Christmas Morning 2011

Although Jeff, Kendra, Alayna and Rebecca surprised us by arriving early Friday evening, Keith, Stacia & Emily would not arrive until dinner time on Sunday....Christmas Day.   On Christmas morning we opened Santa's gifts and those exchsnged between us, saving Keith, Stacia and Emily's gifts until later in the day.

 Handing out the presents results in quite a pile for Alayna and Rebecca.

The big pile by the tree are the ones we are saving for Keith, Stacia and Emily's arrival.

The aftermath!

Alayna and Rebecca's dollhouse (no there was not an earthquake)!

Keith, Stacia and Emily arrive at 4pm.  Dinner was at 5pm.

 Stacia took these pictures.  Note the look on Alayna's face!

 L to R: Keith, Katie, John, Kendra, & Jeff.  Stacia took the pic, 'Becca was sleeping while Alayna and Emily were in the foreground & out of this picture.

Emily's main gift was a solid maple rocking horse chair made by a local craftsman.

Rebecca gazes at nana Katie

John in his Christmas suspenders and Elf hat....taking a free moment to send e-mail greetings!

Rebecca laughs while enjoying Christmas Day!!!

The Guilty look!!!  Emily plays with a Christmas ornament after being told not to.

The Dollhouse Project

When Kendra was 2 1/2 years old, her grandparents (Katie's mom & dad) gave her a dollhouse.  It was simple and just painted wood but Kendra really enjoyed playing with it.  It ended-up in our garage as Kendra grew-up, finished high school and left for college.  Soon she married and had a daughter of her own.  When we moved to Utah, we brought the old dollhouse with us and Kendra's daughter, Alayna, enjoyed playing with her mommies dollhouse.  Kendra suggested I make one for Alayna and create a tradition.  Having never built one before, I decided to give it a try (of course we had to choose a difficult one for our first attempt).  Anyway, I spent the entire month of August constructing it.  I added hardwood floors & a tiled kitchen floor; wall paper, baseboards, chair rails, framed pictures, tiny books for the bookcase & tiny pots & pans for the kitchen.  Katie helped with the second floor support beams, shingling about half the roof, helping assemble the furniture and she made all the fabric cushions, pillows and bedspreads.

I applied stucco to the exterior and landscaped the yard.  Finding artificial flowers that tiny was a real challenge.

For wallpaper we used scrapbooking paper in order to get a pattern on such a small scale.  This is, of course, the childs room.  This red furniture was the only furniture we bougt that was assembled already.  I decided that floor to ceiling wallpaper was too much and decided to divide it with chair rails and paint the lower section the same color as Mickey's shoes.  We ended up using two packages of hardwood flooring strips for the 3 rooms.

In the master bedroom you can see some of the pictures like Mickey talking to Keith & Kendra when they were little, a picture of Jesus, a BYU logo and a portrait of Katie & I.  Katie added the comforter and although we constructed 5 rooms of furniture, only a baby cradle was added to the bedroom.

Here is a closer picture.  As you can see, my miniture wallpapering needs improvement!

 For the kitchen floor, I glued down glass mosaic tiles then grouted around them.  Added baseboards and even a picture of a smiling banana.

In this room we combined some of the living room furniture with some of the dinging room furniture.  I even found a refrigerator magnet that was made to look like a big screen TV; I glued a tiny picture of Alayna, in a field of tulips, to the screen (at the base of the stairs facing away).  One of the main reasons we chose this model was the full staircase, upstairs and downstairs fireplaces and a living room bookcase.

We decide that due to it's size, one dollhouse per family was enough.  This is for Alayna, Rebecca (when she's old enough) and any future daughters that Jeff & Kendra may have.