Housecleaning

We need to have guests more often.

The last few days have been a frenzy of domestic activity. We have friends coming to visit and we've been busy styling the house.

Steve returned from Hawaii with a spartan mentality. Our house is hardly spartan. He had just spent 3 1/2 months, living with the bare minimum and he had gotten comfortable. He returned to our small, cluttered life and was immediately overwhelmed with all of our stuff. He's been weeding out clutter ever since.

Housing in Aspen is very expensive. Space is costly. So we all live in small spaces. Our house is approximately 1400 square feet. 3 bedrooms/2 baths with a loft office. It's awesome for us. Rachel has her own room, Steve has an art studio, I have an office. We each have our space.

But it's small. We also live in a place where we do lots of activities. Activities take lots of gear and lots of toys. We have bikes, we have skis, we have kayaks, we have camping gear, we have rafting gear . . .

We juggle the gear. What season is it? Time to cycle the gear. Bring out the ski stuff, put away the camping stuff. Our storage space is like a puzzle. It all fits but if you want something, you have to untangle it.

I need that, so I have to move this and this and this, get that and then put back this and this and this.

But guests are good. We look at our space with a fresh eye. What's necessary? What works?

We need to have guests more often.

Come visit.

Good husband

My husband bought me a chimenea. Good husband!

I love my chimenea.

I've wanted an outdoor chimenea for my upstairs balcony for years, ever since I saw one on my friends' back deck.

Now, any sort of a fire pit on my upstairs balcony is a tricky proposition. Our balconies, instead of having metal railings, are surrounded by wood siding, wood being flammable.

For this reason, I was attracted to the chimenea with its enclosed fire pit which basically eliminates the likelihood of swirling embers flying through the air and landing on the wood siding.

A couple of years ago, I mentioned my desire to my husband but I neglected to explain my thought process regarding the preferability of the chimenea over an open fire pit. So my husband, being a good husband, surprised me with an open (albeit screened) fire pit on Christmas Eve. And I, being a good wife, was very appreciative of my good husband's gesture even though my stomach was a knot of anxiety the whole time the fire was burning in the fire pit and the embers were swirling wildly in the winter wind.

We didn't light a fire in the fire pit again until we donated it to our neighborhood a year later for a New Year's Eve bonfire in the middle of our outdoor common area.

Fast forward another year (to this year). Good husband goes on a shopping expedition (as I have previously explained, most shopping round these parts involves an expedition). Upon his return, he meets us and some friends at the local movie theater. After the movie, walking home, as we approach our neighborhood, he inexplicably speeds up, claiming an urgent need to use the bathroom. I swallow this pretext, hook, line and sinker.

I leisurely amble into the house and upstairs where what to my wondering eyes does appear but a glowing fire seemingly floating on my upstairs balcony. Very cool.

So we've been enjoying our chimenea. It's quite delightful, lying on the bed with the lights dimmed, watching the flames flicker in their little enclosed space.