Hi!
My name is Sally Maschino-Woods. This is my home page.
This is the playhouse I had when I was a kid. I don't remember when my parents got this for us, but I must have been very young. My sister and our friends played in this playhouse constantly. My sister had a friend named Jennifer who made us clean the playhouse before we were allowed to play in it. The playhouse had a ladder that led to a loft. We also got a small play kitchen and put it in the playhouse. We used to go in there and make mud pies and then try to get my brother to eat them. We could not even fool him. My older sister, Amanda, and I were the ones who played in the playhouse the most. We had good friends who were also sisters named Jennifer and Carrie. We were inseparable. We would stop by their house on the way home from school and stay until my mother would call looking for us. Then, we would drag Jennifer and Carrie home to our house for dinner. In the summer, we would barely be out of bed before we were bugging our parents to be able to call Jennifer and Carrie and have them come over to play. My mom still jokes that she used to think Jennifer and Carrie was one person because we never talked about them separately. As we got older, we started going to the playhouse less and less. Real life kicked in and our imaginations seemed to come to a complete halt. One day, we decided to go to the playhouse and play. In her usualy fashion, Jennifer demanded that we take everything out and clean it before we started to drag in the mud for mud pies (That still does not make any sense to me). As were were dragging out the furniture, we heard a hissing noise from above. When we looked up, we saw a snake curled in the corner by the loft. We ran out of the playhouse and never did return to play. My dad had to pick up the furniture out of the yard, because we refused to return it. It is kind of sad to think back on it now. I learned a lot of life's important lessons. I learned to share with others, even when I did not want to, or no one would want to play with me. This idea was proven more than one time. I learned about keeping good friends and making compromises. I learned that sometimes you do have to work before you can play and that even the work can be fun if you look at it the right way. Most of all, I learned to use my imaginiation. I could create anything with a little mud, some grass and a leaf. I learned that we could play "Little House on the Prairie" and have a great time with no electricity or running water. I learned that I could pretend to have running water and lights and it would all be great. We even had a cardboard box to serve as a television. As I look at the kids I work with now, I think that the important sense of imagination is becoming scarce. I feel very lucky to have had the playhouse to help my imagination soar. Eventually, we all grew up and did not even miss the snake infested playhouse. My parents moved it out of the backyard and down to the barn. For a while, their dog had a mansion for a dog house. Now, it is used to hold the useless junk the family has accumulated over the years. When I went to take a picture of it for this project, I was saddened the fading paint and the inside filled with junk,. New hope has come about becuase i have just learned that my sister-in-law is pregnant. Perhaps she will have a girl and we can drag out the old playhouse and fix it up for the next generation.
This is the sad looking playhouse now, serving as a cheap storage facility for the family's junk.