ABOUT THE LINDENS

Are you sitting comfortably? Tea and cake or biccies at hand? Then I'll begin.

In December 2018 I bought a 1976 Lundby Stockholm dolls' house on Ebay with the intention of renovating it. 

 

 

Unfortunately, as many of us dolls' house enthusiasts will know only too well, the best laid plans of mice and miniaturists have an annoying way of not turning out quite as imagined :)

With Christmas approaching and all the usual Christmassy things to do, work on the Lundby was slow to get underway. But as I hurried about my Christmassy business, the house seemd to be telling me that it wanted to be called The Lindens. By April, I'd made some progress but the mid-century modern fantasy based on the childhood homes of my memory, was still far from being a reality.

Then some changes at home meant that the space allocated to my beloved Lundby was needed for other purposes and The Lindens moved location and was re-christened by my sister, 'The Little House on the Wardrobe'.

As I lay in bed in the evenings, one eye on the television and the other on The Lindens, I began to imagine the family who lived there and the Trevelyans made themselves known to me. And that's how the books began. 

The stories are partly inspired by my own childhood and the characters of Heather and Hazel share many things in common with myself and my sister :)  The always cheerful Laurence Trevelyan with his ready laughter, owes a lot to my maternal grandfather. I'm a teacher like Lucy, and the Oak-Appledon tableau of the Nativity is the precise Christmas performance I used to do with my own infant class. And yes, there were many Josephs who forgot to hand Mary the Baby Jesus and Kings who forgot to present their gifts :-D

I have no idea where Miss Blennerhassett came from, I certainly didn't set out to invent her. She just barged into the book, much as she does into people's lives in the stories!

Anyway, I'm still working on the Lundby and it has a long way to go before it looks the way I would like it to but here is a little glimpse into the home of the Trevelyans.

Lucy's yellow kitchen ;)

Btw, if you have a retro dolls' house yourself, I got the plants and the super-authentic wall and floor papers for the kitchen from a lovely online shop called  Poppets Dolly Bits.


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