Birthday Self-Treating

As you've likely heard on several major media outlets, we demolished and removed a shed earlier this year. We were left with a blank(ish) slate in that corner of the property that we could embellish a bit so we treated ourselves.

I love my fire pit. Christine does not love my fire pit. She wants to take a mace to it. While I can admit that it's starting to look pretty shabby, this is one issue on which I am ready to put my foot straight down with great authority. When Christine isn't around.

While that gets sorted out, we bought a fire bowl.

Just the facts, ma'am/man: Three of the large stones were brought from home. Our water barrel rested on them before it was rendered inoperative following a hail storm (no, really, the attachment to the eaves trough was punctured).

Christine managed to find two more to make a little pattern, then fed her addiction of making me carry heavy things down several flights of stairs by buying 14 metric tons of crushed stone (estimated). It might not seem like that many on the picture above, but there were more added later.

Along with all that, as mentioned previously we moved the old dock over to that end and are using it to support the canoe. By and large, this is our little spot now:

We want to find ourselves a nice couple of chairs or maybe a bench and make that our little "couples" spot.

The fire pit will still work for larger get-togethers and for burning leaves and such, but this is a little more cozy. In fact it served as a great spot from which to smoke our birthday cigars (Cubans, don't you know, gifts from Caroline and Asley's wedding).

Hell of a view that night...

We're not quite done there yet, but it's already much, much more enjoyable.