Blessed Yule and A New Oven Today

A Blessed Yule to all of my readers and friends. Today is the Winter Solstice, and as usual, I made my absolute deadline and got all of my holiday cards mailed out on time. I still have cards coming into my mailbox, and it's delightful to see the various lovely images and have a little bit of love from my friends and family. 

I saw this holiday card on Zazzle and thought it was 
really cute and clever. Thought I'd share it with 
all of you to brighten up your holidays. 

Today is Oven Day - by the time I get home from work today, I should have a new oven in place and ready to start baking and roasting. I'll run it empty for an hour at 400 F to get the new oven smell out of it (after looking through the Owners Manual) and I'll have a good look through the directions. I can hardly wait to use it. I've missed having an oven. We lost it during our weeks of hell in August (refrigerator died on the 14th, oven died on the 17th and toilet cracked on the 30th). We made do with the microwave, but an oven is an important part of any kitchen. 

Apparently my friend Helen has this exact oven and loves 
it. Hers is also convection, and I can't recall if ours will 
have that option or not. If so, I'll be delighted. I've always 
thought a convection oven would be lovely. I'll also 
be very happy with a good self-cleaning option since 
our last oven wasn't able to self-clean any more. 

DH wants to ask Jim K about range hoods and over-the-stove microwaves too, while he's here. We would  love to move our microwave above the cooktop so that we could use that counter space for one of the newer all-in-one ovens that do everything but jump over the moon. Our counter space is extremely limited, and we also have to be very aware of heat overflow. Whatever we get needs to be have a fan and be able to handle being mounted directly under cabinets that are heavily used. There are no counters in my kitchen that do not have overhead cabinets, and no cabinets that aren't fully utilized. 

We would dearly love to have our microwave mounted 
above our cooktop. Most of the range hoods with 
microwave we've looked at are much too large for our 
space. We have exactly 36" within which 
to work and want a microwave with a fan in 
that space. DH is going to ask Jim K for his 
thoughts after the oven is installed. There's got 
to be something out there that would fit and
he's likely to know what is available. 

So, as you can tell, one bridge crossed, the next bridge ahead - LOL. Still, I'm going to be grateful and dance the happy dance when I have an oven again. I have a turkey thawing in the refrigerator, just waiting for the opportunity to be roasted on Friday. 

Winter Solstice at Stonehenge will be live-streamed again 
this year. It's probably going on right now, in fact, given 
the time difference of five hours between us. Have a 
Blessed Yule. 

So have a wonderful Yule, celebrate the return of the sun to the skies in the North, and the retreat of the sun in the South. I'm going to plug in pictures and jump off to make my pool reservation for Friday morning. The gym closes at Noon on Friday, but the pool will be open for swimming at 5:00 am as usual, and I plan to be there to start my three-day vacation off on a good footing. Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow.