See how I titled my last post so strategically? (Scroll down and see . . .I'll wait . . .) Did I do it to get more hits on my blog? If I were smart (smart enough to think of it) I would say “You bet your sweet life!” Instead, I will say that it just sounded good and descriptive and I had no thoughts as to the extra hits I would get from the Colin Firth worshippers around the world (the Jane Austen fans were, no doubt, too busy reading books to notice).

However, this does bring up an interesting topic: Names in Blogdania. I have touched on the subject of why my blog is called Dunhaven Place in a previous post (or two) but it seems a good time to cover that bit of ground once again. For decades, er, hundreds of, er, EVER, The Brits have had this quirky habit of giving their houses actual names. Many of them have no house number at all and the postman is meant to (we would say “supposed to” here in America) know exactly where Hill House sits (on the hill, of course!) and that it is the house on the hill in Nether Wallop as opposed to the Hill House in Titlington Mount (these are real British place names, people, and they just get more and more suggestive as the list goes on--provided you get a hold of the right list). The tradition crossed the waters to America as the British settled the east coast. Louisa May Alcott’s home had a name (Orchard House) and so did so-and-so’s (I don’t have time to look it up just now, just let it suffice that someone famous other than Lou lived in a house with a name in the U.S. of A.). (Thomas Jefferson—Monticello. Thank you, brain!)


If one of my favorite authors (Louisa May Alcott) could have a house with a name here in America and another one of my favorite authors (Jane Austen) could have a house with a name in England, well, then, so could I! I liked the name Dunhaven because it was the brand of the anniversary clock two of my favorite uncles gave us as a wedding gift. And, because my husband has Irish ancestry and I am as much a fan of all things Irish as I am an anglophile, it seemed fitting. “Dun” in Celtic is “home” and “haven” is exactly that—or heaven--you choose. Even though each of our homes had a different name (The Aerie for the three level condo and Rose Cottage for one or another in my quickly fading past) Dunhaven Place is the only name that has ever stuck through the 11 structures in which we have dwelt and called home. (It is less the name of our actual house and more the name for our actual dwelling at the actual time we are dwelling in it.)

Therefore, when it came time to name my blog, it seemed only fitting to name it Dunhaven Place. Which brings me to the lovely gal who has done a review of Miss Delacourt Has Her Day on her blog this afternoon: Debbie of Cranberry Fries. I have never had cranberry fries in my life and have no idea if they even exist but they must be very popular because Debbie CranberryFries on FB has nearly 1,000 friends. And well deserved ones, too. She does a lot of book reviews so I was happy and excited when she volunteered to do a review of MD2. She has shown such a consistently positive and gratifyingly enthusiastic attitude towards Miss D since MD1 that I could hardly say no. Plus, she had already ordered (and paid for) her own copy of the book. I am not a looker of gift horses in the mouth kind of gal.

Go read the review and see if you can figure out "why Cranberry Fries:? Also, check out the giveaways going on now by seeing the info in my sidebar . . . (you won’t be sorry!)