The dollshouse

Nicola & Pete plus daughters Lola, now 9 and Nell, now 7, spent last year exploring Britain in a carbon-light manner. Our spring 2008 challenge is to give up waste from 24 March to 24 April. Most posts are by Nicola (as it was her silly idea). This is how it’s going:

Nell loves playing with her dollshouse – a fine example of a detached Edwardian suburban 3-bed that I would loathe to live in because there's no where to store clutter! I bought it for her from a secondhand stall at an "antiques" yard by Sawbridgeworth station for Christmas 2005 and it’s been a big success. All the Sylvanians live here; sometimes the Bratz (acquired from the carboot sale) do the cleaning.

For some time Nell has been asking if she could redecorate (!) and so last weekend while Pete and Lola were at the football, Nell and I got painting.

Nell did all the work, choosing colours from half-full tins of Auro and Farrow & Ball paints that we used to decorate the real house. We were inspired to do this after Miranda, my Scottish-based cousin Dermot’s wife, told us she’d commissioned a miniature copy of one of the houses her children grew up in and then working with her daughter, Emily, had decorated every room as it was.

This was a bonding, skilful project for mum and daughter at the time; now that they’ve moved house it has ended up giving them the most gorgeous memory of their old place as it was circa 1995. It's a work of art now, and one which no doubt will be handed down to generations of little uns.

Verdict: there’s other ways of getting rid of old paint and wallpaper scraps, but this was really fun.