Sunday, January 1, 2023

Mini Memories - The Secret Room Box

 I had a big secret!   Jason (my husband)  and I knew that Christmas was going to be more lean for us this year due to unforeseen circumstances  with an injury that kept him from working for a few months and being financially responsible we didn’t want to take money from savings just to have lots of Christmas presents.  I was ok with that….until I made my mom’s Mini Memory room box!  When I completed that Christmas present for my mom, I was feeling that bereft feeling I get when a project is completed.  I was kinda lost.  But then I had the grand idea!  I would make Jason a room box of our apartment.  You see, we had moved into our first apartment together in 2018 and we lived there until about 6 months ago…when we bought a house.  The apartment was a thing of our past and we had some amazing memories in the apartment.  Obviously it was our first apartment.  But it was also the place where Jason proposed to me.  It is where I planned our marriage/elopement!  and just last Christmas we celebrated our first year as a married couple in that apartment!   Big moments in life for sure and quite worthy of a room box!

My problem?  Jason had an accident and has been off of work for the last few months.  How do you craft and create something for someone in secret when they are always home???  It was a dilemma!   Undaunted, I decided to create a second room box for my mom, depicting a different Christmas scene and that would be a decoy!  My plan was to keep the two room boxes in the same stage of progress. If I heard Jason coming I could swap out projects easily.  Also, if Jason walked by the office and I didn’t hear him coming   he would think I was working on mom’s box.    Mom’s birthday was coming up right after Christmas so that would work for a gift for that too.  Win win!

I commenced working!   I listened for footsteps all the time and swapped our projects frequently.  (I had my big 1920’s house set up right beside me  in a way that just walking into the room you couldn’t see the actual rooms and if I heard Jason coming I would slide Jason’s room box into a deep room within the house)  It worked!  The room box was mostly completed about a week before Christmas  and at that time I was pretty sure that he had no earthly idea!  

His room box doesn’t have all the little scenes inside. It really is just the corner where we had our tree.  The tree was by our sliding glass door and nestled between the bird perch and the crabs terrarium.  I thought about adding specific Christmas gifts…or the proposal.  But ultimately decided not to.  First of all…how do you do a ring/proposal in a dollhouse room box!   The ring would be a speck…and there was no easy way to display a ring in this scene.  I have not ruled it out.  I could always add that later…or add specific gifts later…but for now I am quite happy with the scene being as is.








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