Happy Holidays / Sad News

 First I want to wish everyone a Happy Holiday!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hanukkah!

I know there are other holidays in December but I don't know the proper greetings/joyful wishes for them. But I wish everyone else a lovely holiday.

And a Happy (soon to be) New Year.

If you don't want to know the sad part of this post until later just stop here and come back when you're mentally prepared.

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And now for the sad news. 

My husband Jess died in his sleep on Sunday night/Monday Morning, December 23rd.  He was fifty four years old.  He had a lot of underlying conditions that effected his health but nothing that was immediately obvious as cause of death. Because he had mobility issues he hadn't really left the house since he was forced into 'retirement' a couple of years ago so until the Medical Examiner determines the cause any funeral service is on hold.  He wanted to be cremated and we can't do anything without a death certificate.

As you can imagine, its been a tough week. We'd been married eighteen years.  The cats are confused and can tell I'm upset but its not like this is something I can explain to them.

I've been on vacation this week, the days that weren't holidays, so I've been keeping busy cleaning my house and going through old pictures of him so I have something for his service when I'm able to have it.  

Speaking with the director at the funeral home suggested that mid January would likely be the earliest I could have a service for him.

This is not how I imagined I'd be spending my Christmas holiday but life rarely goes as planned.

Happy Halloween!

 Just a very short post because I promised someone I'd show my costume. 

Walls, Wallpaper & Windows

 Man... when you're working over forty hours a week its amazing how quickly a month goes by!  I really meant to have this up in June folks. Sorry about that.

I added the wallpaper to the walls and I'm pretty happy with how it looks now that the chair rail is on the wall. You all know my fondness for the color blue but this has some green in it as well so if I ever get the yen to change things out I can try for some green accents. 

I didn't do my measurements quite right, there are a few little gaps in the trim at the back but I can fix those easily enough and once I paint it won't be noticeable. 

I'm pleased with how the brick paper looks on the bay windows and can easily picture it on the outer walls of the rest of the shop.

I'm going to add crown molding with some little block corners. I really like that look and painted white it won't be too formal.

If you're on my Instagram you'll have seen that I did make a bunch of perfume bottles. I like the idea of china, fancy bottles and maybe some flower arrangements or something in the windows. Clocks maybe? We'll see. But here are some of the bottles I made.

I got a little carried away making them but it was fun and I really liked them. So no harm no foul right?

One of the girls at work actually loves working with polymer clay and she made me a tea (or coffee) set and its so sweet!

Isn't it fun? She made all the food too. I can't get over how pretty!

But I had an idea of something she might like so I brought my perfume bottles and asked her to choose which ones she liked.  Then asked her favorite color and brought my paints for her to choose out of those.

She loves pink. Its weird, she and I are opposites. When she was little she loved blue and I loved pink. Now we're adults (sortof at least in my case) and she loves pink and I love blue. We got a good laugh about that.

She chose a very bright pink.

And since I wanted to give her something a little more sophisticated I got one of my barewood pieces of furniture:

And turned it into this:

I made a couple pairs of silly earrings (pink and blue popsicles and pink donuts) and put them in the drawers. And a little plate with a pink cake. No pictures of them though.

So now she has a place to put her perfume bottles.

I like this look so I might try to do a piece of furniture in shades of blue ombre for the shop. We'll see. I considered doing something like this on different pieces to seel in my Etsy shop. 

I did one other thing in June. One of the guys at work was showing me pictures of his granddaughter (she's seriously adorable) and I made her a hat.

He says she loves it and was jumping up and down with it on her head. 

I like it so much, maybe I'll make one of my own with purple flowers to match my hair. 

That is the good thing about this workplace. No 'dress code' for your hair, even if you're in the office and accounting. And since my hair (in the traditional way of the Irish) is going silver in great quantities, Schwarzkopf's Got2b Amethyst Chrome goes over my dark brown and silver. This is the best cheap (relatively) color I've found that actually sticks to silver hair and makes even my dark brown look like dark purple without bleaching it. 

Borrowed the picture from Amazon so you can see what I mean. 

No I'm not getting paid for this endorsement.  I should be though. I've told everyone about this color. 

But I digress.

I'm hoping to work on some more dishes for the shop, or maybe the furniture. I definitely need to figure out how to structure the roof so I can get at the lights in the shop ceiling. 

Lots to do!

Hope you're having a great July so far!  

China Shop - Creatin' Contest 2024

 Well it's been a while... I really didn't realize how long I'd gone without posting until I looked at the date of my last post. I've been dollhousing (notice how I create my own verbs) but I just haven't written about it.

I bought the kit for the 2024 contest. I'm still not sure if I'm going to enter or not.  I know exactly what I want to do with the kit. And I'm on my way there.  When you work for most of the year on one project it feels like a lot of energy for very little return. I'm just tired of being judged maybe?

I work a full-time job, just like most people and its mentally and emotionally exhausting sometimes. Like everyone else's job I imagine. I only really get to work on my miniatures during the weekends and sometimes not even a whole weekend due to other household stuff that needs to get done.

To put in a year's worth of weekends on a project, painstakingly researching and bringing that vision to life... Let's just say that I think I might be happier if I wasn't comparing my build to all the others that are entered. I think I wouldn't mind not getting even an honorable mention if I wasn't spending every free moment working on a build. That happened with my Chapel in 2022. I thought I'd 'transformed' the kit pretty well. I certainly didn't recognize it as the Welcome All Porch kit.

Which leads me to this year.

As I'm sure you've all seen by now, the kit isn't enclosed. I have to change that because cats. The Building Inspector is busy doing her thing beyond the Rainbow Bridge along with her Apprentice. But the cats I have are still curious. So its best for all concerned that I have four walls and a roof on all my builds.

I decided that I wasn't going to make myself crazy this year. I'm keeping it simple and easy to move, in part because I want to use it as a room box for displaying things for my Etsy Shop. I really enjoy making tiny sets of china so primarily the kit will end up being a china shop. Maybe with some pretty glass perfume bottles in a special section of their own.

So I started with the floor.

Then ran out of the right sized tiles so I pried some up and started again.  This time with a border of pine board flooring around the perimeter of the floor.

I've also removed the dividers for the small windows on the far wall and made one long large window. I like how high up it is, it'd be good for a bedroom window if I'd gone in that direction. 

I'm going with American Warm White for the inside trim and for the exterior trim Anita's Blue Fog. I've got the exterior door and trim already painted in the same colors. 

I thought about doing a bead board wainscoting but I thought with the hexagon tiles it would be a little busy looking. and I didn't want to add wood that I would only end up painting. Plus I'd gone through my supplies and I had some simple trim that would look nice as a chair rail but it wasn't made to go over the edge of a panel. 

So I used my painters tape for its actual purpose and primed the interior walls with gesso.  Then I cut some 1/8th wide half round to make simple panels.

The one area next to the door is narrower and I want to see how it looks with the door trim in place before I make a narrow panel for that area. 

So far I like how it looks. I've got some wallpaper that I'm going to use for the upper portion of the walls. 

The little bump out floor is simple pine boards and I'll trim out the doorway with the same trim as the window. But I won't put a door. I think I'm going to do a little curtain or something.

While I had the primer out I should have done the bump out walls but I forgot. I'm debating a small spiral stair up to what would be the attic storage. I have a mansard roof in mind and I think it'll look nice. Storage for the shop but no living space. 

I got a 'Fragile' stamp and I'll probably try to make little crates or something to have in the attic. We'll see.

For the exterior I've got some of the nice brick paper from Miniatures.com and I'll probably use that unless I get really enthusiastic about a plaster look. I've got the paper on the base of my shop windows already and I really like it.

More on those the next time I post.

Edouard Black's Blacksmith Shop and Home

I am Edouard Black, welcome to my smithy and home. I’m pleased to have your custom. My Aunt Cecelia Alyce graciously gave her aid to build my forge and thus gave me my start in life once I achieved my mastery in smithing.

It may be humble, but it serves my wife and I well. Aunt Cecelia planted a cutting from her own apple tree so that we might enjoy fresh fruit and with the village well close by we want for nearly nothing.  We suffered from mice for a time but a couple of kittens from my aunt’s wonderful mousers look to have that problem solved.  Thus all our winter stores of food are secure in their jars and chests.

We recently were blessed with a daughter and Aunt Cecelia has promised to take her under her wing and teach her to spin and weave once she’s old enough. For now we all sleep together in our cozy upper room secure knowing that the thick door with our family sigil and stone walls keep us safe.

Those are my four submission pictures.

And here are a few more with extra details.

At some point I'll put up another post with the sources for all the things in the build that I wasn't able to make. 

For now though, I'm going to try and get caught up on my blog reading. I'm really behind!

Hope everyone is having a happy Holiday season!