PREPARATIONS

The preparations have begun. For winter that is. We woke to temperatures in the 30's this morning. Some of the windows in the house were still open and we had no fire, so it was quite chilly!!
Seeing as how we were using air conditioning less than a week ago, we are not quite ready to begin heating our house with the wood stove. We're now on our way though.
Doug and Andrew removed the wood stove from the fireplace and took it outside where it can be cleaned out well. While it's out, we're going to have the chimney cleaned for the first time, hopefully sometime this week.



Doug custom built a really cool and really strong dolly to use for moving the stove. I'm sure he'll find plenty of other uses for it too.

It seemed to work quite well!!

Then it was on to the wood. We had a tree fall across our driveway earlier in the summer. This is that tree. It will be the start of our large wood pile that we'll need to heat the house for the winter. Doug was a happy boy having his new tractor for hauling wood today. Everything is easier when you have the right tools!!

Finally, I got our bed ready for the chilly nights. I washed the comfy flannel sheets and hung them out on the line in the sunshine all day. I also hung out the down comforter that has been off of our bed for the past couple of months. After they got a good airing, I brought them back in and made the bed. The whole room smells like fresh air now. I can't wait to crawl between the sheets and pile the blankets on tonight. I may have to go to bed a little early!

Tomorrow we'll work on switching out our summer clothes for the winter ones. Usually when I do this, the weather turns right back to warm. We'll keep a couple of t-shirts out just in case.