Shanty Bay woman finds timeless, creative way to spend retirement

Maureen Vivona of Shanty Bay has always been a creative person.

The retired drama teacher who once focused on directing plays now puts her creative efforts towards mini dollhouses, and she has quite the collection to show for it.

"It's like building little sets, so each room in each doll house is like a little set, and it's staged," said Vivona from her home in Simcoe County.

She admitted she's always had dolls, ever since she was a little girl, but her obsession with miniature dollhouses didn't kick in until she retired.

"It's a labour of love. It's a lot of work, and whenever you do something to a doll house, you try and do one thing, and it's like an avalanche. Ten things fall down, especially with the smaller scales," Vivona said.

The size and detail put into each dollhouse are amazing, and so is the size of Vivona's collection.

Maureen Vivona of Shanty Bay, Ont., creates mini dollhouses. (CTV News/Rob Cooper)

She has several doll houses scattered around her home.

Vivona is also part of a miniature doll house group on Facebook. She enlisted her husband, Tony, to help make and refurbish much of her collection.

"So the first thing that happened when we first met was I got involved. I had no choice, so what can I say?" he said.

Tony said he sticks to doing "what I'm told most of the time" and laughed.

Vivona's collection includes dollhouses from Europe.

Some are very old and rare, while others are more modern.

The Simcoe County woman visits annual conventions regularly and trades with people worldwide.

However, she hasn't had much success getting other family members involved.

She recalls a time when her granddaughter finally decided to give the dolls and houses a go.

"She said grandma, we're playing with the dollhouse, and I said oh, isn't that lovely? So I went over to see for myself, and they had staged a crash scene. They took the car, and they had it going through the window of a house. They had bodies everywhere. So, this was my granddaughter's idea of playing with it," Vivona chuckled.

Vivona admitted it's not a cheap hobby but said she plans to continue to grow her collection with Tony, who said he would be there at her side every step of the way.