And so it begins....

So here I am with all the symptoms of a mid-life crisis waiting to happen and a dolls house to play with. I was aware of two places that sold miniatures and houses, DHE and Maple Street Miniatures in Royston, Hertfordshire http://maplestreet.co.uk/. I decided to have a colour theme, pink in deference to my 'pink' eight year old and mahogany as there were already a couple of pieces in the house that I could use.

As you can see I spent a lot of time with the DHE catalogue at the beginning and although it is not what I would buy now it is a very easy way to start off. Having begun to fill my house with furniture I then moved on to the next stage, accessorising and staging, which was a whole new world of discovery for me.

At the same time a friend suggested I look on Ebay for all things miniature as another avenue for buying minis. I was a little sceptical as I thought Ebay was for clothes and cars. I entered 'dolls house' in search and pulled up over 5000 entries! This lead to very happy evenings on my laptop discovering that you really can buy anything in miniature and a whole host of different specialist sellers and companies.

As you can see from these rooms I was still playing it very safe and bought a lot of items from Reutter http://www.reutterporcelain.com/aboutreutter.htm simply because I knew I would get what I saw in the picture. I did, however, start buying a few bits from individual sellers and was really impressed with the quality of their work, like the lovely little dress in the bedroom by Zena of http://www.zenaspetiteboutique.co.uk/

What I really learned searching Ebay was that one house was not going to be enough and I was already planning my next project, a bakery and cafe. With new found confidence I decided to look for a kit or unfinished project on Ebay where I hoped to be able to find a shop at a reasonable price.

Meanwhile the housework was grinding to a halt and the ironing was piling up, but for the first time in years I was having fun all for me, and my family were watching my achievements for a change! My children were slightly bemused to find their mother playing with dolls but were beginning to enjoy a more relaxed and a little wacky mum.