New Years Post

Happy New Year to all of you that follow my blog. I hope you all had a great holiday. I know we did and I will be glad when the kiddies go back to school on monday. Two weeks off is too long for little ones. My daughter had a great time visiting my mom and my sister for Christmas. She got spoiled rotten. I have been busy trying to get swaps done over the holiday. now that they are done and ready to be mailed off I can get back to work on my market place. I have the cheese and deli counter to make as well as a fresh bread counter and a counter that has baked goods llike  pies, cookies, pastries. And I want to finish the Willow, I do not have much work left on it, I just need to get my butt in gear.

I want to make a street of shops but I want to get these two projects done first.

well blogger does not seem to be working well maybe tomorrow I can get pics uploaded.







 

my son's minis

As most of you know I have 4 children. Abby is 15, James is 11, Zachary is 7 and our youngest Ethan is 5.
Ethan is not like the other children he drums to his own beat. Loves anything to do with cooking, baking,  and my miniatures. It got so bad that my hubby and I had to buy him his own house and family to live in it. Well that was last Christmas. So over the last year I have made him some furniture from tutorials on the web and little wooden furniture that i found at the dollarstore. This was all fine until he discovered that some of the blogs I read showed pictures of Callico Critters on them. Well that was that, we were on a mission to locate a bunny family that could live in his house. So while we were in Mississaugua for Ethan's yearly appointment for his eyes we went to Toys R Us and purchased his grey bunny family, but they did not have the baby, they only had the family of four (mom, dad, brother, sister bunnies). The good news came when I was in Toronto in October for the dollhouse show, I was able to locate a baby grey bunny complete with walker. So now his family is complete and all is good. He leaves my houses alone and now only raids the draw that houses all of the minis that I have as extras that are not currently being used.

here are his bunnies, when he was playing with them he said they were at bunny church that is why they were sitting so well

And the bunny house

I hope you enjoyed looking through the eyes of my sweet little 5 year old

flower stall complete

I have finished the flower stall completely. i added a few small bags of potting soil and some cans of bug stuff, I also found some magazines and a book on flowers/gardens. So it is all done. I think it looks cute.

So now I am back to making swap minis. I signed up for two swaps. A sewing/quilting swap and a bakery supplies swap. At least I have until the middle of January to get them done by.

I have decided I am going to leave all the stalls so they all have a uniform look to them. I think the natural wood looks the best, The stalls already have such vibrant colours showcased on them, so a natural look looks best.

flower stall

Well I have the flower stall put together, I have not decided on weither I want to paint it or not, the other stalls are not, I want a uniform look. I may decide to stain them all once I have everything done. If you have any suggestions please feel free to leave some. I do read all of your comments.

Here is what I have so far, the little wooden box on the stand is full of seed packages.

So now that I am caught up on all of my swaps, and the new ones are not due until Februry I have decided to get back to work on my mini market place. So most of you know I have been making mini flowers, I made a bunch on the weekend and I am in the middle of making a potting bench to disply them on. Thanks to Joanne Swanson for the wonderful tutorial about how to build a potting bench.

these are the plants I completed on the weekend. I still want to make some fresh flower boquets tht you see in your local grocery store wrapped in cellophane and I need to make a trip to Michael's to get some more pots so I can make some more flowers

So far this is what I have done for the market place. I have the fruit and veggie stand up, still need to make some more fruits and veggies, and I have the farm fresh egg stand done, both brown eggs and white eggs are available.

Mini flowers

Lately I have been working on flowers and I have been up to my ears in working on swaps. So I have finished the swaps that needed to be done and aare ready to be mailed off. With all of that out of the way I thought I would mke some flowers for the Willow, but i wanted flowers that can go outside. The willow does not have flower boxes so the flowers have to sit out beside the stairs. Anyway in one of my swaps I participated in I receieved a large white flower urn painted with polka dots ( it was a polka dot theme) and I found a picture of a Fushia plant, I have never seen a plant this pretty. So I made one. I was really pleased on how it turned out.

October swaps

While I was away in Toronto my October swaps arrived from my mini swap group that I belong too. I had signed up for the Halloween swap, The Hutch swap - we had to make items suitable to display in a hutch or china cabinet, and a book swap. Everybody sent some really neat gifts and they are all so very cute.

these are the really cute Halloween items. I am going to make a shadow box and set up a mini Halloween Party display.