It’s been snowy and cold and Andy has been completely bedridden due to back spasms. As he’s slept, I’ve finished several key items for the Mouse House and consequently completed four rooms in the last week. I have a lot to blog!

The playroom is a “short” room, tucked above the dining room and below the nursery.

I had already wallpapered the room with copies of miniature, vintage newspapers, in homage to an old abandoned house Andy and I explored years ago in the Appalachian Mountains. I was fascinated by the newspapers glued to the wall that helped prevent drafts so I used that idea here. The floor in the playroom is built with shims I found in our workshop. The maroon tube in the back is part of the laundry chute which extends five floors–from the master bedroom down to the laundry room.

Here is the playroom now:

The room includes children’s books I made as well as game boxes I printed from images on the internet. The playmat with the road and railroad tracks is also a picture I found and printed on fabric. With a great blast from the past, I made the hanging banner with Shrinky Dinks, the plastic sheets that can be drawn on and then shrunk in the oven. The toys were found at various garage sales, including the awesome Lincoln Log set that was part of a $5 bundle. Score!

My favorite part of the playroom is the television I made to light up when the power is on. Just like the rest of the Mouse House, there is no set time period, so I decided to make an old-fashioned tv just like the one we had when I was growing-up (except we didn’t get a color tv until I was in college)!).

I used various items around my studio to construct it, including plastic from a small container, a cardboard jewelry box, wood, snaps, wire and aluminum foil.

Essentially I made a box with a plastic window and inserted two more pieces of plastic behind that. I wanted the test pattern to be invisible when the power is off, so I put opaque plastic over the piece I colored to hide it as much as I could. The rear of the tv is the bottom of a cardboard box with a hole cut into it. When I put the television in the playroom, I wired a lightbulb and stuck that into the hole in the box so the tv lights up when the power is on.

Follow my blog and stay tuned–there are more rooms to come!