Hidden Dollhouse, Part 2

So I'm sure by now you are all wondering where and how the girls have spent all their hard-earned summer book club points. There have been trips to the soccer shop (Phoebe bought a Rooney jersey, Abby a miniature black and yellow ball which she has been kicking against the backyard wall nonstop, much to the delight of my neighbors, I'm sure); and trips to amazon (they decided to pool their earnings and go in on walkie-talkies together); and then there was the trip to ebay to buy Abby furniture for her dollhouse. By dollhouse, I mean what you are looking at above -- the bottom two shelves of her bedroom's built-in bookcase. Abby has created little worlds for herself all over the house, most notably in the kitchen, but I think this is my favorite one of all because it's a work in progress and has been for over two years. Together we've wallpapered the kitchen with Old Navy wrapping paper, renovated two bathrooms with leftover scraps of ceramic and marble tiles from our real house, laid down wall-to-wall carpeting (fabric swatches from the store), and created enormous jewel--and-giftwrap-on-felt wall-hangings worthy of MoMA. A lot of the furniture in the two story apartment complex was in my dollhouse when I was a kid, but over the years we've supplemented with ebay purchases. It can take Andy and me years to make decorative decisions in our real house, so it's immensely satisfying to wallpaper Abby's bathroom with a sheet of origami paper in five seconds. In other words, I don't know who enjoys this project more -- Abby or me.

I always politely suggest that it might be time to start shopping for a real kitchen table, but Abby is committed to her makeshift masterpiece, four tea party plates piled on top of each other. The kitchen is from the dollhouse I owned when I was little. The dolls are Plan. (Christmas present, 2009.)

We have one television in our real house, but Abby's apartment complex has four -- which I guess makes sense since there are three families that occupy the space. The pink cabinet was fashioned from a Melissa and Doug beading kit and the photos on the back wall are cropped from old family photos and framed with silver paper.

Abby bought this little lounge set as well as the bathroom behind it with her book club points. The wallpaper is origami paper.

Her idea, I swear! We took a screen shot (on a Mac: Command/Shift/3) and then shrunk it in Word before printing and sticking on to hard white stock. (Andy's leftover GQ stationery.) I know, I have problems.