Still here.

Just popping in to confirm that I have not died of starvation due to lack of cooking facilities or been crushed to death under a tottering pile of unwashed dishes.  The kitchen/extension project is moving towards completion but is not yet............ actually.....complete.  The fault is not with our builders but with our kitchen suppliers who supplied us with a curved worktop and breakfast bar that could not actually be curved.  And since the kitchen cabinets are curved, that is a bit of a problem.  A problem we only really got to the bottom of once said worktops were cut to size and installed.

We had a frank exchange of views with the kitchen supplier.  They suggested it wasn't entirely their fault.  We disagreed, as they had (a) designed the entire kitchen, (b) suggested the curved cabinets and lovely matching worktops, and (c) supplied the whole shebang.  We eventually agreed to differ on this point but only after said supplier gave us back the entire price of all the worktops.

So that is good, but it does mean I am back to looking at pictures of worktops on houzz.com and trying to decide what we want to replace the non-curvaceous surfaces we currently have.  I seem to have done nothing but read about the different options for kitchen worktops over the past few days.  I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of days ago, totally furious.  I had been dreaming that we were having a whole new house built from scratch (God forbid) and that the builders were constructing it entirely from kitchen worktop.  I was furious because they were using the wrong kind of kitchen worktop for the walls and it would scratch too easily.  My subconscious is clearly not coping with all this interior design stuff.

And now, I must go and buy some Christmas presents for my children.   Apparently, gifts on Christmas morning are not optional.

Some Christmas stuff

 It is my sister-in-law's birthday today.  She has reached the grand old mental age of 12 (she wouldn't mind me blogging this:  she cheerfully admits to not having emerged from adolescence yet, despite being a couple of years older than I am.  Pesky chronological years that is.  Not the kind that counts.)  Anyway, we put on an early Christmas-come-birthday bash for her last weekend as she is going away to sunnier climes next week and will not return to dark and dreich Scotland until well into January.

In her honour we decided to decorate the Corbies and found the perfect tree to do it with.  SIL was allowed the honour of picking her family's tree way back in the 1970s and managed to locate a particularly lurid purple tinsel number which the family were then stuck with forever.  (The fact that their other little Christmas tree had a severed head hanging from it just added to the quirky charm of the seasonal decor.)

So, here, in all its glory, is Purple Tinsel Tree Mark II.  This photo is especially for Jen who demanded photographic evidence when I described the thing to her.  Here you go, Jen.  Enjoy.

However, if you really want shiny..........look!

I might get to turn it on tomorrow.  Can hardly wait.......