A girl just needs a little fire in her life.

One of my all time favorite things about fall and winter is that we get to have fires. I grew up living with an old olive and pearl wood stove pumping out heat in our kitchen. It'd fill our whole house with the coziest smells from all cooking and baking my parents did. They cooked more on the stove, more than any other appliance that I can remember. My dad was always making breakfast and keeping the fire toasty for those bone chilling mornings. The best bacon and egg breakfast sandwiches were served on warmed plates from the bread warmer on the stove. We never started a meal with a cold plate during the winter, and to me, this made meals so much more special because who wants to grab cold plates when it's freezing outside?! In order to have this luxury, it required the whole family to take the time to cut and stack the wood sometime before the fall season hit. I didn't always enjoy wood days, but at 13, I made it work.

The layout of our little 6 acre homestead provided easy access to any downed oak tree that needed cleaning up. Dad would back up the trailer, he'd start cutting and my grandpa would sit and split. Mom, grandma, and myself would load and then later unload and stack the wood. I never used gloves because I didn't want to be a baby, but I always ended up with decent scraps and split nail polish. Little did I know my father was instilling a forever wood stacking muscle memory in me.

Woodcutting and stacking is a minimal or even non-existent chore for most people nowadays with central heating or propane fireplaces. Yes, we have central heating, and hell yes we use it from time to time. Especially since I get a propane discount as part of my benefits through the high school. (I also found that to be a little odd yet such a cool employee benefit) For Jake and I, gathering wood is a seasonal chore we always enjoy doing after the first decent rainfall.

Today was the day we started our wood gathering season. Jake got the Toyota and saw ready, Redd hopped in the back, and we were off. We went to our usual honey-hole not to far from home, and just like my childhood, Jake would cut and I would load. Before we knew it, the truck was loaded and we were headed home to do my least favorite part, unloading and stacking. You don't really think about how much exercise you get from this! After stacking is completed, we blew out the truck, blew off the driveway and decks, and nestled down to cook dinner.

While cooking, Jake started the fire in our own quaint fireplace, lit some candles and turned on the twinkle lights. Add some quality YouTube tiny cabins content and we were enjoying our dinner and fire after a hard days work. Thinking back on fires being my favorite holiday decor, they really set the mood. Fires bring the heat, the spark and crackle to the holidays. They bring so much more than just warmth though! They offer so many opportunities to shed your wet snow clothes or rain gear, grab an Irish coffee (if you're old enough) and gather around to tell stories with friends and family. My fondest memories have been holding a hot chocolate sitting with my feet up next to the fire listening to the laughing and howling of my company. Watching their eyes light up when they walk in and see the fire after they've been out working in the cold all day, says it all.

To this day, I thank my father for instilling such great appreciation for such little, yet important, necessities in life. I'm even more grateful to be with a man who appreciates the same. It makes fire building that much more meaningful, as you're gathering your own wood and put the backbreaking strength into cutting and stacking. As soon as the sun goes down and it gets colder, man it sure feels good to grab some wood off the back deck and start a fire. It's reassuring. It's security, it's instinctive to provide warmth for your family. For some, it may not mean much, but to me, it means we're staying warm and are able to enjoy watching the flames for another night. All thanks to wood and to men who are able to find and harvest it. Nowadays, I'm thankful to have found a man that can bring the wood and the heat ;)

In the future, I hope that I'll be able to provide meals and warmth for my family on the same wood stove as my parents did for me. I hope that I get to share similar experiences with littles of my own and show them the ways of creating the best fire memories that they can. Fires can be so dangerous, yet so rewarding when done safely. Writing this makes me so giddy, since it's only the beginning of winter and there's so many more fires to be had. I look forward to those wood collecting days, because at the end of the day, even being extremely sore and sweaty, I helped provide warmth and memories for myself and family.