Is this what I’m going to be doing with the rest of my life? I do need to wrap this up.

So, I made a fifties lamp for the murder bedroom. I used old bead necklaces and glued a pretty credible mid century statement lamp. I ran a wire through the beads and was halfway to making a harp and thought there has to be an easier way. So I rigged an inner shade that sits on the wire. It’s just sketching paper glued with rubber cement.

The incredible jewelry box came for the bedroom. It’s got scissors. This is so Dial M for Murder.

Other projects completed:

• Added Tudor frieze and chair rail to the girl’s bedroom
• Made a few more books
• Painted the Regency mirror to match my mother’s
• Framed and hung the tintypes (more on my new tintype career later)
• Created the Depression-era freak out paperwork for dining room
• Took an old woodpecker pin from childhood and affixed to house under eave
• Painted the front door (twice – the varnish clotted)
• Made two Staffordshire dogs with resin clay (a bit pathetic)
• Painted a little plastic rocking horse
• Created a mad bathroom scheme of getting ready for a masquerade ball (George Washington wig/bunny ears/invitation)
• Reversed the lighting scheme back to mini-LEDs, got the trim and sawed it

In dear Mrs. Frankenweiler’s files, I found a Xeroxed copy of a seventies book on dollhouses. It’s over 100 pages. She did that sometimes, copied books that were out of print.

This is apparently the Ur text on American dollhouses. It made me so sad that Sally never bought it for herself. So instead she paid a penny a page for a blurry facsimile. Why didn’t she have her little dollhouse book? If I’d only known I would have saved my pennies for her.

I bought the used book on Amazon for a couple dollars. Some of her other dollhouse reference material in her files includes these cute dollhouse enthusiast newsletters. They have tear out order sheets in back and feature masses of traditional furniture styles. For all your Queen Anne needs…step right up.

This room story is a young couple is getting ready for a masquerade ball. There are bits of costume ready to be put on, like a George Washington wig and a bunny ears headband. It’s a direct comment on my parents’ hyper social life. They were always going out to parties.

I don’t want to show too much before the reveal. I’ll tell you that the bunny ears is a reference to an iconic Sally moment: she once wore a bunny suit to a costume party and carried a little drum: The Energizer Bunny. Sally sewed that costume for me for a school play. Was there anything she could not do? I’ll be looking for a little drum for sure.

I made the headband by cutting off the ears of one of those stuffed bunnies I ordered for the house. Sorry bunny! But it’s use-what-you-have around here. I sewed the ears over the wire. It only occurs to me now that these look like Playboy bunny ears. The timing is right. Perhaps the man of the house would prefer lounging pajamas instead? I don’t think so.

The George Washington wig is a triple flip reference, degree of difficulty 10.0.

1. It’s on a wig stand (she had a wonderful handpainted stand from the 60s)
2. She gave hat parties for my father’s birthday where they once wore powdered wigs
3. It’s George, her avatar.

Along the rim of the bath I’ll have copies of Silent Spring and Ariel. Two of my personal favorite books.

I looked at various sixties bath interiors and decided to do a kind of tacky window shade. I used old wired Christmas ribbon and just folded it into pleats. The golden edging is a bit over the top but that’s what you get with leftover Xmas decor.

My favorite part is a hot pink ceiling fixture that I made from was a tabletop picture holder that looks like a gem. I snipped the clip off, turned the jewel stand upside down and inserted it into one of Sally’s little brass dingies to make a base. It’s pretty crazy but so were the sixties.

The bathroom is the decade where my sister and I enter the picture. I have only hazy memories of that decade. Like most little girls, I loved to watch my mother get ready. I like imagining my parents are just about to enter the room – still young, vibrant, with so much of their lives still to be written.

They are now out of reach to me now, but here they’ll always be ready for fun, just as they always were.

The medieval dado turned out well and blends with the red heart wallpaper. Mom had just enough chair rail in her magic wood box for me to finish. I’m a bit sad that I covered up some of her wallpaper. But I really wanted to bring in an echo of her torn-out unicorn picture. I’m not crazy about the sheen of that new wallpaper but oh, well. We go to war with what we have.

A tragedy happened while hanging the mirror in the dining room. I had to take it off once to reposition and it pulled some of her wallpaper off. I felt almost hysterical that I’d damaged it. But I calmed down, and just stuck it there again.

“Everything can always be saved,” my mother used to say when I threw away a drawing in frustration. She would patiently help me rescue it, teaching me perspective, helping me see better. I think as a life philosophy this saying is right up there.

So voila, the girl’s room currently. I put the string of letter Gs over the door to once again reference Geneva. These were patches from our swim team that came from my parents’ house. Tossing this kind of stuff always feels wrong and I’m glad to put them to use. Now I can toss the rest!

When you see the final version, you’ll see my favorite thing. I added a lacy heart border on the rug. I wanted to add hearts to this room to answer the hearts Sally left behind on the bed.

The books in this room are all personal. Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, The Great Brain and Nancy Drews. I’ve added In Cold Blood and The Once and Future King. These open the door to adulthood a bit and capture that moment of straddling the bridge of childhood and adulthood at once.

I also drew a tic-tac-toe game on the hanging lamp in gold paint, as if the little girl did it. It’s the kind of thing a kid does to their room that drives parents crazy. It’s meant to look amateur, I swear.

I’ve ordered a William Morris pillow for the bed, and took some charms off a bracelet to use as decor. This room has an Eiffel tower. The Statue of Liberty will go in the fifties bedroom.

Oh, I’ve ordered a microscope. She can grow up to be a scientist, dammit! This is a feminist dollhouse, bitches.