Settling in for winter

[beetiger]

Reclaiming. Using the fireplace for the first time this season, and I'm pretty sure we never got to it last season. Color-flaming Duraflame in there, and big handfuls of fireplace incense on top of it to cover up the chemical smell a bit. I have no idea why we have a case of these in the laundry room, but we seem to. Random mellow bits of my music collection coming out of the Zune dock, laundry in the machine, webwork on the laptop on the couch and a novel that I've been meaning to read for forever.

We haven't actually used the downstairs den much in the last while. It kind of ended up as a dump space for a bit, and the lighting isn't quite right and it took a good bit of work to make it useable and clear the six spare cats worth of hair down here left form when my old cat took over the space entirely for the year or two before she passed away.

I can't justify pouring myself a glass of wine at 8:30 in the morning. Maybe hot chocolate in a bit.

But in the meantime, flickering flames. I used to watch the Yule Log broadcast on WPIX every year at Christmas, the whole thing, hours and hours. My family thought it was weird because, well, I was staring at a fire on a TV screen for 4 hours, listening to recorded Christmas carols, and well, we were Jewish. But I was kind of an obsessive kid, and well, there's something about a fire. The current setup of the den means that the fire is being reflected right in the center of the dark screen of the television down here, the one I don't think I've turned on in months.

Is it crazy that I'm feeling at home in my home for the first time in forever? I think maybe it's a good sign for a productive winter.

Comments

[autumnquest.livejournal.com]

Sounds nice and cozy. I'm really going to miss having a fireplace. Loki and I used ours alot and yours is really nice. Enjoy!

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Oh it sounds wonderful! I hope it gets cold enough down here for us to use our fireplace. There's nothing like a fire. :)

Do you make your own hot chocolate from scratch? I'm always looking for good recipes.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Right now I am still in "use up stuff" mode, and I have packets of powder in the pantry from only gods know where.

But when I make hot chocolate from scratch it's boil milk in a saucepan, throw in a handful of milk chocolate chips, a pinch of salt, a pinch of cayenne or chipotle powder, and three pinches of cinnamon.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Milk chocolate chips! Hmm, I wouldn't have thought of that.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

Aww, such a beautiful post. I feel cozier just reading.

I love fire too, as does Daniel. We are planning on lighting one tonight - it's going down to...don't laugh...50F. :-)

[stonetalker.livejournal.com]

I've been in this house for three years, and I'm still waiting for it to feel like I'm at home in my home. Getting there. Close but not cigar.

And I definitely didn't feel at home in my last house. We bought the house to get out of living with my sister-in-law. It served us well and I was very grateful to have it, but it was not the house I would have chosen, nor was it the area I would have chosen. No way, no how. It was just a miracle we needed at the time.

In England we always had a fireplace. When I get homesick, it's usually for the 900 year old farmhouse from my first marriage, or for the converted corner shop with its enormous erratically shaped rooms that we left when we came to the US.

Perhaps this is the year when I can finally get a fireplace put into this house (we have been given an old 'franklin stove'), sort the wheat from the chaff in the stuff we seem to have accumulated, and start living in a home rather than a house again.

And even as I write that, a wry smile comes across my face; I feel very 'home' in the garden, more so than in the house. I wonder what that says about me...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I don't really feel like our apartment is "home". It's just "where we sleep and keep our stuff".