I think I mentioned my childhood dollhouse experience, and my commitment to not allow the same sad fate to plague my own daughter thirty years from now. But ... good intentions aren't always realized. We've been so busy and this project is so overwhelming and ... Kidding!

The first step to any dollhouse-construction project is to determine a color scheme. I mean, you don't have to I guess. You can glue it together and slosh whatever paint you have all over the unsanded, bare wood. Like the gloppy leftover stuff in the back of the basement closet. It worked for me as a child, and the effect was rather like a third-world outhouse. I pointed this out to Mud Pie when she was in the throes of impatient agony. "We could use hot glue and poster paint, but if that's what you really want, let's return the kit and tape some cardboard boxes together."

Paint is important. Paint is probably more important than getting the windows in straight and the door on right-side-up. Ok, maybe not, but it's important. The kit instructions clearly say to paint before handling the pieces, to sand after each coat, and to be a totally anal perfectionist (as opposed to an overly eager 9-year-old girl). Unlike with my childhood dollhouse's many little bottles of craft acrylics, we're using Benjamin Moore paints. We can get sample pints mixed up in eggshell finish for a reasonable charge, which will be more than enough for our project.

So we looked at dollhouses (and houses) online, decided what she liked (NOT pink or purple, heaven be praised) and went to Benjamin Moore's website to try out some color schemes. Their Virtual Paint Your Room app is astounding. We picked a house with the features of our dollhouse (trim, shutters, and, uh, walls) and tried paint combinations until we were happy with the result. Mud Pie's conclusion:

Sadly Mud Pie had to wait until yesterday - a full Two Days after unwrapping her dollhouse - to get the paint. Poor darling. Wait until I tell her we next have to label all the parts with sticky notes!