It all started with Petite Princess...

[aggiemae]

This is not about the first doll house I ever build, it is the story of how my obsession with tiny things began. I remember the first time I ever saw the display house and how I would go back to look at it everytime we shopped in that store. Ideal Petite Princess. The pieces where considered hughly expensive between .49 and $1.29 each. I remember getting a Midge (Barbie's far less intresting bestfriend) as a birthday gift in 1964 and talking my mother into letting me "return" it. I used the money to get 3 Petite princess sets, a piano with sheet music and a metronome, two red wingback chairs and a coffee table that had for some reason has a Budda statue as an accessory.

I started to babysit that fall .35 per hour, 10 hours per week, for watching 4 kids, I was 10, so most all my babysitting money was spent on Petite Princess stuff, Dinning chairs came in pairs, I got a chinese screen and clock. a sofa, the fire place....My parents got me the "house" which was like a barbie doll case but it was only used for storage.

On my next birthday my parents paid someone to build me a house for my collection. The doors walls and floors are all Faux painted and are all from Evylin Ness. I do not have the house any longer but I still have almost every piece and also an old store display (the furniture was only sold for two years). Everything in the display is glued down, no amount of kid effort or energy can loosen that glue, the third generation is currently working on it! I love this garrish but tactile furniture the same way my own kids loved the Tomy smaller homes stuff they got in the 70's, which my grandson still loves to play with.

Now as I am felling nastalgic... the first house I ever BUILT was the old style duracraft San Francisco. It took me 12 years so by the time I actually finished it I had changed the wallpaper flooring and paint at least three times. I started it with my niece and the house lives with her in Hatfield PA.

Edited June 1, 2007 by aggiemae

[havanaholly]

the old style duracraft San Francisco. It took me 12 years

Ah, Agnes, you make me feel so much better about taking 3 1/2 years to build that one, which was also the first kit I ever built. I gave it to DGD#1 when she was almost 12 and I have no idea if it still exists or not (long, sad story that gets my pressure up).

[Nameless1]

I used the money to get 3 Petite princess sets, a piano with sheet music and a metronome, two red wingback chairs and a coffee table that had for some reason has a Budda statue as an accessory.

The Buddha statue! How well I remember it!

My under-the-bed ranch house (built by my father) was completely furnished in the Marx Little Hostess furniture, but when I was older, I was allowed to have my mother's Renwal furniture in the T. Cohn house with the dining room. She also had a couple pieces of Petite Princess furniture, notably the coffee table (which was one of my absolute favorite pieces of furniture -- it's amazing I never tried to buy a similar one in real life) and the fireplace (on which the Buddha statue lived, always). There was also a cigarette lighter in that set, I think, since smoking was still polite, even swanky, back then.

There was also a Petite Princess knock-off in half-scale, though I only had the dining room and the bedroom.