the Barbie Castle

Today is our daughter's birthday. Thirty two years ago, for her seventh birthday Jan built her an elaborate wooden castle for her Barbies. It's been standing in our basement for decades, but now that our daughter's daughter is five, and old enough to appreciate it, it was finally time to deliver it to it's new home. 

Jan cleaned the castle and all the furniture, while I washed all the clothes and doll costumes in the five drawers in the base.

For Mary's seventh birthday I had made every single costume for every single character in Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'.  For her eight birthday I made every costume for every character in Disney's 'the Little Mermaid'.  There was also lots of commercial doll clothes. It all smelled a bit 'musty' so I washed it all, ironed some, and sorted and bagged it all in sets.

After the castle and furniture was cleaned, we set it back up so I could take photos....

We were planning on visiting for her birthday yesterday, so the castle had to be taken apart to be moved up the stairs and out into our two vehicles.  I thought, since it had to go outside anyways, why not set it up in the backyard so I could take some photos of it for posterity. It had stopped raining, but was still nicely overcast, so Jan agreed.

He set up just the castle itself in the backyard, with no furniture, and I hid the drawer base with pots of flowers, and got some of my small dolls to populate it...anyone who looked the part.....
just to take some photos......with no story.....

So we delivered the big main floor yesterday, along with all the furniture, clothes and naked dolls (which still needed cleaning).  The rest will get delivered the next time we go.