On the occasion of celebrating an Orange Tuesday Birthday, I went into the archives for this birthday card with a whimsical orange giraffe. My mother neatly wrote what my gifts were inside the card. I don’t remember the dress, but I remember the tool set.
I found the dollhouse I made with this tool set at age 8. My father supervised as I hammered together scraps of plywood. The wallpaper in the kitchen may be a scrap of the wallpaper from our actual kitchen. The stove is an empty vanilla pudding box. That is an orange light switch on the right.
The wallpaper in the living room came from our neighbor Mrs. Firth. The loopy orange carpet was found in many parts of our full size house. Can you tell it was the Seventies? I created a pastel bookcase and just noticed the row of love poems across the top shelf, which is in counterpoint to the rather forlorn spool person facing the wall. I feel like interrupted a serious conversation.
I don’t remember playing with dolls inside this house, but only the process of creating the building, and furnishing the rooms. In a journal from grade 3, I describe building a yard for the dollhouse out of Lego. The dollhouse was my world to bring forth.
What a great project and memories! It reminds me of an art project I did that was a diorama of a farm yard. I put so much detail into that one project!
Just the word “diorama” has a magical sound.
This is awesome! And the spool people are so adorable. I would’ve loved to build something similar when I was little.
Wooden spools were the best for playing with! The plastic ones weren’t the same.