I think I've accidentally stumbled upon a trend. I put zebra print stuff in my living room because I had a faux fur throw that I needed to use somewhere. It worked out quite well, if a bit bachelor pad-ish. But it's actually quite cool in the decorating world at the moment. Just look at this, a suggested design for the interior of the Red Room at the White House once the Obama family take residence.


Apparently, when the new family moved in, Congress will give them a hundred grand to spend on redecorating. I would make some credit crunch-related comment here about how that 100k could be better used. But to be honest, I'd want a lot of money to de-Bush the place, too. Not sure I'd go so inside-of-a-strip-joint in a political house, but I love the idea, not to mention the footstools!

In other news, my brand new boiler is broken. And it's freezing. Fun!

Last night I headed to the depths of the City for the latest London Bloggers Meetup, which was my first meetup in a while (I'm still gutted I missed the one that involved custom Smirnoff cocktails).

This time around, Melanie was giving a talk, so if nothing else I wanted to go along to provide a bit of support. She was great, of course, and I also got to catch up with a few old friends / colleagues and fellow bloggers. It's amazing how many folks I feel I know really well despite having only met them a few times, mainly because of Twitter. It's very easy working in the online world to think you have this huge clique of mates, but you very soon realise that most of them would barely be acquaintances if it weren't for the fact you congregate around a free bar any time anyone invites you.

Hey, it's the credit crunch. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

On a completely different topic entirely, I went to Spain on a press trip. It was nice. This nice, in fact...


I know, I hate myself too. I was reviewing the ESPA spa at the Intercontinetal Mar Menor hotel in Murcia. The hotel was gorgeous (the room had a whirlpool bath, amazing bed, big balcony, more wardrobe space than I have in my flat, etc etc) and we were treated very well. And also, since I'm obsessed with interior design at the moment, check out the club room...


Pretty, no? You wait until you see the rest of it...

Despite the fact the flat still isn't quite how I'd like it, I had my housewarming party on Saturday. It was a rather lovely little gathering of Very Important People, and involved a lot of girls wearing black, me drinking out of a slightly outdated 'Happy 21st' champagne glass and Katie colour-coding my DVD collection. Oh yes, I know how to throw a proper rave up.

Speaking of the flat not being how I'd like it, here's my current eBay obsession, because I know you all love my interior decorating fixation.


Right now it's going for £14. I think it's safe to sat it'll go for a lot more than that, and very quickly end up out of my price range. But I can dream. Look at the big mirror! Heaven! I'm already imagining the fabrics I can cover the stool cushion with. What do we think of this one?

Technically, I'm not taking part in NaNoWriMo this year. I am planning on writing 50,000 words of a novel during November, but I'll be using the time to finish the oh-so-wittily named 'Period Pains', rather than starting something new.

Since the official NaNoWriMo rules state you can't work on a half-finished manuscript (I believe they describe it as being 'punishable by death') this means I'm not a true participant, and I'm not going to log my word count on their site. That doesn't mean I'm under any less pressure, though. This book has been sitting unfinished for far too long, and it's high time I got it finished.

Luckily, this year there are quite a few NaNo-ers who will help to spur me on. Plenty of brilliant bloggers are doing the blog version - NaBloPloMo - including Cate and Christina, which will no doubt keep me entertained. Keris is using the month to finish her current book, Jenni is taking part (that may have something to do with me) and I've also roped in the boyfriend. So far our writing time has mainly involved him giving me dirty looks as I hit the daily word count before he does. This is probably because I bash dialog out without caring while he takes the time to write things that make sense. Right now, I just want to get the basics down so I have the story in place.

Problem is, it's hard to write 1700 words a day when there are other Very Important Things to be done, like putting up mirrors, re-arranging the living room, sitting in the pub reading The Sunday Times, walking around Crystal Palace park and watching BBC Four programmes about Mills & Boon.

*cough*