I can barely believe I'm actually writing a little update today...! When our daughter was born two years ago my priorities changed drastically, and for a long time I didn't work on anything miniatures related. It wasn't so much lack of time, but having the breathing space needed for new inspiration. Luckily it looks like my little daughter is already hooked on minis! I found her a Momoll dolls house including all the original furniture for 10 Swiss Francs on a local auction website! The previous owners had painted it really badly in garish colours, but after a little sanding and a new lick of paint it's as good as new. And now it's filled with furniture that I used to play with, when I was a child. It's great to see how a simple house like this can spark her imagination! And now baby No 2 is due in a couple of weeks, but I actually managed to work on some minis since the beginning of the year! In January I started work on The Mountfield kit, which I had bought a year earlier from The Dolls' House Emporium. I had all the plans worked out in my head. There were a lot of changes I wanted to make to the kit - mainly to make it even more useable for taking photographs. It's an absolutely amazing house, which is much more interesting than traditional front opening dolls' houses, and very close to a typical British 1930s detached house. So first I spent a lot of time sawing and glueing, then came the outside finish. I wanted to have the bottom half of the house bricks, and the top half pebble dash, which is very typical for this type of property. And that meant a lot of this... :-) If you're not familiar with the egg carton technique have a look at Brae's great tutorial. I'm not done with the outside yet, but I just had to make a start on the inside :-) So here are a first few snap shots. The idea for the house is, that if my family and I would live back in the UK, this could be the type of house we would live in. I will copy a lot of the furniture and accessories we own in real life. First up, was the IKEA Lillesand bed and an old mirror we own. Of course there will be lots of vintage furniture as well and stripped floor boards throughout - just how I would have it in real life...