Hello again!

Well here I am again, after such a long absence.  Thank you for being so faithful my friends, I see from the figures that many of you are still popping in to see what is happening.  Sadly, the last year has been a difficult one in real life, and both minis and the blog have suffered.  So I appreciate all the more that you have persevered with me, it means more than I can say.

Not only have so many of you been checking in regularly but there are actually new followers! wow!!  The warmest of welcomes to Roeli (La Petite Sofie); Esther (Mi mundo de miniatura; Los collares de Esther); Susan (Susan's mini homes); Amary (Amary miniaturas); Paky (two blogs but by invitation only); Idske de Jong (Idske's miniatures); Ray W (no blog listed); Becky (A bee in a bonnet); and Sharon Goldsmith (no blog but runs By Sharon Miniatures with delightful kits).

The welcome is belated but truly sincere.  Thank you so much for visiting this blog and even more for becoming a follower.  I hope you will visit often and leave a comment to let me know that you have been here and how you feel about what I post :)

Welcome - belated again!

I must welcome Leanne and Preble, the newest followers of this blog (neither of you list your blogs, please let me know if you have one)

.  I apologize that it is rather belated.  But it is nonetheless sincere.  Thank you for joining our group. and taking the time to sign on as a Follower.  I truly appreciate it very much.  I am so happy to have people to share my thoughts and meanderings with others online.  I wish I had people to share with among my family but apart from them looking (sometimes) at the different buildings or showing them to the grandchildren, there isn't anyone with the interest to talk about those things that we miniaturists love to talk about.  So this is the alternative for me, and I really, really love looking at the work that so many of you show on your own blogs.

I am inspired by your lovely creations and although I can't dream of achieving the wonderful woodworking that some of you do, I aspire to improve with my miniature-making.  Don't always achieve any improvement, but I am trying.  Very trying, my husband would say if he wasn't such a kind and loving man! I look at the effects you achieve and am encouraged to try to make my projects more interesting.

So thank you, my friends, for your encouragement through your comments and your inspiration through showing your work on your blogs!

G'day Wanda!

It's a great pleasure to welcome you here Wanda.  I hope you have had a look around and found some things that interest you, and that you will visit often and leave some comments.   I really love having feedback from readers, to get a feel of how what you enjoy and think.

You will find out that I love minis in all scales but my current favourite is 1:48 scale, and I really love the detail you can get in such a tiny space with this scale.  I also love finding extra things to add every so often to a setting.  You will also soon see that I specialize in UFOs!  Not by design  but it just seems to happen.  I optimistically say each year that this will be the year that I turn some of those UFOs into FFOs - and I am hoping that 2012 will be the year that this actually eventuates, so you will possibly see some of my many projects finally in their finished state :)

So do keep an eye on the blog, and I hope you will enjoy what is to come.  

Some more new followers....

I have been really amiss in welcoming some more new followers: Andy (dollshousesand miniatures.blogspot.com.au); Rebecca (mamasminis.wordpress.com); Esperanza (Hope) at (lasminisdesperanza.blogspot.com.au): Araceli, Beatriz and Fiona, a fellow Aussie.  

It is such a pleasure to welcome you all here.  If your blog is mentioned then I have already visited and have enjoyed the experience very much indeed.  I am always so fascinated by the mini experiences of others and really enjoy reading about your work and thoughts.  

Thank you for signing on as followers here - it seems that it won't be too long before I will be thinking once again about a giveaway!  In the meantime, pull up a chair, grab a cup of your favourite beverage, relax and de-stress from all the Christmas preparations by browsing through the posts here.  I hope you will contribute lots of feedback via comments and constructive criticism: is there too much information, not enough, would you like more detailed information in the form of pages that are more easily located etc?  

Again, welcome and thank you - without people to read the posts, there is no point in sharing on a blog!  Knowing that people look, read and comment is a wonderful motivation to do thing s so that I have something to share with you.

Thank you my friends!

Thank you my wonderful friends!  When I started this blog I thought that perhaps half a dozen or so people I knew on my different groups might be interested in my thoughts and ramblings.  Now there are 220 followers, all over the world!  I find this totally humbling and amazing!!! Your comments are so inspiring and your support is so wonderful.  It motivates me and makes me want to have something to show you so that I can post and continue to share with you. It means a great deal to me, especially when you take the time and trouble to leave a comment.  

And now I want to welcome Princess, Diva, Jess Desserts, Cheryl, Krumel and Villa Conejo (no blogs for any of you mentioned); also Debbie (Debbie's Mini Thoughts and Creations); Angeles (El rincon de Baldu)  and Conny (itsaminilife.blogspot.com.au).  I hope you all visit often and enjoy your time here.  Please feel free to leave comments and share your thoughts with me.  I have visited your blogs when possible and have enjoyed what I have read there, I promise I will be back!

The rug is finished!  I will be posting a photo of it as soon as I give it a gentle rinse and block it out to dry.  Not long now to the giveaway draw.

Welcome, welcome!

And welcome again, to 7 more new Followers!  Daydreamer who tells wonderful stories on her blog (aboutmydollhouses.blogspot.com.au) ; Pat (petitemoonbeams.blogspot.com) who is amazingly productive in both the area of dressing dolls and miniatures despite working as a substitute teacher;  Blanche (diariovittoriano-blanche.blogspot.com.au) who is a dollmaker; Linda who has built a Glencroft - one of my favourite Greenleaf houses, and is using both her mini and papercraft skills to great effect in furnishing it (lindasminis.blogspot.com.au); and Victoria, Lisa Marie and Francesca (no blog mentioned).

Thank you all for joining us here.  I look forward to seeing lots more of your work and hearing lots more from you in the future as comments.  Sharing and giving feedback is a wonderful feature of blogland and is a great incentive to keep blogging!

I'm still here!

Hi everyone, I'm still here, just a matter of real life catching up at the moment.  But lots of things have been happening and I'll fill you in soon!


A huge welcome to Peggy and to 'Skulptress',.  I've spent ages reading both of your blogs, Sculptress and we share a love of Stoksayware among other things - we have similar tastes in lots of areas.  Your dollhouse is going to be so gorgeous.  I am looking forward to following further progress as you complete this build.

Peggy, your blog and your store sties are both  so pretty.  I love the shabby-chic style also, and will be returning to your blog and your store often, I can tell. Your furniture and accessories are delightful.  I can just see some of them in a house of mine one day :-)  

Dear Friends, I've spent a bit of time (quite a bit of time actually!) reading through a whole heap  of your blogs, catching up on recent posts and just in general trying to keep in touch with some of you.  I hope to catch up some more this coming week.

And I want to express my sincere appreciation for the interest and support you show, dear readers.  I can see from the page views that many of you obviously check the blog each day to see what is happening.  And when I post there are comments so quickly - often within minutes of publishing - that I know people are watching. The fact that you do so gives me the motivation to get things done when I can so I have something to show you, and I apologise that there are no photos to update you on the progress of the rug as yet.  My camera battery died this evening, so I will recharge it and take some photos tomorrow.  

Our community is creeping towards 200!

I opened the blog to do a new post about the rug for the giveaway and noticed that our numbers had grown by one more.  I am not sure but I think the newest member might be Sandy D - please correct me if I am wrong!  You don't give a blog address Sandy so I can't return the complliment.

I hope I have the correct person, and I thank you for signing up as a Follower.  I am honoured that you chose to do so and I hope that you enjoyed your visit here sufficiently that you will return often and leave comments too  so that we may get to know each other.  

So now we only need 5 more members for the Giveaway to be opened.  It's just as well I have finished more than half of the carpet!  I'll do another post with a photograph of it over the weekend.  Why not now? because I want our newest member to know that I've thanked her for joining! 

Ten more to go now

A huge thank you to Ultsu (www.miniatureandcraft.com) and Val (http://homefarmprimatives.blogspot.com) for signing on as the newest Followers!  I apologise for this post being somewhat belated - things are a bit hectic at the moment in RL around here and will be for the next week or so.  

In the meantime, Val and Ultsu it is my sincere hope that you visit often, enjoy reading the posts, and leave lots of comments.  It is so nice to share with you, and to have feedback from other miniaturists as well as visiting your lovely blogs too.  Val, it is great to see that you have started to post on yours again and Ultsu, your blog is so interesting.
  

And now we only have 10 more Followers to go to reach 200.  So start telling your friends to come and sign up, or if you are a regular reader and haven't signed up yet, then perhaps you might do so now.  

How lovely....

to welcome the third new Follower in three days!  JoAnn, I am so pleased to see that you have become a member of our group, and you are most welcome here. I hope you visit often (and leave plenty of comments vbg).  As I said in the previous post, feedback from others on the internet is particularly precious because my family isn't  interested in miniatures in the slightest.  We all enjoy receiving affirmation and benefit from constructive criticism as well, just as we receive when we have face-to-face mini groups, which I don't have the privilege of belonging to.  So please browse through the different posts, and tell me what you think!

G'day Terri

You are very welcome indeed! I apologise that it has taken me a while to welcome you, but I am so happy that you had a look at my blog and decided to become a Follower.  You don't list a blog of your own, do please let me know if you have one.  I hope you will come again often and leave comments, share in this exciting world of little things that has such a huge impact on the lives of those of us who love it.  And isn't it wonderful that people from so many countries could be drawn together to share our interest and passion?  Please do grab a tea or coffee, sit and browse and let me know what you think.

And now Cote has joined us too

Welcome - and thank you so very much for joining our little community Cote!  It was lovely to see that you had signed up too.  I hope you enjoy your time visiting here, please feel free to leave lots of comments.  I really love having the feedback and interaction with fellow miniaturists around the world. Your dollhouses look really interesting - you certainly have achieved a lot for someone who has only been doing minis for a few years.  This is such an addictive hobby, isn't it? Perhaps we'll convert you to quarter scale one of these days, maybe when you start to be over-run with your larger scale houses lol!  Meanwhile feel free to sit back with a cup of tea or coffee or whatever and browse through the different posts to get a feel of the site.  I really hope you'll come back often.

So pleased you found my blog Kabrina!

Hello Kabrina, and welcome to our little group here.  It is so kind of you to make such a lovely comment about my blog and to have read so much of it so quickly!  I am so pleased that you find it inspiring -- that is very encouraging and rewarding for me in turn, and gives me more enthusiasm to continue to share my mini world with you all.


As you read further you will find out that I have not quite completed construction on Pickett Hill but am getting close now, and most of the furniture is done.  So when the building part is finished I will be able to furnish a lot of the rooms straight away, ready for the final accessories.  And I am looking forward to landscaping it too.


I have visited you blog too, and will return again to catch up on everything you have been doing.  Thank you  for the lovely things you said on there about this blog as well as the lovely comment you left on the Pickett Hill post.


I hope you continue to enjoy visiting here, and will come again often and leave lots of comments, suggestions and constructive criticism.  I really appreciate the exchange of ideas in the mini world..

How nice!

The number of Followers has stayed static for quite a while now - and then on Thursday I not only received lovely comments from some of you but saw that there were two new Followers. Thank you Madelaine and Mini4you for signing up to share my mini journey with me. Please come back and visit often, feel free to leave comments - I love to know what you all think or want to suggest about what I am doing. Basically the only feedback I get is 'hm, very nice' in a vague sort of way, and I know a lot of you are in the same position. So our online groups and blogs are very important as a source of information, affirmation and correction. Thank you again for joining - just that act is affirmation in itself

Hello Cristina

- thank you for joining my blog. I really love to share my mini adventures and you are more than welcome. It is now getting on towards three years since I started this blog and the number of followers was quite low for a while but they seem to have taken off lately, which is delightful. If you want to have a bit of a browse back over my projects, they are mainly quarter scale and you will see that a lot of them are not finished.

Labels for posts

But for your information and anyone else who is interested, they are divided into several groups

1. Debbie Young's Town Square shops

2. Petite Properties cottages and shops, most of which are part of my imaginary Village called 'Ferny Creek'. There are a lot of Petite Properties kits, so each one is followed by the name of the kit. for example Petite Properties - FlowerPot Cottage etc.

3. Pickett Hill, a kit put out by Robin and Shawn Betterley in conjunction with Suzanne and Andrew's who did all the furniture kits for it.

4. Birchwood, another Betterley project.

5. Secret Books again, a Betterley series

6. The Sea Shanty by Karen Carey

7. Miss Marple's Cottage

8. StoryBook Cottage, by Suzanne & Andrews

9. Honeysuckle Cottage

10. Hollyhock Cottage (a kit called The English Cottage by Debbie Young)

11. Australian Colonial Cottage - by Pam Junk in conjunction with AMEA

12. my Celebration Doors

and other bibs and bobs. I have other kits unstarted as yet that will be added in time. For example TeaRose Too by Suzanne & Andrew and two by Debbie Young; and want to buy Suzanne & Andrew's Petite Chateau and some of their smaller ones so keep a lookout for those)

I try to label things so that you can follow a thread through so for example, Miniature Petitpoint will then be followed by the carpet or project that I am doing - at the moment it would be

Miniature Petitpoint - Forever Aubusson (if I was managing to make any progress on it).

That covers a lot of it but there is more too. Please feel free to put your feet up,sit with a cup of coffee or whatever and browse. I love comments so comment away!

Hope to hear from you soon. Until then -

Welcome Mary

Hello Mary, I am so happy that you have joined my blog, and also that you like the style of 'Pickett Hill'. I must congratulate you on your blog too - what a delightful concept for its name 'The magic teaspoon'. And you do the most delightful miniatures, the books and the little chocolates. I think of Rome as being a very romantic city in which to live and will watch your blog with interest to see the things you make. europe is such a long way away from Australia but if I am ever fortunate enough to go overseas there are so many places I would love to visit.

Welcome to four more followers

My heart always gives a little jump of happiness when I open my little blog and see that there are more wonderful people who have signed on as followers! And I can't help but wonder: how did you find my blog? What attracted you to it once you found it? What sort of thing do you like to hear about the most?

I am very grateful that you all take the time to look, to sign on as followers and those that sign in when you visit too. You give me so much encouragement just knowing that you are interested. And when you take the time to comment it is extra special indeed.

And now once again it is my great pleasure to welcome MiniMumLoon, Lucineide, Gleise and Jennifer, the newest members of our community of followers, Thank you all so very much for visiting and for following. Please - come often, sit down with a cup of coffee or tea and browse the back posts and enjoy yourself. Post a comment and tell me what you think. And be part of the family.

MiniMumLoon - what a creative name you have chosen for yourself. You don't have any details about yourself or blogs listed, and neither do you Gleise.

Luineide you make lovely birthday cakes. My computer had trouble interpreting your other blog at first, insisting it was Spanish but I persuaded it that it was in Portuguese in the end :)

I have visited your blog Jennifer and can see that I will be spending a lot of time catching up on the fascinating story of the Josiah Gammage House and 'other dollhouse distractions'! And I am proud to be your first follower.

Update on Pickett Hill: I have had many disruptions lately, including being asked to preach with just one day's notice! the Lord however had it all in hand, bringing a newsletter to me with just the perfect sermon that I could work up, and it took longer to do the PowerPoint presentation to go with it than to set out the sermon. I don't enjoy that sort of time pressure though!

But I am busy putting the finishing touches to quite a few furniture kits and will post photos of them very soon - promise! and I've made a bit of progress on the house itself too, just a little there though.

So for now -

The numbers are slowly growing.....

Welcome Aurora & Jaz

It is a great pleasure to welcome two more followers: Aurora and Jaz. Jaz, you don't mention a blog and Aurora I tried to follow the link you give in your infomation but it wouldn't connect so there might be an error in it somewhere.

Thank you both for visiting here! I do hope you come back often, grab a cup of coffee and sit and browse through the posts. Please feel free to leave comments - I love having people to 'talk' to about my mini obsession, and to share progress on the different projects with.

.And I love to visit other people's blogs too, to see what you are all up to! This week I spent a whole day then another half a day catching up - and still need to spend more time looking at even more. So many talented people are out there, you often make me feel very inadequate with your exquisite work.

So please don't be strangers! Come visit, leave comments, and join in the fun here in my miniland. That goes for everyone, folks :)

I've been remiss.....

I have fully intended for a couple of days now to welcome some new followers: Elayne, Dallydominis - I couldn't see a link for you Elayne, or a personal name for you from Dallydominis but I think I recognise your houses from a group we both belong to :) . Hope you had a chance to get on with your bedding today. Welcome also to Luisa and Tyla. Luisa the nursery you have just completed for your house is a perfect dream - so soft and dainty, with gorgeous details. I love, love, love it! And Tyla, what a talented lady you are, with all the different crafts you do so beautifully.

I appreciate your visits, and sincerely hope you all enjoyed your time here. I hope also that you will return often and leave comments. My family and most of my friends accept that I love my hobby of miniatures but they certainly don't understand it! I truly treasure my interaction with other miniaturists through my own blog and the blogs of others too. I am greatly encouraged by your comments and gain inspiration from looking at your work. The internet is truly amazing!

Hello Babette & Margarita

Wow! 150 now

Welcome Margarita and Babette to my mini world.  I am delighted to see two more followers added and I hope you enjoyed your visit here.  Please come back often and feel free to leave comments - it is wonderful to experience the sharing that is a feature of blogland.  Otherwise it is all just talking to myself :-).

I am seriously awed by your magnificent house Babette. I do not aspire to anything nearly so grand - I have started off on that path but ended up with something much more pedestrian.  Maybe one day I'll be able to achieve it.  I hope so.  Meanwhile I dream......

Margarita, I also had a look at the link to your books on Picassa.  My particular favourite is the fold-out dollhouse book - what a treasure that is.  If you have that one you are fortunate indeed.

I have a surprise to share with you very soon .....maybe tomorrow I hope.  So keep tuned, friends.  I think you will really like this one.............
Till then