Magic Mushrooms

I've developed a recent fascination with mushrooms, and not just in my pasta. I blame this piece over on Home Shopping Spy and, more specifically, these mushroom salt and pepper shakers. After the owls and bird-decorated homewares that have been all over the high street, I guess it's a logical step for designers to delve further into the enchanted forest for inspiration.

I'll start at the tasteful end of the scale with this Mushroom tea towel. With its 70s colour palette and lovely illustration of wild mushrooms, you could imagine giving it to a foodie relative. It costs £10.25 from Illustrated Living and is made by Danish company Ferm Living. They are obviously well up on their mushrooms as they also produce a mushroom covered wallpaper.

However, I can't help feeling that if you're going to start pretending your house is a forest, you'd may as well go the full hog. And you can't really get more full-on than this Toadstool lamp from Caravan. It's plastic, an unmissable 28cm high (and that's the smaller version) and is pure kitsch. Suffice to say, I love it. All the stands between it and me is £39. Bonus points for the cute illustrations on the website too.

The jewellery equivalent of that lamp is this Twilight Toadstools necklace made by Lady Luck Rules OK for Hoxton Boutique. Subtle it's not, but it is something quite wonderful. It's made from a suitably woodland material of walnut too, with added red glitter. And, seeing as this infatuation with toadstools has 'passing fad' written all over it, it's probably cheaper and safer to invest £16 in this piece of mushroom magic.

With that, I've got everything I need to become a 'fun guy'.