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November's Member of the Month - Meet Ann
By Teresa Martens
Ann (uppitycats) has been a member of the Greenleaf Miniature Community since
May 28, 2005. With 1,759 posts (and counting!) Ann is happy to share her no nonsense approach to dollhouse building and she doesn’t take herself too seriously. She has a quick wit and is eager to learn new skills, moving on when the mood strikes.
Ann got started with miniatures when she could no longer operate her four-harness floor loom because of MS. She started looking around for something she could do “from the waist up”. She’d had a dollhouse when she was a child that her father had built for her. She loved it and played with it all the time until she got busy with high school and then college. She came home from college one day to find the dollhouse gone. Her mother had given it to a niece explaining to Ann that she didn’t play with it anymore!
Ann thought about that dollhouse and figured that perhaps she could build one. She had built her loom twenty years earlier and thought that a dollhouse couldn’t be that hard! Ann did some research and was astounded by the prices of dollhouse kits and decided that wouldn’t work for her. However, one day she was “playing” on Overstock.com and saw the Garfield kit. She fell in love with it and it was cheap with only $2.95 for shipping! So without actually seeing the house in real life, she clicked on buy and soon there it was . . . a huge box at her door. It took her two years to build the house with a lot of help from her husband, but she loves it!
Ann loves that there are so many different aspects to miniatures; things that she can do in her lap, while watching TV, or while holding a cat! She feels she’ll never be a master of anything because she tries bits and pieces of everything; from printies and furniture making, to deconstructing houses to re-do them and building. She never stays with any one of them long enough to really get skilled at it. She’s learned a lot about how to do a variety of different things she’s never tried before like staining furniture, painting, using power tools and even removing paint from a cat!
What does Ann dislike about mini-ing? Like most fun things there is never enough time to do everything she’d like to do! That and the fact that sometimes "real life" gets in the way!
It was a difficult choice for Ann, but her favorite house is the Brimble’s Public House (used to be Brimble’s Mercantile).
Before rehabbing the Brimble Ann had been working on the Garfield. She was so nervous building "Lady Garfield"
that there were times when she was ready to throw it in the burn barrel. She was afraid of making a mistake or doing something wrong. It took her awhile to figure out that the Garfield was “her” house and that she could do with it what she pleased! The Garfield turned out pretty well and when Ann got around to rehabbing the Brimble, she was much more confident and it turned out to be a lovely pub and gentleman’s quarters.
Ann is currently working on items for her Houseworks Street of Shops. One will be a bookstore/coffee shop, another a second-hand store, and the third a grocery store. She’s planned these so that they will display all the stuff she’s bought or made that won’t fit into her other three houses. She’s got two other houses to build and when they’re done, some of the shops contents will move into them. For now, however, she’s making books and grocery boxes, gathering up various other minis, and planning colors for the shops.
Ann’s goals for the future include cracking open her next dollhouse kit, a small Greenleaf cottage. The box is hiding under her bed so she couldn’t see the name, so we’ll just have to take her word for it that it’s a small cottage! She knows for sure, however, that it will be a lovely flower shop. Ann wants to spend some time learning how to make flowers and plants. She has filled the Greenleaf Greenhouse with some plants and she also wants to fill the greenhouse and Purrsylla Tabbykin’s house with flowers of her own making. If Ann is going to concentrate on anything for a long time, it will be flower making!
When asked what advice Ann would like to share she shares her hope that Greenleaf will include the forum website address in any of its future advertising. She felt pretty lost when she got her Garfield, until she found the Greenleaf Community where everyone is so helpful and willing to share, even with complete novices like her. She also encourages folks to take their time; you’re not in a race to see who can build fastest! Finally, it’s supposed to be fun! There are times when it might not be fun so step away, take a day off and go back at it again later. If it’s still not fun don’t hesitate to share your frustrations with folks at the Greenleaf Community, usually someone will have an easy answer or a way out of your dilemma and it’ll be fun again!
Ann has been married for nearly 40 years to the first and only man she ever dated. Ralph proposed on the second date and she said “yes”. Ann is the “mother” of four lovely cats, all of whom have helped build various houses or tested out the play-ability of dollhouse furniture.
Now here’s something not a lot of people can brag about! Ann was in third grade with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and went to school with her from third grade through high school.
Ann has had MS for 25 years (Happy Anniversary!) and uses a wheelchair full time. Mini-ing and the forums are her window to the world where she’s made a few new friends and a bunch of acquaintances. She now has a really cluttered house full of sawdust and tiny houses!
Please visit Ann’s gallery to view more of her miniature treasures!
As our ‘Featured Member of the Month’, Ann will receive a $25 Gift Certificate to the ‘Greenleaf Store’. Congratulations, Ann!
Written by Teresa Martens
November, 2007
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