… I’d want to raise my young here. These elegant, spherical nesting places are beautiful and practical. I’m just picking out some top buys from our friends at the online boutique Caroline McGrath, they have some wonderful titbits for christmas gifts! Think the soldier egg cup is very cute too, plastic soldiers protect the egg from the greedy bread soldiers – great idea!

We’ve been collaborating. Fantastic fashion and homeware shop Foundation approached us to design their shopping bags and packaging for a range of scented candles. Nice job! They’ve just launched a new area in their Cheltenham shop where they’ve mixed in clothing by British designers, such as Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, Nicole Farhi etc., our Bold & Noble prints, furniture by Pinch, wallpapers by Deborah Bowness, plus other items such as Branksome pottery etc… And it is all British! We’re delighted to be rubbing shoulders with the noble designers of this land!

The bump is now a baby and what a delightful little creature he is too. Congratulations to Ysella and Rich on the birth of ‘boy’ (if it was good enough for Tarzan…) on 30th November. Name to be confirmed. So excited for you!

Our free special edition Christmas print is ready – hot off the press! We’ll be giving away this one-off A4 design with every order from the 1st – 21st December. Exciting, huh?

We recently got involved with the Kambia christmas appeal which raised enough funds to establish a Maternity Waiting House at a hospital in Sierra Leone. It means expectant ‘at risk’ Mums can stay at the hospital in case of complications when they go into labour. Brilliant, we’re delighted that our prints could help generate some much needed funds!

Thanks Marie Claire for thinking our Type Map slick enough for the ‘Cool Britannia’ feature, much appreciated. x

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to… Received a text today telling me that it is a year since we launched Bold & Noble. Blimey, it feels like about 10 years – in a good, well established way! Any excuse for a tipple, I’m quite into Harveys Bristol Cream at the minute, I know it is a grannies drink but I used to drink it with my Nana and Grandad at Christmas and it makes me feel all nostalgic… Raise a glass to Mont and Renée, I know they’d be proud of our design venture.

A wee excerpt from the December issue of InStyle magazine – ‘green fingered can mean gorgeous’ (apparently!). Here is our Live off the land print holding his own amongst the other garden goodies.

I loved this piece by Jeanette Winterson for the Guardian about embracing the dark now the nights are drawing in. It is easy to mourn the loss of light nights and warm weather, but there are some bonuses to the cold and dark. At the weekend they produced a brilliant ‘guide to the night’ with all sorts of gems about night swimming, walks, even sneaky guerrilla knitters.

This is ‘Bowie mad’ Dean at his surprise 40th on Saturday – there aren’t many men who can get away with a skin tight lycra jumpsuit and platforms – but you rocked!