Mouse Houses

Hey Hey — it’s Saturday!!!  Otherwise known as the weekend — YAY!  I love the weekend — it gives me a little extra time to try and catch up on things around here.  I’ve been meaning to update you on Mouse Houses for months now, and yesterday, I got an e-mail (which I’ll explain later) that has given me the little extra reminder that I needed.

I’ll back up a bit … long time readers might remember when I posted the picture below of a cute little mouse house that CrazyBIL built for DadLovesMeBestSister when they were remodeling their house.

I’ve always wanted a mouse house in our house, so, when we had a bathroom remodeled about a year ago, we had the contractor set us up to make a mouse house of our own.  (Well, “we” didn’t really have the contractor do it — I kept it a secret from TheManoftheHouse ’cause I was afraid he’d think it was goofy, but I’m glad to report he’s very happy with it.)

We have a landing at the top of our stairs to the second floor, and the wall between the bathroom and the hall was the perfect place for our mouse house.  I had the contractor turn the light switch in the bathroom into a double light switch and the second switch turns on the mouse house.  From that switch, he dropped a nightlight cord down the wall and then just cut an opening into the wall on the hall side so I could access the space in the wall.

It was so easy and fun!  So far, I’ve only added a little tricycle for Mr. Mouse, photos of Grandpa and Grandma mouse (from this fabric), and a sewing machine (naturally) to our little house, but I’m dreaming of lots of other fun little things to do with it.  (At Christmas time I added little battery operated Christmas lights around the door — that was fun.)

Several years ago, a man named Carlos found my original mouse house post and contacted me asking some questions.  I wasn’t very helpful (sourcing a mouse was a problem) but he figured things out and has built a mouse house of his own for his little boys.  If you’re at all interested in mouse houses, you must go watch THIS video he has about his house — the picture below doesn’t come close to doing it justice.  His little mouse (I think since they couldn’t find a mouse, his wife worked so hard to hand-craft their own gorgeous little mouse) actually moves AND he has a motion sensor in his hall to make his light come on and off.  (I think that’s a brilliant idea and now I want a motion sensor for our house too!)  And look at his perfect little furniture — I need more mouse houses so I can still have a sewing machine AND a reading nook just like this one.

Because I’ve had many questions about the details of these little houses in the past (the original mouse house is one of my most popular pins on Pinterest), here is a list of where I got some of the pieces for our mouse house:

• The Light – We used THIS single night light from Lowe’s and our contractor hard-wired it into the light switch in the bathroom.
• The Door — I found THIS door and it turned out to be the exact same door that was used on the original mouse house.
• The Mouse — I searched and searched online for a little mouse and had no luck — the ones I did find were just SO expensive.  I had almost decided I would have to figure out how to make one, when one day, MyDadLovesMeBestSister and I were going through MeMum’s Christmas ornaments and we came across our little mouse.  MyDadLovesMeBestSister said “Hey, this is just like the mouse in my mouse house.”  I’d never noticed he’s a Christmas mouse — shhhh, don’t tell.  In the meantime, Awesome Carlos mentioned  that he found some super cute little mice HERE that would work perfectly for someone searching for a mouse.
• The Walls and Floor — I bought scrapbook papers at Michael’s to decorate our mouse house.  You can’t really tell by the pictures, but the paper on the floor is a wood-grain looking paper and it’s perfect to make a little wood floor for the house.

So, there you have it.  I LOVE our little mouse house and happily, FinallyAGirl loves it too.  One morning she jumped out of bed and ran over to say good morning to the little mouse.  Carlos said his little boy says good night to his little mouse every night too.  I’m thinking we might need to make our mouse a bed (with quilt of course!) so we can put him to bed each night and wake him up in the mornings.  And, for even more fun, I’m thinking, when the grandbabies are big enough for chapter books, our mouse might have to go on a vacation while The Borrowers move in for a little while.  How cool would THAT be???

If you stuck it out ’til the end of this post, The Scruffster would like to thank you. Don’t worry — he’s keeping a watchful eye on his little mouse friend ….

XOXO,
Anna