DOLLHOUSE FOR A NIECE AND ONE FOR FRIENDS DAUGHTER

Some years ago we built a dollhouse for a niece in Virginia. It was basically the same design as my first dollhouse kit, but this time Tom made the house and I got to decorate it. Then we carted it to Virginia in a crate on a used trailer. All went well on the drive even though it took two days to drive from Miami. I have included the picture of the dining room because I wanted to show the light fixture. At the time, Tom was making many of the ceiling lights for me. They were nice and I do wonder how I let him give up on that talent!! I am also adding a couple of pictures of a Greenleaf Willowcrest that was built for the daughter of friends. I love that house and hope it will one day be back in the Greenleaf dollhouse kit line.

AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER

In the mid 90's my daughter in Orlando called me and said she had a favor to ask. Her oldest was 'graduating' from kindergarten and because the teacher was a very good one, my daughter wanted to do something special for her as an end of the year gift. She then asked if her father and I could do a miniature classroom which would be presented to the teacher as that gift. It sounded like a good idea to me so I asked Tom what he thought since he would be the one to make the box to hold the classroom. He of course agreed...he's good that way, especially when miniatures and grandchildren are involved. Tom and I got busy making and finding things to put in the room. I had a number of items that would work, we made some and found others at various stores, like Toys 'R' Us where we found the teacher dolls and the miniature computers. For that first box the only thing we couldn't find in Miami was the desks for the students as there were no miniature shops in the area. Our daughter was able to find the desks because she has my favorite miniature shop, Ron's, in Orlando. Within two weeks that first mini schoolroom box was in the mail to our daughter. She was pleased with the box and later told us that the teacher was really appreciative that someone would go to that much trouble for her gift. I suspect she was told that good teachers are always appreciated!!

At the time we had two older granddaughters in elementary school so of course they wanted to make gifts for their teachers, too. We got busy on those boxes and added an interesting touch...because those girls were older, they had done various projects in their classes during the year so I asked each girl to pick out a project and duplicate it in miniature so that we could include it in the box. Both girls did excellent work on their projects; we were pleased with how authentic they looked and hopefully you can see those projects in the pictures.

I have added these pictures and the story of the schoolboxes because some of you reading this may well have elementary age children who could honor their teachers in the same way. The three boxes shown here were well received. If you start your planning now, you could have a fabulous schoolroom box finished by the end of the present school term.