How to make a Barbie dream house

I've been bursting to show off some of my DIY Christmas gifts, but had to wait until after the big day so I wouldn't spoil any surprises. I did quite a few homemade, or custom created gifts this year. This one is a collaboration with my friend, Kim.

She wanted to give her 5-year-old twins a Barbie dream-house for Christmas, but didn't want to break the bank on something that might break easily. With four kids, she knows delicate a plastic dollhouse wouldn't last long. So we embarked on a shopping adventure to find the right tools to build our own, sturdier version.

Originally, I was thinking we would make over a bookshelf, but then we found this storage cube shelf and it was already pink! Normally, $50-$60 for one of these bad boys, we walked on a $20 sale at Fred Meyer. Plus we had an extra 15 percent off coupon for housewares. [They had blue too, and I'm still kicking myself for not buying a couple when they were so cheap.]

The whole thing was pink, so we lined the shelves with wood-grain contact paper to give the house wood floors before assembling the shelf.

We bought a variety pack of scrapbook paper at the craft store and covered the back panels with the "wall paper" using clear contact paper to adhere it and give them a protective coating.

 I found a few unfinished wood jewelry/notions boxes at JoAnn's fabrics that made excellent furniture with a little acrylic paint.

For area rugs we cut circles and rectangles out of a bathroom rug from the Fred Meyer home section.

We painted balsa wood strips mint green and glued them to the corners to create molding to give the rooms a finished look.

Santa somehow knew the girls were getting a Barbie dream house and brought the girls furniture sets like this bathroom set complete with a flat-screen TV mounted to the towel rack. Barbie is apparently one classy gal.

 For a roof, we used a flag case from Michael's craft store.

They seemed to like it.