Who turned off the heat?

in the South? It's cold. We went from 77 last week to not getting over 40 yesterday. I actually love Winter and the cold. Much better than the horrible sweltering heat. But this year there wasn't really a transition from warm to cold. I think Fall came while I was having a baby. I went into the hospital and it was hot hot and came out and the leaves were changing. The leaves are all falling from the trees, the cold is here and it's supposed to be 20 degrees tonight! The last of the squash will die off tonight.

But there's an upside to all this cold. This gorgeousness.... one of my all time favorite things...

There's just nothing like the smell of a woodstove. When I got up this morning Clay had already started the fire. Walking down the stairs to that faint smell was heavenly. Now I admit I wanted to still be sleeping (I have a 3 week old that thinks he should be wide awake until 2am) but that smell made me smile. And the heat. Oh the heat. It's just different. Central heat and air is great but it doesn't feel like heat. It keeps the house warm but there's not warmTH. Wood is warmTH. Love it. Seeing children sitting all around the stove sharing a book because it's the warmest spot in the house is just nice. Coming in from the cold to put your hands above the stove to warm them up is just nice. The sounds of crackling wood, snaps, pops of wood in the stove, is just nice. I can't wait to get the wood cookstove hooked up. You'll never hear the end of my love affair with wood then :)

And of course, I can't not post another sweet Hartley picture. He is changing so fast that in each picture I take he looks different than the last! Okay this picture makes me chuckle. He looks like a sweet happy piglet to me in this picture. Oink. Love when they're all cute and piglety and have those upturned breastfeeding noses and make little piglet grunting noises. I could eat him up. Not like pork of course. But in a "I could just eat those toes right up" kind of way :)

Love you Hartley dude.

Who needs flowers? - Take 2

Remember my first installment of "Who Needs Flowers?" Well my sweet husband has done it again. A ways back I emailed him a nice wood cookstove that I saw on craigslist. I've wanted one forever. Slowly, way slower than I'd like hehe, we're working towards living without much electricity. I think we're still quite a ways from my hubby giving up running HOT water and flushing toilets but cooking with woodstoves and weaning off lightbulbs, we're getting there. Anyways, I've been keeping my eye out for wood cookstoves. BOY they're expensive even on craigslist. Then I found this beauty. It was almost 2 hours away and while cheap, still a fair amount of money for us. He told me he wasn't thinking we could get it. I tried to let it go but kept making little comments here and there about it. Yes I should have let it go. I tried. Honestly.

So I eventually figured we weren't getting it. Then late Friday night I made some little comment followed sweetly and jokingly by "you non woodstove getting husband hehe" He just smiled and said "who said I'm a non woodstove getting husband?" "WHAT?!!!!!!" replies his astonished wife. "I WAS going to surprise you but I'm going to get it early tomorrow morning". "I LOVE YOU!!" I squealed as I covered him with kisses.

And the next morning the alarm went off at 5 AM (on Saturday no less) and a few hours later he returned with this beauty. (ignore the fact that I had to piece two photos together and didn't feel like working on it to make it look right)


It's in pretty great condition. Very little rust, no cracks, nice white finish still. It does need a little TLC from me. I'll be getting rid of all the rust I can, either oiling it or stove blacking it (still need to research that), etc. We're not so sure about the water resevoir since it's just an open box with nothing else and there's a space under the water resevoir I need to figure out the purpose of. Clay's going to get the metal shop guys to build him a new insert for the hot water that perhaps I can lift out or.. well we haven't figured that out yet.

My hubby and son had fun because they said it was a really nice lady they brought it from. My son was more excited though about seeing all her geese and animals and whatnot but he's 9. She was happy it was going to a family that would actually use it and love it. And we will. All winter long we plan on using it. And for the summer... well my son's next job is hauling rock over to where together the kids and I will be building an outdoor grill. I'd LOVE to build an outdoor oven but one step at a time. I'll start pictures of the outdoor grill this week as we get started.

Anyways, the wood cookstove. I'm in LOVE with it. Well and my husband too. And my son who went with him.