Monday morning, 6am

I couldn't sleep last night, probably not helped by our darling daughter's incursion into our bedroom after she'd had a nightmare. Usually I can nod back off again without a problem, but not today, so after fidgetting for an hour I decided to leave Michael in peace and sneak off to the office to catch up on a few things! As I write there is that lovely early-morning cool in the air, with the scent of wisteria wafting in from outside and a band of marauding wood ducks advancing across the paddock. Lovely. I can also hear, from the sound of the hot water tank which is in the office, that Patrick is up and about and having a shower, ready for work. He's going to be a bit surprised to see me up!

Anyway, never mind all that. I was going to refer to a few websites I've found recently that contain things I'd love to have for the house but can't afford...

It seems, looking at what I've been looking at recently, that I have a bit of a love affair with paper, particularly in sculptural form. I stumbled across the somewhat improbably named FlexibleLove website a while ago, after I saw pictures of their expandable cardboard seating in a design magazine. I just love the incongruity - and what you might call sustainability - of using cardboard for seating. Sadly, however, the cheap nature of the materials is rarely reflected in the price...

Farm Design's furniture uses similar materials in some of its furniture, but while I love Giles Miller's Pool Rocker I'm not going to pay GBP750 for it... If I'm that keen, I'll have to use all the boxes from moving house, cut them up and work out something for myself! The thing is, though, I'm perhaps being a little unfair about the cost of design and of the work that goes into making something. No matter what the end result is made from, someone has spent considerable time and effort designing and making it, and the high unit costs for the production model reflect that, as I know from making my own work. So the truth is that I would pay the money (if I had it), but sadly can't afford the item.

I clearly do love cardboard, for another website that caught my eye was Bloxes.com. I could see myself making something from these just because they're so ingenious. I'd say Andrew Wilson and Aza Raskin have had a lot of fun with them, judging by some of the photos on the website... Just great for kids, I reckon, viz. the giraffe!

Perhaps my favourite website for corrugated paper furniture and products is Molo. They make honeycomb paper structures that act as seating, partitions, lamps and dividers, and the overall effect is beautiful. They're based in Vancouver and if I had the money I really would buy some of their products. So there.