A Merry Little Christmas

 

We got the Santa puzzle done last night. Since it's just The Mister and me for Christmas this year we've had plenty of time to just putter around the house for the past few days. 

On the 23rd we had a Frigidaire technician come out to try and figure out the stinking, smoking oven. It just keeps getting worse. He took it apart and couldn't find a thing wrong but he agreed that the smell was terrible. He said they are putting lots of chemical cleaners on them because of Covid but this is beyond what he expected.  He says we need a new stove so now the fight begins to get one. Lowe's doesn't want to hear about it. Frigidaire is going to send out yet another guy to see what's going on. Needless to say it put a damper on Christmas dinner. 

But......the one thing this remodel has taught me is to be resourceful. Lasagna in a crockpot? It can be done and it was actually good and easier than in an oven. I even had another crockpot of minestrone going all day so we could have our traditional meal in spite of the obstacles. 

I couldn't bake anything for dessert but I did make individual trifles using those packaged strawberry shortcake thingys you get in the produce section. It wasn't exactly like Mom's but it worked. It's been a year of making do. 

This hasn't exactly been a sit and knit kind of December either but I did get half of sweater number 3 done yesterday afternoon. I'd like to have them all by next Christmas so I hope this fire doesn't burn out. I've got a long way to go. 

The hardest thing I did all day was decide which Christmas movie to watch with my peppermint martini last night. Christmas Vacation won. 

It's been a quiet, low key kind of holiday but I did have one big squee moment when I discovered.....berries on one of my holly bushes. I've been coveting holly berries for years and this time one of them finally delivered. Those three little red berries made me so happy. It's the little things that mean the most.