1) My friend Lauren has one of the most stylish houses I’ve ever been to. She seems to have a great eye for creating interiors that are both fashionable and homely at the same time – half Country Living and half White Cube art gallery. Very clever.

Anyway, I visited over the weekend and had serious mantelpiece candle envy: it reminded me that one of my most favourite candle scents in the world is Jo Malone’s Dark Amber & Ginger Lily. I’ve written about this scent before (see here), touting it as the ultimate wintery fragrance, and I’ll definitely be re-stocking in the autumn. You can find it here online here – £50, so a bit of a luxury buy, but you only need to burn the candle for a short time to perfume your entire house.

2) My kitchen is starting to take shape! I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with my house – thank goodness, because we’ve been out since early March and I’ve worn the same two pairs of shoes on rotation since May. I was starting to feel a bit despondent about the whole project, but when I popped in on Friday and saw that most of my kitchen units were in place, it gave me a little boost. Unfortunately the work surfaces won’t be ready until September, so we have to have temporary tops, but I can work with that. The units are ALNO – glass and aluminium inside the “horseshoe” and walnut finish on the outer surfaces. I’ll probably do a full run-down of what I chose for my house renovations when it’s all finished, if anyone’s interested.

3) I was having a really sad and geeky conversation with my friend the other day about how brilliant cats are. Living back at my parents’ for a month meant that I got to spend some time with Mr Bear, who will be back with us as soon as we move back into our house. I loved the way that he slinked on over every time I sat at the table to do some work – he’d either try to lie on my laptop keyboard or headbutt me in the face for some attention, and I saw it as the most wonderful compliment. Cats can be stubborn, aloof and annoyingly cool and detached, but when they strut on over to give you some love it’s the best feeling ever! I know that non-cat-lovers will be doing some mouth-sick now, so I do apologise. I’ll switch to dog pictures next week, for a change…