Fire & Mayhem on the Farm

We had a fire.. in the kitchen.. here is how it happened.  We went shopping for Thanksgiving on Wednesday.. when we got home Dayle brought in a heavy bag and swung it up onto the cooktop where we would unload the bag.  He then went outside and was moving my car and getting some pellets.  I headed to the other end of the house and was taking some pillow shams out of the packaging.. and started to hear a beeping, then I smelled smoke.. so I headed down the hall and saw FLAMES on the stove!!  What had happened was that when D put the heavy bag on the counter/cooktop, he'd accidentally hit the knob and turned the burner on high.. and the bag of groceries caught on fire!

When I walked into the kitchen, miniature marshmallows were flying through the air, and  melted marshmallows all over the floor, fresh cranberries were popping and flying through the air and were all over the floor and a bag of bread cubes were burning like coal, the flames were 2 feet high!  I admit, in retrospect, that I did not perform well in this emergency.  My main action was to go to the back door and scream at the top of my lungs for Dayle.. instead of dumping water on it myself.  :-(  When he got in we both worked to get water on the fire and we put it out.  The neighbor lady and her friend showed up, they'd heard me yelling for Dayle.. come to find out the guy was a firefighter and helped us immensely by helping D get the smoldering things out of the house and told us how to air out the house, etc.  He told us that a few minutes more and the paper towels would have ignited and the whole kitchen would have burned, if not the whole house.  ::sigh::

The microwave is "toast" and so is the stove.  There is just a bit of charring on the cabinet to the right of the main burned part.  We really actually got off lucky.  The house was full of smoke and still smells smoky, but it could have been sooooo much worse. 

Yesterday we spent all afternoon visiting appliance stores to find replacements.  You don't know how important your microwave and stove are until they are not there for you.  Happily, we found what we wanted at the last place visited, which is a local small store in Gresham.  I am happy to buy from a family owned store.  AND.. they are bringing them to install them this very afternoon!! 

On to happier things.. the 3 Christmas Cactuses in my garden window are in bloom.  And after getting that colorful duvet cover, I realized we needed some colorful pillows, so we went back to the store and found these pillow shams to match.  I still want to do a crochet pillow in these colors.. someday.

Should I do a round?  Bolster?  Square?  All three? :-)

See the skylights over the bed?  I love them.  When you wake up, you know right away what the weather is.  Rain?  Dry?  Blue skies?  Snow?   

I will try to get some photos of the new stuff in the kitchen after they put it all in.  We also got a new dishwasher as.. :-)... I fell into it a few years back and bent the hinges.  OK, we seem to be a couple of clumsy screw-ups, huh?  LOL!  I hope you all have a great weekend!!  I'm going to a really neat art/craft show tomorrow with my younger sister.  I'll take some photos to share with you.  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)