Sunny Days

HOT STUFF: Spring has sprung! ... 

OK, not technically, yet, but Monday was the warmest March 18 on record at Sea-Tac Airport, according to  the National Weather Service.  It was also the warmest winter day on record (spring doesn't really start until March 20), and it was the earliest day in the calendar year to hit temperatures this high. And Tuesday was even hotter, with some thermometers registering 80 degrees!

The daffodils have been pushed out of hibernation and into full bloom. The one below is from a a pair of bulbs I dug up and we brought with us when we moved. I wanted to take them with, because CJ and Annabelle planted them when they were super young, and I couldn't bear to leave them behind.  

The sunshine felt delightful, for sure. The weather definitely spurred us to get our garden going. We planted dozens of wildflower seeds along our driveway, hoping they'll be food for our future bee hive. And we sowed some leek seeds for fun.

The seeds were all a couple of seasons old, so we'll see what happens. We figured putting them in the ground was better than chucking them in the compost bin!

We also got our indoor starts started. Here's hoping we have some pepper, tomato and sprouts soon!

INVESTIGATION: The past couple of weekends, we've spent a few hours getting to know our "new" oven. 

Actually, it's not even close to new. It's an old beauty - a 1962 Frigidaire Flair Custom Imperial.

I think I first saw one in the mid-1960s, on the television show "Bewitched." 

The one "Samantha" is standing at is *just* like the one we now own.

We bought it months and months ago, from a private party on the Olympic Peninsula. The woman said she was told everything worked on it. We had no way to test it (it has a funky old plug), so we had to take her word for it.

It has been sitting in our garage for months now, but we think we have our kitchen remodel pictured, and before we committed to that and built it around this old stove, we wanted to make sure the thing worked. Christian managed to make an outlet for it in the garage. We fired it up and there was good news and bad. The good news was the two front burners and the left/small oven worked. The bad news? The big oven didn't heat up at all. Neither did the back burners. 

Naturally, Christian saw this as an exciting challenge. ;) He dove right in, and I jumped online. 

One thing we learned from the Internet is that these units have a switch in them that won't allow the back burners to turn on unless you have the cooking surface pulled out all of the way.  We made sure that we had the burner unit slid all the way out. It still didn't work. We still suspected it was a switch issue and Christian located the two switches. Lo and behold, one of them was badly broken.

Christian fashioned a splint for it, sandwiching it between two Popsicle-type sticks and secured it with hardcore glue. After the glue dried, he reinstalled the switch, and guess what? It worked! Woo hoo!

There are still a few things to check out on the unit, but overall, we're thrilled that it works as well as it does.

 On one peek inside the unit, I noticed a wiring diagram on its 'ceiling.' 

 That diagram might come in handy in the future. 

The oven needs a super thorough cleaning, but now that we know that it works, we can move forward with our kitchen plans.