I moved to London
when I was 17 and don't intend to ever leave. And now I'm lucky enough to have a home in the countryside. I think I have the perfect situation.
Home to me
is where my kids are.I'm away a lot, so it's very important to me that home is somewhere I can be private. When you're in the public eye, you have to have a place where you can shut out the world.
Having said that, I do treat my home as a public space from time to time. I often invite people I'm working with in to my home. I think when you talk about interiors for a living, it's important to be prepared to prove that you practise what you preach.
My home is very
eclectic. My partner's parents have an antiques shop. My parents are antiques dealers and my other half has very eccentric taste, so our home is a real mix. It's partly chintzy, partly floral, and we have lots of weird taxidermy and strange pieces of dark wood.
Relaxing isn't my forte.
I don't watch enough television, but I love period dramas. I love to have friends over and sit around chatting, especially friends who have kids. You can sit and catch up while the children all play together. That's my ideal way to relax.
Tidying up
is a way to relax for me, too. Perhaps it's because I live with four boys and a dog, and a partner who thinks that towels levitate magically, fold themselves up and appear back on the towel rail.
Pottering around is one of my favourite things - moving things around and fiddling.
I'm a modernist.
I like to embrace new things. It drives me crazy when people say they hate Twitter. You can't hate Twitter - it's the voices of millions of different people. You might dislike certain voices and disagree with their views but you can't hate Twitter. It's like saying you hate paper.
I'm fast thinking and emotional and quite opinionated. It's better out than in half the time, so I really like it. It suits me. When you're famous, you don't often get the chance to say things in entirely your own voice and your own words. Twitter enables you to do that. It's a force for good, especially in the crafting community. Facebook, Twitter and the internet have been brilliant in that context.
I once tweeted
about my kids having too much homework to do and I caused a real stir. I still tweet controversial things now and again, but I understand more now about how people are going to react than when I first joined the site. I've bedded down a bit with Twitter.
There are so many
wonderful things that are made for our homes. Sometimes I'm sad that they're not made here in the UK. I understand the economics of it. Particularly at the moment, people want to freshen up their homes without spending too much and they can't necessarily afford things that were manufactured in Britain. But I wish more would.
I'm working on
a thousand and one things at the moment. I'm writing a new book, filming a new craft television show this month, bringing out a new range of bed linen, introducing more accessories to my Marks & Spencer range, adding new wallpapers to my B&Q collections - it's never-ending.
Channel 4 would have loved me to do more series of (the property show) Relocation, Relocation, Relocation, but the fact is there are only 365 days in the year and until there are 450, I cannot work on three different shows and fit in all the charity stuff I do. I'm lucky that there's no shortage of work. Touch wood, it will continue for many more years.
My top interiors tip
is buy more cushions. If you're afraid of buying anything too solid and too permanent, cushions are the way forward. They're cheap little things that make a big difference. New accessories can change a whole room.
I'm about to treat myself to a whole new set of towels. Ours go grey. There's nothing you can do about it. It'll be plain white towels for me and dark blue towels for everybody else.
