Lilac bought a Dollhouse!

 What started as a manifestation activity has evolved into a crafting project!

(from a casual manifestation tool to a full-on Passion-Project!)

~Lilac

The photo above is of my Kitchen Altar.  All good Green Witches have an altar for manifestation.  I have several of them, throughout my home and gardens.  I received a gift from my dear friend in New York, and within it's pages I found myself called to follow something that was latent and silent inside of me...a passion long forgotten.  Feeling silly, but determined, I began to use miniatures (1:12 dollhouse size miniatures) to create a replica of all things I wished to manifest in and within my home.  The photo above is what the latter looked like last year in Spring as the full planting season was underway.

A kitchen altar is a staple ingredient to creation if you are a Witch, Wiccan or any Earth-based Pagan belief system.  I enjoyed finding and adding my beautiful Kitchen Goddess atop the altar.  She is made of Volcanic rock and I purchased her for $65 at Elite Trading.  I give her offerings whenever anything outside blooms, so that she continues to assist me in developing my creative flow in the kitchen.  

In the summer of 2020, I was encouraged by my loving family to assume a new space for my creative endeavors...and so I created a Studio Space for myself in a finished room we have downstairs.  It has become a sanctuary for me and a happy place.  Amazingly, the space seems well-suited to me and my taste in every way and no one else in the house is particularly drawn to it.  I cannot explain this phenomenon.  Everyone in my family has a space of their own that they truly enjoy.  My daughter has a gloriously over-sized bedroom that has a huge picture-window and four other windows.  She has an artsy flowing vibe in there that immediately invites you to come in and explore your raw artistic nature.  My husband has a garage where he tackles projects and enjoys being surrounded by the smell of motor oil and gasoline.  My son is a budding teen who enjoys escaping behind the curtain of imagination with video games, and online activities...happily he also loves his bedroom.  And then there was me...kind of just there...in the kitchen all the time.  I began to feel forgotten and lost.

That was when my husband took me aside (outside, lol)...in his garage where he was working on his motorcycle.  He asked me about how things were going with my hobbies like Tarot Readings and such.  As I talked, he listened and then made a few observations...about how I am always appearing ready to help others with what they may need and want, but not really getting to explore my own wants and interests.  He mentioned about the Kitchen Altar and asked me if I would be interested in a Dollhouse for my creative inspiration. I argued against it, insisting that my altar was enough.  But the truth was that I was outgrowing it- and the space I had given myself to grow was just no longer expansive enough.  He asked me to use the room we had for our musical instruments, as none of us actively play anymore.  I reluctantly agreed and slowly began to transition that space into my own.

It was a lot of hard work to move all of the items from the room on my own and to create a space for me.  But this is what came from it.

For several months I have been enjoying the use of this space and working on making it a point of great inspiration and a useful workspace.  In September, I achieved an important goal and became a Certified Reiki I practitioner.  Learning Reiki as a practitioner really opened up my eyes to how I want to use my talents.  After Christmas passed, I found myself digging even deeper on that and decided to start looking for a Dollhouse for my own creative outlet.  

The children and I found it finally and now it is part of my Studio.

Some friends have wondered and asked..."why a dollhouse?"

Well...it all goes back to the kitchen altar.  And from there it goes back to my childhood.  

When I read the book that I talked about above, there was a moment that I remember crying when I read about how witches use miniatures of real life objects to use as visualization tools for manifestation.  All of a sudden I had one of those flashback experiences where I was 17 years old and playing dolls with my kid sisters.  I obviously was "too old" to be playing dollhouse, right?  I mean 17...come on.  But I enjoyed setting the scenery for my kid sisters and then I would leave while they play-acted whatever they liked.  After that I became interested in toy/model trains, model neighborhoods and miniatures of all sorts.  I guess I just like them.

And that was it.

I just liked them.  That is all.  

Why had I been judging myself for so long for liking something?  One of my employees painted miniature models for gaming and I found it fascinating how he was such an enthusiast and dedicated so much time to this hobby.  He took a lot of pride in his production of hand-painted miniatures.  One day I asked him if he thought my interest in  dollhouses as a hobby was weird.  He adamantly assured me that it was an admirable endeavor and he encouraged me to explore it.  After a long while, I finally did.  

My kids reluctantly came to enjoy the silly ways I would set things up to catch them off guard or to see who noticed.  My son is the one who most often notices that I have changed things (be it on the kitchen altar or in the dollhouse). My plan is to complete this uncompleted house which I bought from the builder.  She built it VERY sturdy and I love how solid it is.  She created a wonderful foundation and added one round window before deciding it needed a new home.  I will need to do a lot of work to get it completed and frankly I have NO IDEA where I will start.  But as I did with our actual house, I will do with my miniature.

So this is my craft for this week- the introduction to a project that is frivolous and that is just for me, and has no purpose other than to promote my mental health and ingenuity.  It is a creative physical outlet through which I am able to express and explore my inner thoughts and feelings about things.  I would love to hear what my friends and blog readers do for hobbies and especially for crafts.  Please feel free to add comments here on the blog.

~Namaste

Lilac