Longing to return to the stone cottage ... a reminder of life left to languish.

My electrician, overseeing the tape wires in the future kitchen.

I started this wide stone dollhouse in 2021, from a discontinued Real Good Toys kit, the Newbury.

I made a thousand little decisions to create a cottage in which I wanted to live. Or where I would want to live if I were a nicely middle-class person in a smaller town in England, Denmark, or some other place with nice, cool summers (as they used to be before climate change)--a cottage built maybe sometime in the 1800s, then renovated a bit, now occupied in the 1930s with some furniture that would have been contemporary then, some very old and simple ... Maybe it had been upgraded to a kind of dower house or gatekeeper's lodge. So it should be cottagey on the outside, cozy on the inside, with some "peasant" furniture, some elegant upgrades, a few standout pieces--an art nouveau china cabinet, or maybe a hand-painted wardrobe or cabinet ...

I still want to live in that idea of the cottage. But as with any good dwelling, it's going to take a heap of (my) living to make a (mini) home.

I made stonework by gluing bits of cardboard egg carton on the walls, then coloring the stone with pastels.

I do love how cheaply and easily a person can make a stone wall out of cardboard egg cartons.

Stonework colored with chalk pastels, then sealed.

I painted Euro-style pantiles for the roof but haven't put them on yet.

I made wood floors but haven't installed them yet.

I learned how to wire for electricity—very proud of that—the lights will work! I've always dreamed of turning the lights on and letting the mini people live with the blessings of torchieres and chandeliers. Sort of like the Borrowers.

Practice board for the electrical work ... and a tester lights up!

And then I was put on a medicine that turned my brain into jelly and my body into another kind of jelly with a few bones inside. I stopped working on the cottage in spring 2022. (I also stopped that medicine a while later. Ugh.)

Trying out various possible wall and floor treatments. I ended up hating this parlor paper (bottom left). I put a better one in.

At first I decided I needed to organize every last thing I own in the big house (the one that exists around the mini houses) ... over a century of old family relics, plus all my books, old lecture notes, and mini house supplies. That was years ago, and I'm still working on the organizing, not allowing myself to do my other projects.

Maybe writing this and putting it up for people to see will help me decide it's okay to return to the cottage.

This is just the mess in one corner, where I was working full-bore on the cottage.

It can be handy to have lots of books around if you need weight to press the wood seams together.

I feel as if I might also need to finish this project to get everything in my outer life flowing again.

I chose things for the parlor to work with this Bespaq lounge set I got at an incredible bargain.

Wallpaper design bought on Etsy and printed out on wrapping paper through Zazzle. And wall outlets for lights that work. I tried to make a coffee-stirrer herringbone floor, but I don't have that kind of precision, so this one is premade, nothing to do but stain and seal it.

I also enjoy a cheap rustic floor made from coffee stirrers. I like this wardrobe, but just see the one below.

A floor in progress.

Every day, the cottage reminds me of all the things in life left languishing. I became truly a senior citizen in the time I've been waiting for permission to work on it. Is it time to return?

(I think I'm the only person withholding permission at this point.)

For the entryway, I "dirtied" the coffee-stirrer floor to show traffic patterns. Trying to figure out what color the stairs should be (I cut up a commercial staircase to give it a little curve). Also not sure if it should have a banister or not. The kitchen is to the right.

The wardrobe/cabinet above is special--hand-painted, possibly by the famouse Natasha herself. It was in an auction with a couple of her signed pieces, but since it isn't signed, I got it incredibly cheap, and it's one of my favorite little bits.

I miss my tiny world.