1) I have been having great fun this week, putting together a “Christmas Decorating” advertorial for B&Q. You can see the video over on Youtube here, but just LOOK at these Christmas jumpers you can get to hang on your tree! They were a pound each! It’s a shame I don’t know a family of elves, because it would be a really cheap way to dress them. They have little hats and boots too. I could kit out an army of elves with what I put in my trolley…

2) I went a bit crazy buying stuff on Amazon over the last few weeks for my Gift Guides and also a book feature that I want to do pre-Christmas. But I went so spend-crazy that I lost track of what I was buying and what I was merely placing in my basket. On one particular morning I woke up to eighteen – EIGHTEEN – emails thanking me for my purchases. My heart was going like the clappers! Turns out I had been buying it all with that “one click” function on my iPhone and not saving it to the basket at all! I now have enough children’s wall stickers to cover the Tate Modern and enough hardback books to build a barricade around my house, should I ever feel the need to. Needless to say that the One-Click has been deactivated for the moment! The wall stickers are amazing though – have you ever seen these? You can peel off and stick on again and they are a great no-commitment way to decorate a kid’s room, or your own, if you like rockets and robots and stuff. Find them here. (You can also see them in the Affordable Gift Guide.)

3) Dexter is home and I want to thank you all so much for your kind messages and emails, I was really touched! He’s on lots of medication but is doing well, so should be right as rain in a few days. Poor Mr Bear is having to get used to sharing the attention all over again.. He has spent most of the past few days lying on top of a hamper that arrived from Triumph (thank you Triumph!) and looking grumpy.