Brrrrr…Spring?

Although winters usually seem long, the winter of 2013-2014 has seemed even longer with broken records for snowfall amount (loved it!), cold (-15 degrees C and lower which is unusual for this part of the province), school closures due to snow storms and power outages. Starting over the Christmas holidays, our province experienced rolling black outs for the first time and many of us were outraged by what seemed a lack of common sense on the part of our power providers, a scheduled servicing of a generator for December (because God knows it never gets cold here in December. That's dripping sarcasm in case you can't tell) for example and other mistakes (if you could 'see this coming' then why couldn't the public have been asked to conserve energy much, much earlier and potentially have avoided the mass black outs that frustrated and potentially endangered many people across the province?). Mudder went to visit her sister in Mount Pearl for a 'sleep over' for a night, returning five days later when the power was back on and the roads cleared from the ongoing snow storms. I was starting to fear we were entering another Ice Age.

In January of 2013, we lost our power for five. Solid. Days. That sucked. When DH and I lived in Goose Bay, Labrador, we often lost power. Lightening strikes in the summer and winter storms sometimes created vicious conditions for power generating stations. When we lived in Middleton, NS, our house came with a power generator as Nova Scotia is not immune to the occasional and devastating hurricane and the havoc they wreak. We experienced power failure in Kanata too.

DH out with the snow blower after only one of our winter storms.
Our snow blower was WELL used this year. Even by me.

This is Canada's most Easterly province jutting out into the North Atlantic so I suppose we have to assume the occassional weather smack down by Mother Nature. In anticipation of the trend continuing, DH and I decided in the Fall of 2013 that rather than investing in a generator that would provide power and only be used a few days in any given year (and not necessarily each year) we would invest in a wood stove that would not only help us out with being a heat source when the power was out but something that we could enjoy for many months of the year. 

To that end, DH and I started discussing where in the open concept kitchen/dining room/living room the wood stove would go. My WIPs (works in progress) are generally quite small. DH takes on the big ones.

Getting started.

Looking good. The installers can come back and
attach the stove as soon as the hearth is finished.
We will eventually have a small shelf (mantle) on the
back three sides of the post.

A close up of the stone. We love it and stuck to the design
principal of using a finish that reflects the landscape surrounding
us. We have rocks in our backyard just like the rust ones and slate
is very common here.

The hearth slate was a bit of a coup. It came from left over roofing
tiles from the freshly built home we lived in in Germany. A
beautiful and sentimental touch.

The last week has seen us spot our first robin in the front yard which is always a welcome sign. The snow is melting, the backyard muddy and Spring fever is running rampant through our household of boys. Too bad flurries are back in the forecast for tonight. I'm really getting tired of the same old, same old weather forecast.

The grass of Spring.

A boy doing boy things: filling his pockets
with gravel.

Swinging! My favourite!