It's A New Year and a New Oven

I have been negligent, yet again, in my posting. At this moment I am downstate at Hal's sister's house. Been here for a week. Tomorrow I will go home as she is going back to nursing school. It's raining outside here but up north we got snow and a goodly amount I have heard. That should make it nice for Luna as she does seem to like the snow though not as much as my good boy Rocket did.

Toward the end of 2010 by gas oven, which runs on propane, did not turn off 3 times and I did not find out till the next day. Fortunately, the flame remained on and though it cost me in fuel it did fill my house with gas. I've never liked that range, it was the cheapest GE the previous owner (who bought the whole property and divided it into 7 sections to sell for profit) could put in. It had the broiler drawer on the bottom which is literally a pain in the back to use, the flames were blue tipped yellow instead of solid blue so it was burning inefficiently and the oven temperature was off anywhere from 75 to 150 degrees depending on the required temperature and the mood it was in. It had been adjusted as far as it could be and was just not a joy to use. Plus those old burners did not boil water very fast and it would take 3 hours to get my 17 quart pressure canner pressurized.

My new oven which I bought in a year end sale and is a Frigidaire is a joy to use. It's got sealed burners so no water gets inside, it lights quickly, heats water, oh, so much faster! It has the broiler inside the oven where it should be. I even got it in the "bisque" color to match my dishwasher and refrigerator. I'd have loved to get one with a 5th burner in the middle but that would have cost an extra $300.

First day it came I roasted a chicken. I've baked cookies, boiled noodles, it's been an utter joy to use. I think canning vegetables will be so much easier this year!

(edited to add photo)

Visitors in the House!

Yes, my Christmas time guests are back again. Lyra and her mom boyfriend. (We'll call them K and M.) They got in Sunday afternoon after leaving Massachusetts pulling a U-Haul trailer stuffed with my mom's living room furniture.

(I forgot to finish this the other day so I'll write something quickly.)

In the few days they've been here Lyra, Luna, K and I have done a lot of walking in the woods. K and I have gone shopping, once for food and once for gifts.

It's Christmas Eve now and in an hour we'll be heading over to Uncle Butch's for a party. I made sweet and sour meatballs.

During this week Hal and M have been hunting and finally late this afternoon one has gotten a deer. They'll show up to the party later after they've hung it in the pole barn.

That's it for now, I am tired, and have to change clothes.

Merry Christmas.

Family Christmas Party Day!!

Today  Hal and I will attend the annual Family Christmas party for his side of the family.I drove down with his mom 2 days ago so she and I and her daughter could just hang out together and bake. I made an egg nog cake I've never tried before, home made applesauce, and I have a pineapple stuffing ready to go into the oven once I retrieve it from my car where it spent the night as the refrigerator is full.

Hal is driving his dad down this morning and have already left. Will take them about 4 hours to get here. We'll all meet up at J & M's home where the party takes place every year as they've got the biggest house in the area. It will be great to see everyone as not all could make it to Thanksgiving up north. Only one family won't be present as they are now in Texas, being a military family and subject to moving about a lot.

Other food that I know will be there are "Mexican chicken", a spiral ham, pumpkin pies, the famous C's cheese ball, cheesy potatoes, and undoubtedly several other desserts. Soda, tonic, pop, coke, whatever you want to call the bubbly, effervescent, fizzy, carbonated beverage will be the drink of the day.

Besides eating there will be a gift grab bag, one for women, one for men, everyone participating provides a gift, this year, the price limit was raised to $10. The children under 18 exchange gifts with another cousin whose name was picked for them at Thanksgiving. And after all this there is a "White Elephant" game where everyone gets to choose a mysterious gift that another family member contributed because he/she didn't want it. Gets rather silly at this point because some of the gifts are really awful or even useless to the one who gets it yet now and then one is pretty cool. those risk being "stolen away" by someone else with a really lame gift. Can be funny.

Well, probably should go get that stuffing out of my car and turn the oven on. One of these days I'll update the blog again.

I Like My HDTV!

It finally arrived Friday. It has been held hostage since the 17th of November in a warehouse in Taylor, MI. The shipping company claimed they can only deliver to my area on Thursdays, and since last Thursday was a holiday (Happy belated Thanksgiving) they couldn't deliver till the other day. Oddly, they didn't deliver on Thursday, Dec 2nd, but instead Friday, December 3rd. Wonder what their excuse would have been had I asked why not Thursday?

However, what I researched and purchased was an LG 42 inch LCD HDTV 1080p 120 Hz. I must say it looks very, very good. Damn good in fact. Hal also hooked up all our speakers so we're getting Dolby 5.1 surround sound again.

We reoriented our living room to accommodate this set up. Essentially, rotated the furniture 90 degrees. The TV, as it's very thin compared to our cathode ray tube 24" TV is now on the bookcase against the staircase wall between our tall oak cabinets. Stereo remains on the left side and we moved all the TV components to the cabinet on the right. Hal removed the old TV cabinet to his camp and moved his 8 point deer head to that wall. Eventually, it will have a chair beneath it when my younger sister brings the family furniture here in 2 weeks.

Since we had to remove a lot of knick knacks from the shelves to make this rearrangement, I have to put them all back again with fewer shelves as those same components took those shelves over. So, slowly I am dusting and polishing and replacing. Might get it done by the time my sister, her BF and Lyra get here in 2 weeks.

Or not. But the TV will still look good!

Bought a BIG TV and a few Other Things

At least it's big for me. A 42" LG high definition television. Looks nice, I've seen other LG's in person but not this one. Bought it from Amazon. It's supposed to be here by the end of the week. Bought it for $300 off list price. I was planning to stand outside a store on Black Friday hoping to get something similar, but Amazon has been having some pretty good pre-Black Friday sales. Can't wait for it to get here, our current TV is only a couple years old, and isn't a bad little TV, but it's only 24" and is not high def so can't take advantage of the HD signal we're getting from DirecTV. We'll have to pull the old stand out of the loft to set it on but that's no problem though a little awkward to maneuver down the stairs. The current stand will look very nice at Hal's hunting camp with the little 24" one.

Tonight I'm heading to his camp with a dinner of venison heart, a strawberry cake and a salad. Opening day of rifle season is tomorrow so I'll be out there with my dad's gun looking for dinner. Hal has already given a couple deer away to some of our less fortunate neighbors. They really appreciate it.

Luna will spend tonight and tomorrow at Uncle Butch's with her Uncle Yogi, Tank and whichever other doggie friends happen to drop by. Uncle Butch's granddaughter will feed and left my birds out of their coops in the morning so I don't have to rush back.

Did a little shopping last week, too. Bought Hal a new fleece hoodie. He liked it so much I went back the next day and got him another.

Eleven days till Thanksgiving. Many of Hal's clan will be up here for dinner at the farm, then holiday shopping on Black Friday. I'm looking forward to it. Plus I no longer have to get up at 5 am to wait outside Walmart in hopes of snagging a TV on the cheap.