Just Me, Stina-Marie: A Work In Progress (And a bit of history)

Christmas of 1990, I was almost 9 years old.
My father got me a gift that would change my life.

I peeled the beautiful paper off my gift with all the excitement and anticipation you could imagine from an 8 year old girl. Oh yes, I had opened a few gift before this on that "cold" Texas morning. Although none of them stand out in my mind. This gift though, this one was special. I can still feel my heart race as i remember that day. My Very First PORCELAIN doll! She was gorgeous and I felt very "grown up". I remember gazing upon her perfectly crafted face, she was perfect. She had golden hair in perfectly formed curls, and the most brilliant blue eyes you could imagine. She was dressed from head-to-toe in Victorian fashion. I fell in love.
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You see, I have been collecting dolls since that day. One doll at a time, and over the last 22 years it has grown into a rather large collection of "My Heart On A Shelf". That doll from my Dad still holds a special place in my heart and in my collection.

I have been working on renovating The Doll Room for a while now. I had my babies housed in a small bedroom, but it had started to overflow into the rest of my house. So my husband and I decided that I could use the storage room/ 3/4 garage conversion, for my doll room if I cleared out the junk first.

I set to work ASAP. I cleared out the junk, sold what i could, donated what I could, and threw out the junk. It was a daunting task but I did it.

Then I had to repaint the walls. OH YES I said HAD TO! I am not kidding you there was no choice but to paint the walls, they were U-G-L-Y!!! The previous owners of our home, the ones who obviously made the garage conversion had chosen a horrible mustard yellow, no wait... that isn't the right description of the color. I think baby-poop-yellow is more accurate. The color made my head hurt and my eyes bleed. I can not say enough bad things about this color! Anyway, I went and picked out the paint. I picked one for the walls and one for the trim. The color better fits a room "just for me". It is PURPLE. Medium purple walls with a very dark purple trim. The only part of the room that I did not paint is the ceiling and only because I loved the sky and clouds that were already painted there.

I hung some shelves and started working on displaying my collection. It was fun and coming along well

At this point, life got in the way, I lost motivation and took a break. (Big Mistake!)

My room then became a collect-all for junk around the house again. If it couldn't find a place to be, it found its way into my doll room. Although I hate to admit it, it was AWFUL. I could not show anyone my collection due to the mess in there. I couldn't escape into my room because it was an overwhelming clutter and disarray. I sunk into a "doll room depression" it was bad, real bad. I didn't even look into buying a new doll for a whole YEAR. Seriously, that is so not like me.

After a time I finally got up the courage to tackle the mess that had consumed my room. (remember I said 2013 is about starting over?) I started off slowly by donating the junk that did not have a place to be stored outside of my room. It took about 3 full days to clear out all the unwanted and un-needed clutter. I even went through my crafting totes and got rid of a bunch of stuff. All total I threw out 3 garbage bags of junk, donated 3 boxes of stuff and cleared out/ downsized 6 totes.

I am still working on building and installing more shelves. I am also attempting my very first furniture repaint. (I will post about that at another time.) I am proud of the work That I have put into it since the beginning of the process. Even-though the room is still very much a "work in progress" I can finally have people see my collection, and more importantly I have a place where I can escape my day-to-day life and spend time in creativity and solitude.

Here are a few pics of what it looks like today...