The day we had to steal the ice shanty heater to heat our house.

As I watched the weather report this morning they said it was a chilly -28' outside. And that is without the windchill, thank goodness the wind is not blowing this morning. Hearing him say that, immediately brought back memories of our first winter living here.

At the time our house only had a bedroom, bathroom and a semi-finished hallway, which is where we had our make ship kitchen. The kitchen was completely gutted to the bare studs and there was a huge hole in the floor. Sadly the hole in the floor went to our foundation, which in all reality, is the ground. It's not cement but pure sand. Unfortunately, the kitchen was the only way to enter and exit our house at the time, so we were unable to close the kitchen off from the the part of the house we were living in. So we got by. We put up a warm and oh so cute door made of clear plastic. And it was held on by some even cuter staples. I'm telling you would die if you saw it. Here are the only pictures I could find to show ya the kitchen at the time. Everything was the same as you see in the pictures, except we had replaced the windows and door, and those holes that you see in the floor, were actually cut into ONE BIG HOLE. There was no insulation in the walls, just the bare studs staring back at us. Don't worry, I had a cute little rug as you walked into the house that totally dressed things up. Oh ya, and we had a wooden spool (with a cute tablecloth on top) with half broken chairs in here too. Occasionally we would sit in here and dream of what it could be and other times we just sat in here together while I cried the whole time, wondering why we bought this place.

Ok, now that you get the picture, on with my story.

It was 6 years ago and a frigid winter day much like today. I came home from work at immediately noticed the house was freezing. It was a balmy 43' inside. HMM, immediately I thought the furnace wasn't working. I went and checked things out, but it was working. So not knowing what else to do, I did what I did most nights and grabbed my book and went into the clean, newly redone bathroom and wrapped myself up in a blanket, huddled again the baseboard heat and read a book. When the hubby got home, he found me in tears just sitting there. Desperately wanting to make me feel better, he told me that there was nothing he could do.(Insert more tears here!) Way to make a girl feel better, right? It was just too cold outside, and the house didn't have enough baseboard heat to keep the temp up, and of course the lack of insulation didn't help at all. So, my ever so cleaver hubby, came up with a solution and...
we had no other option but to steal the propane heater from his brothers ice shanty. So off to the pond we went get some heat. When we got home and hung that little propane heater in the kitchen, it was heavenly. Ok, not really, but it was no longer 43' inside. The smell was not so good, but we had heat. And it was so funny at the time, that we couldn't help but laugh. All those tears quickly turned into laughs. We continued to use the ice shanty heater for the rest of the winter and continued to live with our kitchen looking like it did for a year and a half. Funny how when I think back to this time, my house is a palace now! And thankfully our kitchen looks like this now.

So today I am appreciating this little home of ours again. We may be crammed and desperately trying to get out of each others way, but at least we are toasty warm! And thankfully these memories of mine make me appreciate just what we have! Because, "it could be worse!"