You Cannot Take It With You… Or Can You?

As exciting as it has been to move into this new house, it was certainly sad to say goodbye to our old house and leave behind all of the parts (and projects!) that we could not take with us. The penny tile backsplash. The deck. The fireplace. Wait, scratch that last one.

Let us zoom in a bit closer on that little item sitting on the mantel. Well, what do we have here?

That, my friends, is an remarkable miniature replica of our fireplace. Miniature as in fully portable and yes-it-totally-came-with-us-to-the-new-house. It is the creation of Lisa Harrold, a recent fine arts graduate in the UK who specializes in miniatures. She emailed us to say that as a lively exercise to keep her skills fresh, she chose to recreate our fireplace – only smaller. Much smaller.

Since it was not of much use to her after it was done, she asked if she could send it to us as a housewarming gift, and once we convinced her to let us pay her for it and the shipping, it immediately became one of our go-to accessories in our new house. It does not have a final resting spot quite yet (it is a bit too big/delicate for Clara’s dollhouse) although it might end up on the living room built-ins. These photos are more simply my (failed) attempt to photograph the remarkable detail that Lisa put into it. They do not come close to doing it justice.

If the darn thing were not so excellent, I’d totally film a monster movie where Burger destroys it Godzilla style. Although that would also require Burger working on his destructive monster face. Right now he’s mainly giving me “confused” and “when can I eat the treat you hid behind this compact fireplace?”

Yep, still simply wants that treat. Guess the mini-fireplace is safe from annihilation for now.

Thanks again to Lisa for the excellent and meaningful mini fireplace. We are so touched to have such a tangible memento of the enjoy that we put into that house, and we thought sharing the goods might even inspire someone else out there to take something they enjoy with them (Sherry wants to buy them as gifts for everyone we know). We may simply have to dig up something from our first house that we can hire her to miniaturize. Sherry thinks the laundry nook would be cute. Or perhaps we should go with the living room fireplace, to keep with the theme. You know we enjoy a collection…