PS I love you

Happy New Year everyone - hope you had a lovely Christmas! The Worst House was full of Christmas cheer this year, a very happy contrast to Christmas 2007, when we had to decamp to my neighbour's house while she took a very handily timed holiday in Australia.

2009 has got off to a flying start for us. On 6 January I had Dawid the builder in again to price for a very long list of jobs upstairs, starting of course with the crack in the master bedroom ceiling and including getting rid of the nasty woodchip in my son's bedroom. I don't think we can afford most of it but it feels positive just to have invited him in.

Then I discovered that IKEA deliver! Result! Although my husband misses the meatballs and my son loves the creche ( they have Playstation) I am thrilled - no more battling through the crowds to find they don't have what you want, and still managing to spend £100 on a load of kitchenware and cushions you definitely didn't need when you set out that morning...

I have always hated the huge pile of toys, books, chewed pencils and odd broken bits of Power Ranger and mangled dinosaur leg that live at the end of our kitchen, so I took a deep breath and tried out the new online ordering thang. The marvellous white metal IKEA PS cabinet, which has been on my wishlist for ages, arrived painlessly a few days later. After the usual evening of struggling and swearing with the instructions we now have a tidy toy cupboard. Let's see how long that lasts...!

And then photographer Carl Pendlebury contacted me to say that Real Homes magazine would like to do a feature on our house! I am very excited indeed - Carl and a writer commissioned by the magazine will be visiting on 19 Jan, so the Worst House could make it into print in the next few month. (Carl is a freelance photographer who is always looking for houses which might be suitable for featuring in interiors magazines, so if you're interested why not get in touch?)