Club Little House has just announced its next round of swaps. See here for details if you're interested (I'd be in but their style is more Cath Kidston than Mid Century modern)
Then my Curators arrived with a big van (here's Roving Reporter Rowan who promised to send me photos of the install in progress to share with you):
They filled the van up with houses: 
And drove away.
Order was restored, and my house was sounded all echoey.
and I definitely believe what Taph said about removing things to quickly and them being replaced just as quickly so the natural level of order is retained.
(The front of mine is quite faded. I've since obtained a new front) 
I found this an incredibly frustrating house after the design ease of my Scandinavian houses.
Trying to place the furniture in logical places without covering the various windows and doorways was a puzzle and a half.
The kitchen was a particular challenge. In the end I had to place several bits of furniture with their backs to the viewer, including the oven and microwave combo which itself provided a puzzle: why is this piece so rare when it's a staple of any kitchen?
Why, also, when a family of four was produced for the house is there only one bedroom?
And although a range of (very rare) nursery furniture was produced, beds for the children were never sold....
My curators and I had much fun trying to work out "the story" behind this particular household. Where's Mum? Do the scars on the daughter come from some terrible accident in which she died? Do Dad and the kids live alone trying to cope with the results? In which case do the kids sleep upstairs in the frilly bed and Dad kips on the sofa?
I've been lusting after this Eames Aluminium Group office chair for what seems like forever but I can't justify the price, even second hand (the last one I saw was $1,500). And the idea of buying a rip off version just doesn't sit right, even if they weren't so damned ugly underneath!
I gave up on the dream and did me some bidding (in between watching the most excellent Penelope) With a truly exciting last 45 seconds, I won it for a grand total of $61 (sorry whoever that was that I overbid in the last 3 seconds. Bet you didn't think that was possible, huh?).
1. The Liners: A history of the world's great passenger ships, a 200 minute long double video which I snapped up off the shelf as soon as I spied it. Tania and I already have plans to watch it together some time very very soon. ($6)
This invite hit my inbox this morning:
These rooms are all contemporary, and feature art collected from around the world. Some rooms are fanciful, some are sleek, and some are just gaudy. If you enjoy interior design, home decorating and art collecting, you will enjoy all these pieces.
The show runs from Sept 9th - Oct 7th.
Rozanoff ART
Alas I already have plans for the weekend (and the TSS Debt Relief Programme says "No" to last minute flights to San Fransisco!) otherwise I'd be there with knobs on.
So here's the wee treasure that's been just a hop skip and a jump down the road from me for the 10 years that I've lived here. Boy do I feel like a doofus!
This one is at The Canberra Space Dome and Observatory at The Downer Club (which is apparently owned by Dickson Tradies). My sources tell me it's closed, which is a pity as I wanted to pop down and take some photos inside it.
When did this Futuro arrive in Dickson? Where from?
I can identify the rest of my Reac collection but this one's eluding me. Which is particularly frustrating because I'm pretty sure I read about it at great length in the Phaidon Design Classic Books I borrowed from the library a while back.
Once upon a time (as all good stories start) The Shopping Sherpa was idly wasting time wandering round the depths of eBay (this, dear readers, was before she had a blog to waste time on which is much more fulfilling not to mention cheaper).
But it was not to be as the (vintage Triang) house became an eBay casualty, lost in the mail. Doreen settled into the temporary accommodation happily and TSS thought the adventures and suprises were over.
Then Dennis, the mail-order husband, arrived. As Doreen wrote to Charlene:
"Well the shift Down Under has certainly been good for me - I now have a husband! Shhh! Don't tell anyone but he was a mail-order husband (bet you thought you could only get brides, huh?) and so far we are getting on very well.
The house situation is still not good. No sign of our (I love saying "our") place arriving. But that may work out for the best since we have our eye on a much bigger place (6 rooms instead of just two and a porch) which will give us room for a family eventually. In the meantime I've got rather attached to my cardboard boxes and will be quite sad to leave."
As often happens, the family came earlier than expected with the arrival of Daisy Rose MacGregor on November 11 2004, along with a very generous range of baby necessities, courtesy (once again) of Granny Charlene.
And soon after (luckily) they were safely settled into their larger and newer Triang House.
And so it came to pass that the MacGregor family all lived happily...
ever...
after!
The End.
(Updated photos (with detailed furniture information) can be found, as usual, in my CMAG FLICKR set)
* Diary insert for 2009 (I'm still not sure if this should be considered a consumable and therefore not needing to be counted...) plus free Poco Profile leather and suede coaster (which, when turned upside down makes the perfect dolls house rug!)
Or, to be more precise, cakeS.
The anthropologically inclined part of my brain is still trying to figure out if the number of cakes at your farewell equates to your status within the office. But it keeps being sidetracked by the by products of huge hits of sugar (well that's an interesting concept. Let me consid....WAHHHHEYYYYY! WHAT IS THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT! Ok Ok. What was it we were discussing?)
None the less, it would appear that part of the whole "working in an office" malarkey involves large amounts of sitting round and eating cake...
I realised I've mentioned it before but had been there without my camera...
How's this for $5?!
Diva has the most incredible looking Art Deco B&B in the Southern Highlands:
I'm hoping to go visit her (and her incredible dolls house collection. And the (allegedly) huge local Salvos) in November... Don't worry, I'll have the camera with me!
I emptied the contents of my Kaleidoscope House out yesterday to clean and dust it in readiness for packing it for the exhibition. And it hit me how much it looks like the Material World project done a few years back where they emptied people's houses round the world onto their front lawns and took a photo of it.
The Caroline's Home dolls house was first produced in 1975 by the English company A Barton and Co, who had been making dolls house furniture since 1945. This model is very easy to identify as the name is helpfully written on a plaque by the front door:
If that's not enough the wallpaper in the upstairs right hand room has a picture of a giant chicken (C) and horse (H) on it!
Caroline's Home is one of the only houses which include windows on the back wall (along with a very pretty garden):
Most windows have not only working shutters, but the windows themselves open as well:
As this is a very recent acquisition for me it's still in its early stages of furnishing, mainly with items produced by Barton, but also with furniture made by another English firm, Triang.
Oddly, even though the rest of the house has printed flooring, the bedroom floor is unfinished:
At first I thought it was just my house and something was missing but I've noticed the same thing in a few more houses that have come up on eBay since my house arrived. Weird. I've emailed the owner of the Caroline's Home website but haven't as yet heard anything back...
Fish supper? How terribly English!
Barton was bought by Lundby in 1984 and Caroline's Home houses continued to be produced until the mid 1990s, around the time Lundby went into bankruptcy.
