Mouse Houses

A book we got from the library last week "Mouse's Birthday" by Jane Yolen sparked some great childhood memories for me. As a child I loved all things miniature. The smaller something was, the more I was intrigued by it, especially if it had little doors that opened or had a function. My best friend growing up, Diane, had a doll house to die for. It had electricity and everything. I loved rearranging her dollhouse furniture.

Though I was probably too "old" for so much pretend time, I loved making Mouse Houses with my younger sibblings. Dad would bring home huge reams of the old computer paper for us to "recycle" (you know, with the green and white lines and the perforated sides with the holes in them?) and we would go to town making mouse houses. I wonder if Mom has pictures? It was literally hours and hours of creativity and entertainment as we created their homes, furniture, cars, and then played out their little mousey lives.

I even remember in third grade writing a story about a mouse and getting so caught up in illustrating the details of her home that I'm not so sure I did much with the actual story!

So, as I was saying, "Mouse's Birthday" brought those wonderful memories flooding back and I decided that Mouse Houses needed to be a part of our Summer of Fun. Kayden was invited to join us, but he decided he was too old for this, then later changed his mind.

Although our Mouse Houses growing up were made entirely of paper and fabric and oragami boxes, my little ones don't quite have the fine motor skills to do all of that yet, so I used what we have around the house, and only purchased a few little items to get us going.

First we started by creating our mice..... I got the wood "boy game pieces" from a local craft store then we added thread whiskers, pompom ears and nose, googley eyes, and some cording for a tail.

Meet "Diego Mouse", left, and "Nemela"(or whatever her name is this hour) on the right.


The boxes for the houses came from a paper store because we didn't have any shoe boxes around the house to use. I also picked up the little necklace boxes for their beds.


The kids picked fabric from my scrap box for their blankets and pillows. The pillows are a cottonball with fabric wrapped around them and glue-gunned (is that a verb?) closed.


The kids picked their floor covering colors (craft foam) and created art work that we glued gunned on the walls.


The door knobs and window knobs are pony beads.

The furniture was fun to create with little wooden spools, circle discs, and mini popsicle sticks. The dishes are wood buttons and the cups are just snipps of straws.

They were really fun to put together and it is so fun to watch Ky and Karissa play and create. Their mice go on "dates" to each other's houses, eat dinner together, have sleepovers, and even have pets. They were both up playing Mouse House in their PJs when I got home from walking this morning.

It just warms the cockles of my heart to watch them. Oh to be a kid again. Oh wait, I was today!