Burn, Baby, Burn

I barely unpacked from Tanzania and I found myself into a new project! We had been thinking about making an extension off our patio for a chiminea for awhile now. Somehow, though, we got carried away while watering the garden last week...watering turned into clearing out an area...which turned into a visit to Home Depot for materials. Yikes! Put the breaks on! I still have massive amounts of laundry to do! All of the sudden, wham-o! A new paver mini-patio with a brand new chiminea. This turned out to be a way less ambitious patio than the one we built a few years ago, thank goodness! In the end, we’re feeling very Californian with more opportunities to spend in our garden. See the photos of the small patio and the chiminea in our backyard.

I'm slacking - I didn’t include a post about our new fireplace from last winter, which was a big deal for me. So, keeping with the fire theme of this post, I'll inform you that we installed a gas fireplace in our living room. This project required a ton of research and persistence on my part over the 3 winters we have spent in our home thus far...I needed a fireplace in a bad way! We finally found one that fit in our space and complied with all of the annoying Boston-area codes. End the end, we stayed warm this winter! Click on the photo to the left to see it larger.