You don't have to spend $200 on a dollhouse. Instead, you can learn how to make a dollhouse yourself using a cardboard box as a frame.

Your toddler will most likely become impatient with how long all of this takes. if you want to do this project with them, my recommendation is to give them small tasks to complete. They can make wallpaper with white paper and crayons. They can help you choose which photos to glue to the walls. If they are old enough, they can cut out shapes or help you put glue on the walls.

Required Materials:

• Cardboard box (one that holds a lot of diapers, a shoe box is too small)

• Glue -- glue sticks or good old Elmer's glue

• Photos cut from magazines (living rooms, chairs, curtains, dressers, bookcases, bedrooms, etc)

• Stickers (optional)

• Scrapbooking paper (to use as wallpaper)

• Wrapping paper (to use as wallpaper)

• Scissors

• Construction paper

• Crayons

Step-by-step Instructions

1. How big your dollhouse will be will depend on the size of your box. Using scissors, cut out the largest side of the box. This will become your central wall.

2. Cut out the two smaller sides. These will become the walls between the rooms.

You're aiming for a long central wall with two smaller walls that bisect it. Imagine a lowercase "t" with two crosses instead of one cross, and that is the shape you want. The house has no walls or roof, which makes it easier for little hands to get into the rooms to play.

3. Now it's time to decorate! Get your toddler busy with crayons or have them decorate a white sheet of paper that will become wallpaper for a room.

4. While your toddler is busy, you can decide which areas will become the kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc.

5. Then, start gluing the cut-out photos of beds, curtains and bookcases to the walls of the bedroom. If you end up with an ugly spot from catalog copy, you can cover that with a sticker or a bit of scrapbooking paper (or even wrapping paper!).

6. Keeping working on each room until you like how it looks. You can come up with a number of ideas and keep adding to them until you're pleased with the results.

7. If you knit, you can use scrap yarn to make a little rug. I temporarily used two square coasters to make a floor in one room.

The total cost for my project was $5 for the scrapbooking paper. I had all the other materials on hand.

Our rooms did not come out as large as I would have liked. I decided to turn one of them into a secret garden since the room was small and a bit dark.

I have some leftover material from cut-to-size IKEA curtains. I plan to use these as curtains in the next dollhouse I make.

Have a great time making this house. I told a lot of people about this project idea and everyone was excited about how they could use their creative side to make this happen. This project can bring out your inner interior designer, and it's a lot easier to decorate a dollhouse than a real house.