No matter how much fun lies ahead, it is always a sad day when you have to take the boat out of the water!

We arrived at our own private winter wonderland about 5:00 last night. The lane to our cabin greeted us with a wonderful site.

The driveway, on the other hand, was not beautiful but a job waiting to be done. I knew it was going to be bad because I had called to get the septic holding tank pumped out, and the driver called me back and asked when we were going to have the driveway plowed so he could get in.

We got the snowblower going and cleared the drive only to get another four inches of snow overnight. It is truly beautiful around here and I was very thankful that the wind did not come up overnight and blow all the snow off the pine branches.

So, this morning after doing my PT exercises for my knee, I put on my boots and headed out the door with my phone to capture some of this.

Here are some of my favorites. I like this one for the bends in the trees. The snow is sure adding a lot of weight, but luckily I have not noticed any broken branches.

I always like to play with the macro feature of the iPhone. This one really captured the crystals of the snow.

And finally one of our favorite places to hang out with the kids when there are with us. The fire pit! I would love to have a fire going in there right now if only to add a spash of color.

And finally here is one of the heavily laden pins on the lake side of the house. I love that tree on the left. the landscaper wanted to pull it out 22 years ago, but I said no. Lets let it grow.

After my walk we did another round of shoveling and snow blowing. It looks like a guaranteed white Christmas this year, and I’m looking forward to Kaia, Tanner, Josh, Rachel, Johannes and Maren joining us soon for Christmas.

I love the change of seasons! I took this last fall when the light was beautiful.

I took this an hour ago. Fresh snow, still coming down.

I love it when a good plan comes together.  Last summer we decided to finally take the plunge and build a pizza oven at the lake.  After looking at the options to site the oven, and thinking about a fireplace/oven combination, we finally decided to combine the pizza oven project with our desire to replace the aging and increasingly ugly outdoor bar area.
In late June I contacted a few different stone masons to start to get an idea of cost and availability.  I was immediately impressed with David Marek www.layersofstone.com and his ideas on the project.  I checked some references and decided that my initial impression was correct, that David would be a good guy to work with.  Here’s his original sketch of our project.



David was able to start tearing out the old bar, and working on the replacement the last week of July.  He just finished the project last week, in time for us to enjoy some Pizza with our friends this last weekend.  The result was beyond my expectations.  Here’s a photo of the final outcome that you can compare with the plan:















For more shots of the project you can check out my Flickr Photo Set
Last saturday was the inaugural pizza baking.  It took about two hours to get the oven fully up to temperature, but the wait was well worth it.  We used this crust recipe and pre-baked the crusts on both sides for just a few seconds.  The crusts came out very light and crunchy.  I’m looking forward to trying out lots of different crust recipes, but this was definitely a winner.