The Blue House: Kitchen

I used to collect doll house miniatures. This is a picture from "The Blue House." (If the rollovers in the photo don't work, click here.)

Along the left wall is a cake rack that my mother painted white. Above it are some baking pans, and on either side of it are framed "food related" photos. The top shelf of the cake rack has a pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and a chocolate cherry cake. These were made by professionals and look exactly like the real things (only smaller!)

The second shelf has a layer cake at the far end that was made by gluing two flat buttons together, and next to it is a chocolate cake that was made by a neighbor up the street. My mother found out that our neighbor used to make dollhouse miniatures, so I have several items from her. She used some kind of clay (not Fimo or Sculpey) to make her items and while they weren't perfect, at 8 years old I thought they were the greatest things in the world. The bowl of fruit on the table, the cookie jar next to the stove, and the yellow clock over the center window were also made by her.

The bottom shelf of the cake rack has a huge rubber birthday cake (I don't remember where I found that.) and a box of Coca Cola bottles from my brother's toy truck.

All the furniture along the back wall was built by my mother from a kit. The doors and drawers weren't supposed to open but she modified them so they would. Many of them were crooked because of this, but I didn't care. Chances are I had something inside each of those cabinets and drawers (this was true for all of my houses). I know I had utensils in the drawers.

Most items along the back wall are labeled if you roll your mouse over them. Some items you can't see very well: There are 2 pot holders and a cutting board hanging to the left of the stove. There's a copper colored tea kettle on the stove, and probably a frying pan with a spatula and egg in it. I usually kept those on there. I also usually kept a turkey in the oven. Yes that door opened too!

Next to the cookie jar on the counter, and almost completely obscured by the chair, is a toaster. It came with two pieces of plastic toast and a tension spring that would make the toast really pop up (and fly out of my dollhouse, across the room, and onto the floor.) I think the two jars/bottles next to that had cherries and string beans. To the right of the potted flower on the counter are stoneware canisters for flour, sugar, tea, and coffee. The lids came off and inside was a glued in layer of each of those things. I loved that!

The table and chairs originally had pink flowers but my mother painted them yellow so they'd match the kitchen (I probably wouldn't have noticed if the flowers had stayed pink!) There's a second cookbook on the table (beside "The Joy Of Cooking,") but I can't remember which one it was. It was probably "The Silver Palate Cookbook."

I made the grocery bags myself and the contents are all items of miniature foods. Some were bought over the years, and some had been made by my mom, myself, or the neighbor up the street. The refrigerator was, of course, filled with food too! The refrigerator is actually from my sister's old dollhouse (Shhh! Don't tell!) -She'd long given up dollhouses by this point and I'd "rescued" a lot of her better stuff before it was trashed. Most of my sister's stuff was cheap and pretty crappy. I had the "real" dollhouse stuff and she mostly had plastic "little kid" stuff, but some of her pieces were good so I grabbed them when they were headed for the trash!

The door on the left led to the outside. The door on the right led into the dining room.