A little girl two houses down saw an unusual doll house on one of our trips to a hobby/craft shop a few months ago. It was a four story "tree house", with pulleys and winches to get stuff from the first floor to the top floor, ladders, a crows nest on the top and various beds and other pieces of furniture, along with six wooden dolls, grandpa, grandma, mom. dad, son and daughter. It was all wood, ply floors and dowels for trees, railing etc.. She was really fascinated by the thing and did the "I sure wish I had one of these." things kids do twenty times in each trip to any store that has anything that remotely could be a toy.
I checked the price, in the $125 dollar range, and told her that was a lot of money for some plywood and some dowels. She did her pouting look and then raced down the aisle to see what other neat things she could find, and perhaps persuade me to get her - and her older sister. Kids will gang up on you you know.
Well time went by and Christmas approaches. The little girl has that tree house doll house on the top of her Christmas list. So the mom takes her out to the hobby/ craft store to see what it is she has in mind. Naturally the price tag rules it out, they have been having some tough financial times and money's kind of tight.
While hanging out in the shop her older sister mentions that the tree house her sister really, really, really wants for Christmas won't be under the tree this year."I bet you could make one .. . one of these days. You can make anything out of wood." she said, making sure the hook was set good.
And that began my apprenticeship as an elf.
The "older" sister (9) and I made a run to the hobby/craft store, with paper, pencil and a pad of paper. Needless to say, a store employee wasn't too thrilled about us measuring one of their more expensive toys. To pacify him we bought the six dolls for the tree house - I'd need them for scaling things anyway.
So now, after three full days of shop time, a half sheet of baltic birch ply, 20 or 30 feet of various size dowels, every flat surface above the ground covered in tools, parts, scraps of ply, a pile of dowel cutoffs and an assortment of clamps, the four foot tall, two foot wide, sixteen inch deep tree house rises above the clutter. Bug spitted (shellaced) wood catches the light, the carved dowel "trunk" looks sort of like a tree trunk and the little beds, one a bunk bed for the kids, the table and some chairs are making it look rather homey. One crows nest to make, the branches and leaves to put on and it'll be done.
This one was definitely not like making furniture but just as challenging and even more fun. Christmas eve or morning is going to be very interesting.
If you get the opportunity, I higly recomend having a go at being one of Santa's elves. The hourly wage is in units you can't get at a bank and the interest on the investment in time will certainly beat The Market or any bank.
Every day we have the opportunity to create memories. This one's going to be one of my fonder memories and hopefully one of a little girl's fond memories long after I'm gone.
charlie b