My Little Christmas Mistake

If you remember, I promised my girls dollhouses for Christmas when they said bye-bye to Barbie. This was several months ago. Since then Twinkle Toes (8) and Measle (6) have been searching the internet for their ideal dollhouses. I was finally able to convince Measle that plastic dollhouses are really much superior so she found one and we ordered it a few weeks ago. It came in a big box not too long ago. Twinkle Toes was a different story. She's very particular and not just any dollhouse would do. She wanted a kit that her dad would build so she could pick all the colors. Even though my husband is quite the handy-man, I strongly cautioned her against this situation. I knew he would be busy as ever and hopefully working on my kitchen cabinets at Christmas. So, she reluctantly agreed that we would buy a wooden dollhouse that was already assembled. It wasn't easy, but I finally found one, or so I thought.

Doesn't this dollhouse look assembled and painted to you? I was so pleased with myself that I found one that was NOT a kit! Nowhere in the description of this dollhouse was it described as being a kit. Now it may have said "some assembly required", but I'm thinking snap a few walls together and you're ready to go. Not so much.

The dollhouse, if you can call it that, came in a very flat box with these instructions and thousands of pieces. Oops. I had asked my husband for several days after receiving the box if he wouldn't open it up and take a peak, but I assured him that it was already painted and only needed "some assembly." He spent a fun day building a model airplane with Mr. Monk and then while I was out doing some last minute shopping he decided to open it up. What he found was a nightmare.

This is several hours after the nightmare began. You see that even my dining room table has been sacrificed because of my little Christmas mistake.

Here he is after another couple of hours. What's that I detect on Big D's face? Maybe he's thinking about all the other things he could have been doing. Maybe he's just a little upset at his naive wife who really thought that for the same price as those awful kits, she was buying a wooden dollhouse that was already put together! Maybe he's thinking that if he had known it would be this much trouble he would have started from scratch with his own plans and materials. I know he's thinking this had better hold together! Meanwhile, Twinkle Toes is loving every minute of this. She hovers over her dad planning this room and then that. He let her choose the color of the "tower room" last night and they painted it red. (Yes, this is the same red that was meant to be for my kitchen cabinets. Sigh.) I know that for as long as Twinkle Toes lives, if she only remembers one Christmas present from one Christmas, this will be it. I'm an idiot, but God turned my mistake into a wonderful father-daughter project that means so much more to her than any pre-assembled perfectly painted dollhouse would have.