My daughter has begun collecting Our Generation doll’s and I love the wide variety of accessories and playsets available for them. Everything is just that much cuter in doll size!
Mastermind Toys has an amazing selection of Our Generation products and one of the playsets that caught my eye in the store was the Our Generation Holiday Celebration Set. We went with a mantle-less fireplace in our current house and I really miss having one to decorate for Christmas. The faux brick fireplace in this playset looks so cozy alongside the doll sized Christmas tree and decorations.
What I didn’t love so much about the set was the $99.99 price tag. Knowing that I could find a very similar tree and decorations at a Dollar or craft store, it just didn’t feel as good of a value as most of the other Our Generation sets. With this in mind, I decided to attempt a DIY fireplace and recreate my own version.
Creating the Fireplace
For the fireplace, I went to Dollarama and purchased a floating wall shelf, a large gift box, a wooden box with hinged lid, a plastic picture frame and some pretty contact paper to cover everything. I took apart the hinged boxed and ended up using it for both the bottom hearth and the top portion of the fireplace. The main portion of the fireplace is the gift box lined inside with black contact paper, and covered outside with a pretty silver/white print. I carefully cut the hole with an exacto knife to match to size of the plastic picture frame, then hot glued that in place to create my surround. The floating shelf became my mantle and I glued the box lid on top after I covered it in the same silver/white contact paper.
For the electronic flickering fire, I was able to recreate this fairly easily with a battery operated tea-light surrounded with orange and yellow cellophane flames and tree branches hot glued around it. My daughter was so excited to see the flickering fire in her fireplace and I was excited I was able to use all recycled and found materials other than the $1.25 tealight.
Decorating the Fireplace
In the original Our Generation version I don’t love the painting that hangs above the mantle, so I decided to find a small Christmas wreath to hang on mine. We found our red and white bell wreath at Dollarama, but I had pinned this great version made from a mason jar lid just in case we struck out and needed to DIY something.
When it came to decorating the mantle, the stockings were the trickiest thing to find. Dollarama did have small stockings, but they still weren’t quite tiny enough to be the right scale. Just as I was considering cutting and sewing my own, my husband came up with the brilliant idea to use baby socks. As luck would have it, I had a perfect little Christmas pair I had held on to from when my kids were little and all I needed to do was sew a small loop of ribbon to the top of each for hanging.
To hang our stockings I found a 3 pack of nutcracker ornaments ($4) I knew would make the perfect stocking holders. I simply hot glued bent Christmas ornament hooks to 2 of the nutcrackers to create the stocking holders on the mantle, and our 3rd nutcracker found its spot down on the hearth. I might be biased, but I think these are so much cuter then the red candles on the mantle in the original version.
And speaking of cute, how perfect is this doll sized gingerbread house we found at Dollar Tree?! These are edible and come fully assembled and decorated for only $1.25. We found it in amongst the other Christmas chocolates and treats, and my daughter keeps bugging me about how she REALLY wants to eat it!
Down on the other side of the hearth is an adorable little tray of cookies I just happened to have as a Christmas tree ornament in my collection. The original playset comes with a wooden tray with cups of cocoa and Christmas cookies, so this was a perfect substitute in our copycat version.
Decorating the Tree
Our small tree was one we already owned, but you can easily find similar inexpensively in stores. To decorate the tree, we went to Dollarama and picked out a small pack of jewel toned balls, shimmery gold stars, battery operated lights, a sparkly blue tree-skirt and a purple star shaped topper. I gave over creative control to my 6 year old and was rather doubtful how the ornaments and colorful lights would all look together, but somehow it all seems to work. The only thing I might add yet is a garland.
Finally, a tree isn’t complete without presents under it so we found these small Christmas themed gift boxes at Dollarama. I was happy to find boxes with lids that lifted off, like the original set, so my daughter can fill them with small gifts for her dolls to open during play. To complete the look, we also grabbed a small pack of bows my daughter had fun sticking on the top of each gift.
What do you think of our version vs. the inspiration? I am so happy with our final result and I love that we were able to customize and decorate the tree in all my daughters favorite colors. We were able to save money using items found at home and DIY, plus my daughter and I also had a ton of fun together shopping at the various dollar stores to create our final vision!
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I also want to recommend this My Life As Holiday Decoration Play Set from Walmart that I considered. For only $10, this would have been a great buy to provide all the adorable accessories needed to easily decorate a DIY fireplace. It seems to sell out quickly, though, so if you see it in stock and want it, I recommend you snap it up. I especially love that tiny snow globe!
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