And Now For Sunday...

OK. This is my second time writing a post today... Very early this morning, I put up a post for Thursday.  I think that is legal to go back and fill in the gaps just this once.  In case you haven't heard, I missed posting on Thursday, but I made up for it this morning... I am not going to mention it again. 

I have to tell you that Tessie was getting to the point of hysterics this morning, so I put in a couple of lights in the Potions Shed.

It must have worked. I haven't heard a peep out of her all afternoon.

This is one of the lights that I used. Battery operated and sticky pad on the back.  That one I put inside the roof and stuck it to the ceiling where it won't be seen. The other one was a battery operated clamp light.

Neither one can be seen from outside the house and they give that nice eerie feeling that Tessie loves.

I went to Goodwill this morning and picked up this 25dollar book for a buck.

Tessie has been pouring through it and is bookmarking almost every page... You know... "We can use this in the She Shed... We can use this one in Daisy's Cottage.  We can use this one in my NEW HOUSE!  That one was rather emphatic.

She has a place for everything in the book and is ready to work on all of them at once...  I doubt that I will use many of the ideas, but it had a nice section of colored photos of gardens and things that would look good outside a window.


Anyway, this is what the She Shed looks like with the lights on... In order to turn them on herself, she is using the pogo stick and bumping her head on the push light that you see in the first photo. Hey!  Whatever works!

Back to rug making.

See you tomorrow.

Movin' Right Along...

This is where the conservatory will sit when it is finished.

It will get some indirect sunlight in this spot.  That way, if I put some real plants in it, they will get the proper light and hopefully they will keep growing... As you can see, I already have some plants in this area. I know that it will work there.

That meant that I needed to fill the hole where the conservatory was sitting..

I did that with my jewelry/needlework chest. 

I am still debating what I want to put on the tables.

I had to go to Wednesday Witches this afternoon, so I didn't really have time to do any minis... I just had time to move some furniture and put some stuff away.

Tessie found one of the early rugs that I printed from the net.  It is about right to go with the lampshade and chair.  There are instructions on how to do it elsewhere on the blog. Go here.  http://caseymini.blogspot.com/search?q=printing+rugs
It will work until something better comes along...

Tessie, maybe you should get started on a new rug.  I don't have time right now.

I am going back to work on other things, now that I am home.

See you tomorrow.

Even the Door!

I actually went as far as straightening the signs on the door to the workroom!

Tessie made me do it.  She stood on the handle the whole time and told me where to put things.

The photo on the right is one that I found whilst cleaning.  It is April's first grade school photo.

April and Amare are coming over tomorrow.  I am going t see if Amare can figure out who the person in the photo is.  I don't think that it will take him long.

I have everything on this wall straightened, with the exception of the wood pile and the baskets in the top left corner.  They will find a new home shortly.  I don't want them falling on my head!

As soon as I finished the light, Tessie zapped it and I had to go find her.

She put it on the table in the bedroom.  It is a spot where she can read(with the help of the light) and watch TV without it. 

I decided to wait on a rug for it until I can find something in the right colors and the right size.

I am now going to attempt the wood pile...

Wish me luck.  I am going to need it.

See you tomorrow.

Finding Keepers

I am taking a break from sorting and cleaning this morning... Oops. It's already afternoon.

One of the things that I found was this lamp.

I did it a lot of years ago. It's last life was kind of witchy.

Tessie informed me that she needed a good place to read and with the light, this would be ideal.

The lamp is made out of an old Christmas candle light with a line switch. It had a shade to begin with, but I had to add the wooden base.  It was just the brass piece that you see.

When I first started using it, I glued the brass to a wood plaque from Walmart.

I made a new shade at the time and have made several others over the years.

It just depends on what I am going to use it for and what materials I have at hand as to how it turns out.

This time, I was in a hurry, so I just grabbed some scrapbook cardstock type paper.

It was printed with buttons.

I simply traced the original shade... Or I should say, the former shade.  I don't even remember what the original shade was made from.

Then I cut "V's" in the excess.  I turned the edges under and over lapped the ends.

Then I went and found some braid that kind of matched and covered the edges this time... Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't cover the edges.

What is on the base is not what is going to stay there.  Tessie grabbed a chair and footstool.  She then sat down with her latest copy of Variety and promptly went to sleep and started snoring loudly.

I am not about to wake her up.  The peace and quiet is enjoyable...

Here's proof of this morning's corner cleaning.  Next comes the  wood pile... I am not looking forward to that. Notice! The second to the bottom shelf is EMPTY! The garbage truck will be emptying a very full can from us this week!

Too many decisions to be made.  What to keep and what to throw. 

I have a tendency to save the smallest pieces of wood, since I work in "Small".

You never know when I will need a 1" piece of 1/4" stock...

Anyway, I am going back now to join the snoring... No not mine... Just Tessie.  She is in the middle of the worktable and I will be working around her.  Wish me luck.

See you tomorrow.

Tea and Dollar Tree...

This is as far as I have gotten with the tea basket.  It is hard to tell, but the thing is in the shape of a snail shell.  It will be more easy to tell, once I am finished.

I put the tea bags in to see if it was going to be the right size.  It is.  Now I can finish it and fill it with new tea bags when it is done.

I need to do another inch and then do some edge work.

I went to Dollar Tree this morning.  They have the little LED Christmas trees again this year.  The one on the left is the one from last year.  This year they put fine glitter on the outside.  Nice for a change. 

The ones from last year show no signs of dead batteries.  That makes me a happy camper.  I imagine it would be cheaper to just buy new trees than to try to find the batteries that go inside.

In other Dollar Tree news, they still have the little lights that I used in the observatory.  Unfortunately, no black.  Lots of colors and white.

I also spotted some glue dots that I had not seen before.  36 for a dollar.  The blue bag is permanent and the green one is reposition able.  I thought that those would be good for minis.  The dots are 1/2" across I imagine that they can be cut to smaller sizes if needed.  I will let you know when I use them.

For now, that's all the news that's fit to print.  Back to the basket.

See you tomorrow.

A Little Light On the Subject Helps...

When I bought all of the mini goodies from my friend Sue earlier this year, I got a lot of electrical stuff.  Some working and some not.

I just dumped it into the electrical drawer... I got it out this morning and dug through it. 

I found enough stuff to finish the dashboard for the tower.  And then some. 

I wasn't sure which stuff worked, so I started sorting...

 These are the ones that worked that can be used in the tower... I'm not saying they will all be used, but they are possibilities.

I want the dashboard to have some lights, along with the bells and whistles...

This morning I also made a weather vein for the top.

In case you were wondering, this is how I am keeping the Terrible Two busy this morning...

I told them that they have to hold the piece in place, until the glue dries or the compass points won't be aligned... Hey! It's a good story and I'm sticking with it.

They keep asking if it is dry yet and I just automatically tell them no.  It's better to have them playing with pins. 

I certainly don't want them messing with transformers and electricity.  They would burn my house down!

So far, this has kept them busy for an hour and a half... I guess I should let them off the hook, now that I am done testing the electrical stuff.  But it was so peaceful while it lasted...

See you tomorrow, with lighted dashboard.

Lighting Up....

 First of all, I am envious of Widget.  When I was little, we used to try to touch our nose with the tip of our tongue.  I never quite made it and couldn't see the point of the exercise.

Widget has me beat by a mile!

Now down to business.  I decided to put two lighted candlesticks on the desk.

I had to make a choice.  Which would you choose?  The battery pack on the left lights up just the two lights.  The transformer on the right was the only one I had on hand.  It lights up a LARGE house.  It would probably explode the whole cottage if I tried it on just two lights...And besides, it is hard to hide....And a waste of power.

So I went with the battery pack.  It was from a string of those awful yellow lights that you can get to put on mini Christmas trees.  I cut the cord on those and fastened the two lights to it instead.  It holds two AA batteries.

It is very easy to do if you don't want a lot of light.  Candles aren't very bright, so it worked out just fine.

If you ever want to do it, you simply attach one wire from each light to one side of the wire from the battery pack.  Twist them together separately...Don't one group touch the other. 

Here's what it should look like.  The two brown wires in each group are from the lamps.  The green wires are from the battery pack.

I twisted them tightly together, making sure that they would be separate.  If you touch them together, you could blow the bulbs.

To insulate them so that can't happen, I painted each group with white glue.  I will do it again to make sure it is coated. 

Do test the light to see if it works before you paint them with the glue.

It is hard to get a good photo of the lights.  When you put enough outside light on the cottage to photograph, that makes the lights look dimmer than they are.

The other requisite for this technique is to have a place to hide the battery pack.  This one is under the desk.  I will paint it black before I bundle the wires(separately) and put the whole thing in place.  The only other thing that you have to make certain of is a way to get to the on/off switch.  In this case, I will be able to slide it in and out from under the desk.

Did you notice that the dragons now have a home?  They can guard me when I have my back to the door, working on the computer...You never know who or what will find their way in...

I have to go now and paint the little black box....

See you tomorrow.

The Real Fun Starts Now...

First of all, I really can make chandeliers if I have the right stuff to do it....This is the one from my three room dining, living room and kitchen room box.

It's hard to take a good photo through the glass.  Sorry it's not clearer. I couldn't take a photo of it lighted because it glares and you can't see any of the detail.

I promise to get back to a tutorial later.  I need to pick up a few things, before attempting it again.

This seems to be my week for surmounting problems.  I finished the rug pattern.  It is still on the laptop.  I can't seem to get the e mail to send things to myself or get on the internet, either one, at the present time...So I get to take a photo instead.

The "brown" fabric along the bottom edge is really green.  For some reason it refuses to photograph as green.  It really looks good with the swirly rug in it's true colors.

I did some work on the desk last night.  This morning I did some more on the rug.  There is still a long way to go. 

I have lost track of how many stitches I have done and I don't keep track of the time spent.  Everybody goes at a different pace.  My two hours might be someone else's hour and a half or maybe even three hours.  So I just don't count anymore.

Now.  Down to the fun part.  I started painting some of the rocks this morning also.  I still have a couple of sides to finish on the addition of the extra layers, but I couldn't stand to not see how it was going to look.

First I just painted the whole section in shades of gray.

At this point, I am just covering any bits of writing on the carton, so that they won't show through.

Then I start, one rock at a time.  I move from one rock to another in another area with one color, so that all of the rocks are not the same.

There is a lot of skipping around involved.  This is the kind of stonework where the cement in between the rocks is dug out before it hardens, when they do it in real life.  It makes the stones look like they are just fitted together.

It is a legitimate way of laying stone.  I even saw someone doing it on  the "This Old House" hour a couple of weeks ago.  I like it because I don't have to worry about cement between the stones.  And besides, I'm basically lazy and that cuts down on labor.

Here's the pallet that I am using.  They are all Ceramcoat colors.

Starting at the top.  Golden brown, Charcoal, Antique white, Woodstone green, Burnt umber, Tile red(very old and kind of hard), Metallic copper, Burnt sienna and a bunch of places between, where I was mixing colors at random.

I only have one column at the back of the house started, so I had better get back at it before the paint pallet dries.  Gotta run. 

See you tomorrow.

Zofi! You Had Better Watch Out!

Not only is Tessie on the warpath....I think that I'm backing her up on this one...

Zofi found the gold leafing pen while I was sleeping...

When I got up, there was a strange purple light coming from my bedside table.....And there was Zofi, weilding the gold leafing pen on the base of the Chinese table...

It doesn't look bad in the photo, but in real life, the coat is uneven and the only thing that she didn't paint was the tabletop.

To add insult to injury, she left the cap off of the pen and now I don't have any gold leafing left that isn't brick hard.

Back to the strange purple light...I left a coffee cup on the table and Zofi put it to good use...Or maybe it was bad use.  I don't know yet.

She is pretty handy with a pair of pliers and Aleene's Jewelry glue.

She found one of my old chinese lanterns and proceeded to try to glue it to the book light.

Mind you, she had to tear it out of the booth, clamp it to my coffee cup and then get the glue on and the light in the right place before it all dried wrong.

I left it there.  I want to see if it works before I banish her back to the Witch's Warehouse.

She is now back inside with Mick, guarding the place.

She put my half finished rug under the newly painted table.  I do hope that the feet were dry.

She also found a copy of a Chinese snuff bottle that she seems to be thinking of using for a stand for one of her crystal balls...

I didn't tell her that she is being closely watched and may be zapped if she isn't careful.

Let her have her fun today....Later she just may pay the price!  The Terrible Two(and a half) are watching from above...

See you tomorrow.

The Wire.......

No. Not the TV series, the electrical wire in the crooked cottage. To say the least, it is very strange.

Sue never did anything to the cottage, so I know it was there before she bought it.

Walter found something on the net last night that said that Graham Wood put his wiring in the beams...OK...Right. One wire.

It runs up into the attic, where there is no way on earth to get to it if something goes wrong. The attic doesn't open. No way. No how.

I unscrewed the chimney to fix it and this is what I found. The other end of said wire....OK... I ascertained that it was definitely the other end by gently tugging at it. Yup. The wire inside moved.

The one inside was a foot or so long. Too much to hang a ceiling fixture. I surmised that it was to be used in conjunction with the outside wire to connect things. It just had not been cut.


As you can see, there is an opening for the second floor fireplace. It can be lit.

After much fussing and messing with bulbs that didn't light, I found a flickering fireplace unit and one bulb that did light, in my stash of electrical...

I had plenty of extra wire, so I was set. At least to test it out. I will have to make or buy some kind of hanging lamp.

I put a new lead on for the fireplace that connected to the main wire and just a light bulb on the end of the original wire. I finally got them to work, so I know it can be done.

Now for the puzzling part. the bottom floor has absolutely no provision for electrical at all! In fact, the fireplace is less than a half inch deep and has no hearth. Very strange.

I heard Tessie and Zar discussing it. Tessie was speculating that it might have either buried treasure or a body bricked in behind it.... Hmmmm.....

I am now trying to decide if it would be OK to cut open the fireplace and make it a working one too. I am not sure that I want to fuss with it, but it just looks really strange to me. Wouldn't the bottom floor have the working fireplace? Heat rises.

I am not going to rush to judgment, but I would just like to have that fireplace work too...Tessie is saying, "Leave well enough alone. Who knows what is behind that wall of brick?"

Maybe she is right. Do we really want to know? I am going now to sit in a corner, work on the Weaver's Workshop and think about the fireplace situation.

See you tomorrow.

A Shot in the Dark.....

I was awakened by noises coming from the family room about 4:30AM. The waking up part isn't unusual. Although it is usually Mookie meowing that wakes me.

Today it was crash, bang, and rattle, followed by bad words....

I went out to look and there was Tessie, stumbling around the kitchen of the townhouse.

She was carrying one of the LED lights that I bought last year. I was planning on using that one in the Clockwork cottage, but she filched it.

I made the mistake of asking her what was happening..."I stubbed all of my toes and bumped my head twice!" She took a couple of steps and crashed again. "This is not a lamp! It's a glow in the dark disaster magnet!"

I was trying not to snicker at her, but she was so right. Those LED lights are cute, but they don't throw enough light to see your hand in front of your face. I don't think that hanging over the table is going to do a bit of good.
She presented her case to Zar. "I want a new house! This one doesn't work. It is trying to kill me....It is alive and it hates me!"

I do believe that the drama queen has been watching too many late night horror movies.

Then she went on with, "And besides, I don't like living room furniture that looks like over sized balloon animals! Who's idea was that?!?"

I gently reminded her that she picked the pieces out. She settled down somewhat and then started to growl. It makes me very, very nervous when she growls.
To appease her, I told her to go look at some of my decorating books and see what she could find that would suit her.....Anything to keep from building her yet another house....It was blessedly quiet for a few hours. I went into the bedroom and she was on her seventeenth book...Literally.

Using one of my antique crochet hooks as a wand, she was zapping pages as she went so that the books would automatically fall open to the pages that she has picked, I guess that is better than marking them with a big red grease pencil, the way she used to do it.

Anyway, while she was occupied, I was on a quest of my own. How do you make a dark kitchen lighter? The answer finally appeared like a light bulb over my head....Please don't throw tomatoes at me for the pun.

Out of nowhere, I suddenly remembered that I had just one of those LED lights that I bought at Walmart on a close out last year....I do so wish that I had bought all of them, instead of just three.

That reminds me. There is still one stuck inside the box on the cat tree from Christmas decorating. I also remembered that the ceiling of the arch had a 2 1/2" drop. Perfect to cover the light.

Earlier, I tried putting in a lighter colored table.

Now we can see everything....Unfortunately, that makes it so that decor in the kitchen has to be done.

Of course, Tessie is taking the credit for lighting things up. She said it was all in the crochet hook/wand. "It's just a simple flick of the wrist! It works every time..."

Keep your fingers crossed. Maybe, without the balloon animal furniture, she will move in after all!"

Wish me luck!

See you tomorrow.

Light Bright....

I put in a walkway to the shower tower this morning. Then a pad in front of Zar's "Office". We can't have muddy feet tracking into the place when it is raining...

I thought that the shower path would be easy. It wasn't. I curved it and I had to cut every stone to fit.

I figure, the more stonework, the less landscaping.


We only have one small problem....Zar lost the key to the office again...I guess he will just have to use Tessie's bathroom until it is found. It serves him right for not sharing.

I tried out one of the battery lit dollhouse lights in the main part of the trailer. It just didn't throw out enough light to see the dark corners.

Then I had an inspiration. I remembered three fixtures that I purchased on closeout at Walmart a few months ago.

They are LED utility lights. Now I wish that I had bought what they had left. they are perfect!

See the two little metal strips at the bottom of the bar? Those are a touch switch. Not a slide! A touch!

It takes four AA batteries and comes with very sticky tabs to put on the back.

Best of all? It's not blue light. It looks like regular light.

I don't have the roof fastened in yet, so it was very easy to install.
If you get down below the trailer, you can see it. Chances are, most of the time people won't do that, because the table that it sits on is so high. I had to get down on my knees to take this photo.

Even if they do, I don't think that it looks bad. Being white, it looks like a box ceiling fixture.

I don't know if GE still makes these, but if they do, I am going to look for more. I am putting one in Hubert's Haberdashery. If I install it above the inside of the front door, It will never be seen. And I will be able to touch the end from the doorway.

Can you tell that, today I am a happy camper?

See you tomorrow.

Now, About the Apron.....

Tessie told me this morning that the copper lamp for the kitchen was too bare....I think that she meant plain.

Not being in the mood for an argument, I humored her. She dragged it in and I fancied it up with some copper wire and some gold embossed sticker paper.

I am not crazy about the fact that the whole lamp is copper and then they went and put a gold trimmed shade on it.

I remedied that by adding more gold trim around the battery case, the top and bottom of the shade and a couple of lines around the bottom of the fixture. At least now it looks somewhat like the gold was meant to be there.

After I finished doing that, I coiled a couple of copper jewelry, head pins and glued them to the frame of the lamp.

Tessie says that I can now hang it over the kitchen table.

Not just this minute....I have a headache and I don't want to do anything that requires that I stand on my head to install.


So....instead, she decided she needed a new party apron, which I wouldn't have to stand on my head to make.

How could I complain? It took all of 20 minutes to do and it will keep her quiet for the rest of the day.

I put pockets on the front. She is fascinated by pockets. She runs around the house looking for things to stick in them.

I finally got smart and told her that their sole purpose was to keep her hands warm. She fell for it. She stuffed her hands in and has been walking around boasting about how warm her hands are and telling Zar that it is a shame that he doesn't have pockets to keep his hands warm.

It is 52° here right now. I know that a lot of you are knee deep in snow, but 52° is colder than I like it. I am a desert rat and so is Tessie. Thus, she appreciates good pockets.

I am going to go take some aspirin, put on some woolly socks, and knit more now. I just hope that she doesn't get the idea that she should have socks too...

See you tomorrow.

Where'd The Little Old Lady Go?

Well, for one thing, she isn't that little. I realised that I have never shown you my one and only "Barbie" sized poly clay doll.


I went to look for her and she wasn't on her usual second shelf space in the bookcase....After some searching, I found her up in the castle....Evidently, the last time I did spring cleaning in the bookcase, I moved her up there out of the way.


You would think that someone would notice how out of place she looks. Now I know that nobody ever looks up there.


I had to get up on a step stool to get her down and put her back where she belongs.

You may be wondering why I am showing her at all....Well, she just sits there day after day, patiently doing nothing...I had planned to have her knitting something when I made her 20 or so years ago.


She is an unsung hero of sorts. I saw an article in a doll magazine. They were having a contest. I thought that I might join in the fun....I found, after making one doll that size, that I never want to do it again. For some reason I find it difficult to switch to the larger size. For me 1/12scale is much easier that 1/6. She is a lesson learned. I didn't enter her in the contest and there she sits year after yearl...I really should start her some knitting so that she will have something to while away the hours.....


On the mini front, I did only one task today.I have been trimming(real) trees and doing (real) laundry. I did about five rows of sock knitting and then found a dropped stitch about 20 rows down....Does that tell you what kind of day I have had?

Anyway, on to the minis. I did put up one of the sconces. I am liking the battery operated lights more and more. I simply cut a hole in the foam core the size of the base and stuck it in. I think that I am going to leave it like that so it will be easier to change the battery.


I think that it was Sans that asked about the blue tinge to the lights. They are a bit blue, but not horrible. The one that is in the copper setting doesn't cast a blue light at all.


These lights are a bit more expensive than the regular hard wired ones, but I got to thinking about it.....You don't have to buy a transformer or wire. No tools needed and you don't have to worry about where you are going to hide the transformer and string the wires.


I hope that they come up with some more styles. I bought two of the sconces, the copper ceiling fixture and a three arm chandelierwhile they were on sale. The chandelier was messed up and I sent it back. I will show you that one when I get the replacement.


Someone on the Greenleaf forum sent an addy for another company that carries these. http://www.manhattandollhouse.com/html/battery_operated_miniature_dol.html They have more styles. I have not ordered from them, but I am tempted. Now I am wondering how hard it would be to make your own. Has anybody out there tried it yet?


OK, I am just rambling on now. I need to go do some more laundry.


See you tomorrow.