dates and things to have us time and me time before the baby comes.  The deliverer of this gift can attest that I bawled like a baby when she brought it over.  It was incredibly sweet and thoughtful.

And the thing is, that's not everything.  But I'm grateful to be aware of all the good that is occuring in our lives and not mired in the bad.  If I didn't have so much good to focus on, I honestly don't know that I would get out of bed in the morning!!

Snow Day!!!

Texas crazy weather has begun!!

Monday night for family home evening we went to see the lights at Frisco Square and it was so nice we were in shirt sleeves walking around!  Afterwards we went for frozen yogurt.  It was a great night!  The next 3 days were in the 70s and then yesterday the temperature started dropping.

Today's a snow day!!  Well an ice day.  We're all home with power thank goodness so snug and warm.  But they had to go out in it of course this morning.  It really is a crust of icy snow that they didn't even sink through but they had a good half hour of sliding around and pulling icicles off of things. 

According to the weather it could be like this all weekend.  I'm hoping it warms up by Sunday . . .  I like snow in very very small amounts.  This should do it for me for the rest of the year!!

It's the Holiday Season!!

Chopper and I have already been in the holiday spirit thanks to the building of the dollhouse (which is coming along nicely!) and last week was a nice low-key week to relax a little bit before the craziness of Christmas.  Although this year we're trying not to make it too crazy.  I don't like feeling stressed at this time of year!!

I literally forced Chopper to do Thanksgiving my way this year -- he prefers a quiet family dinner and I like a big group -- partly because then I don't have to cook the whole thing!!  The pregnancy won out though and we ended up with 17 people and had a really good time I thought!  In addition to hosting, we did turkeys, cranberry sauce, layered jello, apple pie, and a cranberry lime cheesecake that turned out surprisingly good.

Chopper smoked the turkeys again this year -- hey any excuse to barbeque!!  Once again, they turned out very well although Chop is his own worst critic and said they were a little dry.  I did not hear any complaining though!  The smoked flavor is just enough to be more than bland turkey but not so much that cranberry sauce clashes with it.  

I've been singing a song that the girls love -- it's the only Thanksgiving song I know and I think I learned it in elementary school!!  One of the lines is "who will get the drumstick, yummy yummy yum stick" and both girls insisted on having a drumstick for Thanksgiving.

Megan actually ate hers!!  It was so funny to watch her chowing down.  Abby took a bite maybe.  She spent most of dinner telling the people around her about how the birds were dead, daddy shot them, and then moved on to the human body and how we have blood in our legs, etc.  It was very entertaining.  She is so interested in that kind of stuff -- she may just turn out to be medically minded!  Makes me shudder just thinking about it!

I've been working nonstop to finish a pair of twin-size denim quilts for a friend's twin boys in Idaho.  She sent me their old jeans -- lots of Wranglers -- and particularly wanted me to use the tiny pockets.  It was hard hard work to do denim, batting, and flannel and quilts but I found a method called quilt as you go where you quilt in panels and then bind them all together.  It was easier than pushing the entire quilt through my machine and I'm actually really pleased with how they turned out.  The binding gives a nice little stripe effect that ended up working really well.

 Her boys picked out the coordinating fabric.  This one is hard to tell but those are red flames.  I wish I had a motorcycle to drape this over!!

This one was hunter's camouflage.  

The back of the first one is plain black -- this one ended up striped.  I was worried that doing plaid flannel in panels wouldn't match up so I deliberately added some black.

Close up of how the binding looks.

Now it's on to Christmas projects!!  I'm building some furniture and making some tiny quilts for the dollhouse as well as some fun little presents for my family who will all be here (hooray!!) so I've got a lot to do but it will be a lot of fun stuff.

My first attempt at a couch.  Upholstering is hard!!!  But I think it turned out decent enough that the girls will like it. 

The day after Thanksgiving we were going to put up the tree but Chopper had to work and we didn't get to it until the evening.  I had to distract the girls somehow so we tried a pinterest recipe for cornstarch and baking soda dough and made ornaments.  They weren't nearly as polished as what you see on pinterest but they are a nice white color so perfect for painting. 

Some of the finished products.  Megan's are the deliberately painted ones and Abby's are the mess of paint ones.  I need to go through and label them so I remember in future years though.

This is why we're getting the girls a dollhouse -- admittedly Megan will play with it more.  She LOVES Chopper's Christmas village and would spend hours arranging and rearranging the little things if we would let her.  We won't though because eventually William has to get up from a nap!! 

 This handsome boy has done a nice job of staying away from the tree actually.  More so than the girls who like to pull off and play with certain ornaments. 

We are having some family pictures done but our scheduled day was rainy and awful cold and I'm not sure when we'll be able to reschedule so yesterday a good friend came over and took a few shots of us in our backyard for Christmas cards.  We're still trying to decide which one to use -- not because we have several good ones but because we have several regular family ones!!  Chopper really protested having coordinating outfits because he wanted us to look normal.  But I think you'll agree that we certainly manage normal despite the outfits!! 

 

This might be the one.  William is obviously not happy but at least you can see everyone.  We still haven't decided though!!! And only 3 weeks to get it all together!