I love a warm kitchen

This is one of my favorite times of the year.

Though we're not big on Thanksgiving (with 2 consecutive days off, to be honest, we'd rather spend the time travelling)...I still love the "warmth" that is felt during this time of year. In my opinion, between Halloween and Thanksgiving is that magical time when people seem nicer and more caring to each other.  (But...once we hit Black Friday, all that seems to go out the window as people get a little crazy the closer it gets to Christmas when they realize they're running out of shopping days.)

It's also the time of year when kitchens are filled with warmth and good smells and foods from the oven.  That's when I dust off my apron and answer only to "Sadie Sadie the married lady." Last year, I enjoyed baking multiple loaves of zucchini and pumpkin bread.

It's true what they say -- you never realize how much you miss something until you've lost it.

Some time ago, we had a pizza night with a few friends.  (In case I haven't already mentioned it, my husband makes the most amazing pizzas!)  Well, that evening, our KitchenAid oven got slightly dirty from all the pizzas.  Some time later, I decided to run the "clean cycle" on our fancy dancy oven.  Bad move on my part.

Halfway through the clean cycle, our oven died.  The range (burners on the stove) still worked, but the lights on the oven were out and there was no way to heat it up (not to mention that the door remained locked from the clean cycle).  I later discovered that many (at least 6, by my count) of our neighbors had already encountered this exact same issue. (Did I mention that the oven wasn't even that dirty when I ran the clean cycle?  Oops.) Well, our oven snafu put the kibosh on my baking plans for a short period of time.

Thankfully, it turned out that our oven had just blown a fuse, and we were happy to find out that the entire oven didn't need to be replaced (though it was touch-and-go there for a bit).   I left the whole thing to my hubby and thanks to him, it got fixed...putting my baking plans back in full swing!