About

I built my first dollhouse when I was 12 years old. My parents had just taken me to see the Bradford dollhouse in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and I was totally captivated. I begged them to buy it for me. (Ha! I was 12 and on vacation so everything seemed like a big gift shop to me.) Instead, my parents offered to teach me to use power tools when we got home from the vacation. There were so many houses being built in my neighborhood that supplies were plentiful. I had no kit, or blueprints or plans. Just my imagination.

I built a 3 story house with four bedrooms and 2 staircases and decorated it with found objects. Each birthday and Christmas, my parents would give me a few “real” pieces of dollhouse furniture, and I “inherited” my mother’s dollhouse furniture from her childhood (furniture that would all come to be very valuable as the years wore on). Everything else needed to furnish the house was created by my imagination and built by my hands. Three years later, I was satisfied with my dollhouse.

And I had developed a new sense of my own capabilities…creativity, patience, and skill. In addition I had a very deep sense of satisfaction that only comes from using one’s hands to build from scratch. I feel that today, as I write this in January of 2017, we are denying our children and grandchildren this wonderful sense of satisfaction that comes from using our hands and our creativity to create wonderful objects….satisfaction that cannot be gained from pressing buttons on a keyboard of a phone or computer.

As my life progressed, I found myself working in the field of Community Outreach and Communications for many nonprofits. I spent 2008 working with an agency in Georgia that seeks to provide therapeutic help for abused children who are in state custody. After leaving that group, I found myself haunted by the expressionless faces of the children I came to know there. Joy had been stripped from them at too early an age and I always wondered if they would ever be able to find it again…you know that joy that comes when you wake up on Christmas morning, or your birthday, or the first day of summer vacation from school. I began to research therapies for abused children and, along the way, I learned so much about Play Therapy.

What a great idea! Young children are often too traumatized to be able to TELL their therapist about what has happened to them, but place a dollhouse in front of them and they will SHOW what horrors their past holds. Once they start “showing”, the words follow and the path to recovery has begun.

Unfortunately funding for customized dollhouses, which can cost up to several hundred dollars to create, isn’t available these days. Funding for mental health programs in our country is woefully inadequate.

(I should add that I used to write a newspaper column in Atlanta and used it to encourage people to volunteer in their communities. I heard from vast numbers of people who said they would love to volunteer more…and teach their children to be responsible to their communities and volunteer as well…but they were so busy and the timing of volunteer opportunities was so infrequent.)

That’s when I experienced my big AH HA! moment.

A nonprofit that brings together families, civic and school groups, religious organizations, and even businesses to build the dollhouse kit as a team-building exercise or philanthropic gesture…a dollhouse to be decorated and donated to a formerly abused child in professional care to recover from abuse.

My nonprofit dream came true with the creation of Building Faith Play Therapy Toys, Inc. We work with these community groups as advisors, coaches, and fans as we show them the ins and outs of building a dollhouse kit. We place no time deadlines on them, for this process is a 2-way street. Our “builders” gain their own sense of purpose and accomplishment knowing that they have conquered a new skill while simultaneously providing a child who is in a deep, dark place with the tool they need to get on with the healing process.

With all of the experiences I have gained working with so many dollhouses, I have learned a lifetime’s worth of tips and ideas for the dollhouse hobbyist. It is time to share some of these with all of you. I hope, as this blog progresses, that I help you and that you feel comfortable sending your ideas to me to share with others. Thank you for reading my blog! Remember to subscribe to my blog so you will get all of the latest tips and ideas!