Storybook Cottage

About a month ago I posted about my idea for the "family dollhouse", I should just call it the "family miniature house" we haven't done much with that idea as of yet. I have been looking into it though. Making miniatures for it would be fun. I found my book, it's called "Tiny Treasures amazing miniatures you can make". Looking through it gets my wheels turning, once we get started I hope we'll look at things in a more creative way. Household items and disposable food/toiletry items can be used to make miniatures.

I've had ideas about our backyard and how we could incorporate some cute small things into it. It is very green with bushes and trees and grass. When we first moved in I thought I'd like to have elves or gnomes under the bushes. I have one so far, and he's already been broken and fixed. I want to do more with that idea. Those ideas actually come from visiting Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida as a little girl. I LOVED the Fairytale/Elf Village. We have home movies of me going up to the little figures in the village. I especially like the architecture of Snow White's cottage, or should I say the Seven Dwarf's, she was just visiting :) I have such sweet memories about this. Sadly it was replaced, but my daughter was able to see it when she was little. I'm pretty sure I have some pictures somewhere of that. I have found some old postcards online from it, see them above.

While looking into miniatures and dollhouses online, I came across some sites about fairy houses. I thought that ties into the whole elf, gnome thing. When I was a little girl I loved playing on the playground at school with holes in trees and moss. I started thinking about how I needed to make a little house! I went and bought a bird house at the craft store, that was all I could think of to start myself off. I had a picture in my mind of how it would look, I picked up a bag of small rocks, I wanted it to be a little cottage with a cobblestone exterior. I also got some silk flowers, pink and purple because they are my favorite colors. I brought it all home and a few hours later I started putting my fairy house or story book cottage together yesterday. It was SO FUN, I loved doing it. I used a lot of hot glue though. I takes one bag of rocks to cover the whole house, with a few to spare. I am also thinking moss, the craft store sells it, it's treated so there isn't anything alive in it. That would look wonderful to have some moss around my little house. For now I just painted it ivy green. I haven't finished the door yet, since it was a bird house it's open. I'd like to make a door to put on it. I LOVE Thomas Kinkade's work and he uses quite a few cobblestone houses in his paintings. This is a sweet painting of Snow White and one of the Cobblestone houses. On my little house, the flowers are big in size in comparison to the house, but this is supposed to be a tiny house in the forest, it's all make believe....so it is correctly proportioned. I'm not sure where I am going to put this cottage yet. It's not really protected against the elements. I have a high window in my dining room I may consider.