There’s a pretty baby blue mews door on our street and I’ve always wondered what it was like inside. Yesterday, I accidentally found it on an estate agent websites and it’s amazing.

I love the crazy wallpaper…

and the awesome kitchen.

Everything’s so organised and cluttered at the same time!

I’m soooo jealous of their roof terrace too. I love snooping around other people’s houses!

This week I’ve been super crafty. My first project was a couple of Union Jack pillows for the bed. “Someone” brought me a heap of Chanel ribbons to use and they worked really well.

I made a mermaid tail as my costume for Mardis Gras. It has a zipper up the back at the bottom, so I can unzip my feet and walk. My favourite movie when I was a kid was The Little Mermaid, so I’ve always wanted a tail and now I have one

The secret cafe at Westfield has closed down but we discovered a new little place called Ca’puccino which serves yummy Italian food.

There were floating shelves of books everywhere, which made me feel at home.

The mugs and napkins had a lined paper pattern and now I really want a set.

CO+K has been getting lots of press this week and has been in a bunch of magazines. This article was in Craft Business – they call me a well-known journalist, hehe.

There was also a little mention in MakeJewellery magazine. We’re also in the new issue of Sew Magazine, so if anyone has a copy, could you please send me a scan with the bit about us? I’d love to know what it says.

Finally, someone else has made a version of my kitty hood scarf, I’m going to have a little army soon.

Time to start packing, we leave for New York in less than 48 hours and I’m so excited. If anyone has any NY tips, please send them this way!

On Saturday we had a Christmas party at the Mews for our friends. We had mulled wine, mince pies, homemade eggnog and gingerbeer (which tasted better than the shop bought bottle that Lynz bought) and presents for everyone wrapped under the tree. I even made some presents…

including a hama bead 3D glasses necklace for Lynsey. I can now post the how-to and it’s here.

Before the party, Tom surprised me with a bag from Vivienne Westwood. My party outfit consisted of a black H&M dress, necklace from Forever 21, sparkly silver eyeshadow, my Vivienne Westwood horns…

and a new pair of Vivienne Westwood skull and crossbone earrings. They’re so sparkly and come in an indestructible box. Tom also got me an hour at Lucky Voice karaoke with up to 15 friends, which will be so much fun.

I gave Tom a whole bunch of geeky presents, including this Come In / Go Away ambigram doormat.

Twitter and Facebook mousepads.

iPhone application coasters.

… and yesterday I sewed him a set of social-networkig cushions. I’m making a pair of matching RSS ones for him today.

Emma gave Tom the best present though, which will be two pet goldfish when we get back from Scotland. We need to start thinking up names… any suggestions?

I also made a couple of squirrel brooches yesterday for the family – I hope they don’t look on here before xmas. Check out the how-to here.

I seem to craft so much faster when it’s cold outside. This week I finished my patchwork quilt, which I had started back in the summer. I had the bulk of the work finished in two days and then left it for months until Monday, when it was so cold, I decided to get it finished. It’s really cosy having the extra layer on the bed and it’s good to snuggle up with in front of the TV and knit.

It’s been another busy crafty week. I’ve finished knitting my scarf, but I want to add pockets and John Lewis have ran out of my shade of yarn, so I’ll have to wait until I’m back in Scotland to get some more. On Wednesday, Tom’s boss Malcolm was hosting an evening at the office, where he showed off the video of Hugh Grant shaving off his moustache. It was really funny and I’ll post it when it’s live.

Alex gave us an early Christmas present last night, which is a really pretty candle holder made out of a tree trunk.

We’ve been making eggnog and ginger beer for our December party this weekend. I’ve also finished my Christmas shopping, which I’m really happy about. I do more shopping in December than I do in the rest of the year.

We’d been looking forward to December so that we could open our Lego advent calendar.

It’s pirate themed and each day you get something to build, I’m looking forward to getting the little Lego mermaid.

Don’t worry if you don’t have an advent calendar though, we’ve put together a crafty one for CO+K with a how-to for everyday until Christmas.

On Wednesday night we went to see Twilight. I still can’t make my mind up about the film, so Lynz has lent me her book of it to read. (This lipstick covered tube poster still makes me giggle).

It was an 11.30pm screening, so we had the whole cinema to ourselves, which was the advantage of going so late, but we had to walk home from Finchley Road because we had missed the last bus. It had stopped raining and it was a nice walk, so we didn’t mind.

On Thursday we picked up this year’s Christmas tree from Clifton Nurseries. We thought we had picked a similar size to last year but it turned out to be 2 foot taller and much heavier. Luckily a nice bus driver let us take it home on the bus and dropped us off round the corner next to the Mews. We had to buy a bigger stand to fit it though.

On Friday, Emma moved flat – back in the direction of the Mews and we headed in to town to meet Tom from work. It was Beer O’Clock at the Leap offices, so we were invited in for drinks, organic chocolate and played a game of Jenga, while Malcolm (the boss) was outside with a film crew trying to get passers by to shave off his moustache (which he had grown for Movember) and ended up cycling off in a pedicab while holding up a sign. We didn’t see him again, so we don’t know if he succeeded.

There are two very cute fish who live in the office and now I really want to get some. We met up with Alex and went for dinner afterwards.

Yesterday, we started decorating our tree. We’re going to have a December party and have all our friends come over to help decorate, drink mulled wine, eat mince pies and listen to the Bright Eye’s Christmas album.

New decorations this year include a jumping reindeer and a glass lollipop. In the evening, we headed over to Ealing to hang out with Lynz, Claire and friends.

In other news, I did a nice little interview for Amelia’s magazine and you can read it here.

It feels like November has sped past super quickly… we’ll be opening our Lego-filled advent calendar tomorrow.

I spent my last couple of days with my family hanging around Maida Vale. We had bites to eat on the canals and went Christmas ornament shopping in Clifton nurseries.

We have nice new neighbours upstairs, Olivia and Juliet, who came down for drinks and took our unwanted orange sofa away. When Emma moved out, we got her bigger one and bought a red cover for it. I’m going to make some social-networking cushions to go with it.

On Saturday night we went out for Alex’s birthday, starting off at the Eagle Bar Diner, where we had delicious food that Raven had recommended (goat’s cheese burger, fat fries and a hard shake). Ben and Emma shared a fish bowl filled with cocktail and fruit.

Apple had a sale for Black Friday, so I got myself a shiny new Macbook Pro. It’s so light to carry around. Not only does Tom get to play pingpong and on slides all day at work, but his new boss took him computer shopping in the Apple store and, when he’d picked the one he wanted, told him he could have more money to get a better one. The office were sent 1,500 bars of Green & Blacks chocolate, so Tom came home from work with a big box of them – far to tempting for a Monday afternoon.

I woke up to a call from my bank’s fraud squad this morning because someone had stolen my card details and was trying to buy phone top-ups – super scary! I think I must have used a dodgy ATM somewhere.

This weekend was Andrew’s birthday, so we got him a membership to the Prince Charles Cinema, so that he can go to £1.50 movies in his free periods. Afterwards we met up with Emma, a massive dog licked my leg on the tube, Em dropped 5p and it ended up in the bottom of my shoe, and we went for mussels and beer at Belgo.

After dinner, we met up with Andrew and friends at The Cuban in Camden – a bar filled with couples dancing everywhere. Ben and Dave came too and Ben had an awesome skeleton t-shirt, which lights up when you take a photo. We were sat outside under an umbrella and heat fan in the garden and got very cold.

Afterwards we went for a cherry flavoured shisha pipe to warm us up, it was delicious!

Emma, Alex, Ben and Dave came back to the Mews to watch Limmy on YouTube, drink absinthe and have a band slam. Amazingly Em and Alex fell asleep with all the noise and stayed until the morning.

Tom and I went for an amazing last breakfast at Plan 9. I had French Toast.

Followed up with peacan pie, which made us miss Raven.

We went shopping for a little while in town. Carnaby Street has pretty xmas decorations with pink inflatable reindeer.

We had a coffee in the new look Starbucks. They had little individual cubby rooms with sofas downstairs, I quite like it.

I surprised Tom with little wooden London transport blocks, which I had found in Muji (my new favorite shop). He loved the little tube and routemaster.

Afterwards, we crossed horizontally (twice) at the new and improved Oxford Circus. It felt a bit like a game, because everyone bumped in to each other in the middle and got scared when the green man went red.

In the evening, we went through to see Lynz, Claire, Alex, Emma and Andrew in Ealing and had yummy Nepalese food for dinner.

This weekend was Halloween, my favourite time of the year, so we planned a party at the Mews.

Tom did an amazing job with decorations, hanging orange and black streamers across the ceiling with dangly bats, pumpkins and spiders. We also had a spooky doorway, Halloween balloons, fairy lights and candles everywhere. We made super strong jelly eyeball vodka shots and a cauldron of punch, which changed flavour and colour throughout the night. Everyone brought spooky nibbles and lots of booze, so there was sugar overload.

We carved pumpkins. I carved a cat pumpkin, complete with carved ears, which we later sat around in a circle and told scary stories.

I also carved a robot and a spewing pumpkin.

Tom carved a very cute robot pumpkin and Lynsey carved a spewing cat pumpkin.

Oranges also make very good makeshift jack-o-lanterns.

After dressing the Mews, it was time to turn our attention to costumes. I dressed up as Poison Ivy – my hair became more and more green throughout the evening and it was a nightmare to get clean the next day.

Tom dressed up as a drowned sailor, complete with Sailor Jerry transfer tattoos and barnacles glued to his face. Emma and Alex made him an award for the best costume later in the night.

He wouldn’t have won without the help of resident makeup artist, Lynsey.

Emma dressed up as Swine Flu (with piggy tail, ears, flu bag and bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tamiflu), Lynsey was Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, Claire was Judy Garland as Dortohy from the Wizard Of Oz (with tic tac pills to pop), Alex was Sweeny Tod, girl Alex was a sexy pirate, Ben was Wolverine and Andrew was the Invisible Man. I annoyingly didn’t get many photos of costumes during the night.

The evening was filled with bobbing for apples, a spooky Spotify playlist, karaoke, Buzz!, creepy TV shows and spooky stories. I love Halloween.

Today felt like Boxing Day. Emma stayed over, so in the morning we slomped on the sofas under duvets, watched terrible shows and movies on TV and munched on left over candy. In the evening, Alex invited us over to her amazing apartment in Notting Hill for a delicious Sunday roast and we toasted marshmallows over her open fire.

Last night was Raven’s leaving party, which was very sad but also a lot of fun. Emma and Raven had done an amazing job of tidying up the Mews and lit lots of pretty candles everywhere.

We’re going to miss Raven sooooooo much!

There was cutting of a Hummingbird red velvet cake and we all fell asleep on Emma’s bed (the walk downstairs to our own bed was too much for us) and woke up to the sound of “how do you like your eggs in the morning?” playing very loudly.

Those of us who survived until the next morning went for a yummy brunch at Harlem on Westbourne Grove. We’d been promising to go for ages, so as it was Raven’s last Sunday, the worst hangover in the world wasn’t going to stop us.

Pancakes and a raspberry smoothie hit the spot perfectly!

Yesterday  we dropped Wendy off at Little Venice, so that she could take the boat to Camden, and went for breakfast. The friendly man from Warwick Avenue had written…

“Good morning folks,

It’s Friday, no longer any reason to get out of bed – thank goodness!

Have a lazy weekend.”

… on the service information board. He’s my hero.

We dropped Wendy and her very large bags off at the Eurostar for Paris.

I got a very cute zipper rosette brooch from Accessorize. I really should have made one myself but I couldn’t resist buying it there and then.

In the evening we went to Clare and Jo’s leaving party, which had turned in to a “may be leaving” party, so I’ll be happy if we get to keep them. The party was at Zigfrid in Hoxton, which had terrible customer service and an awesome broken mirrored walls, which made it feel like you were in a forrest.

I forgot to blog about it, but we adopted an unwanted palm tree on our way home the other night. I really like it and wonder how big it will grow?!