Well, sort of new. New as in I’ve been meaning to write about it since August, how about that?

There are two Universal truths about Matt and myself.

1. We absolutely HATE our backyard, as the sun beams down on the entire thing all day long and burns the grass, so there is none. It’s an unusable wasteland.

2. Besides movies, neither of us can stand to watch TV. So most winter activities like board games will really only go so far…

The perfect solution: Build a firepit in our backyard. In fact, if we continue to develop the backyard, eventually we’d like to get rid of all the lawn completely. We can’t use it during the day - so let’s really use it at night!

The spot is staked:
(note the sunlight)

Reboot does a great job guarding the circle:

To get a perfectly circular firepit: Stick a large stake where you want the center of the circle to be. Cut a piece of string equal to the radius of the circle (allow extra to tie it). Tie the string to the stake. Around the other end of the string, tie a can of spray paint. Now, hold the string taught and spray on the ground to make a circle!

Sigh. Well, this was the perfect spot. That boulder ain’t moving. On the count of three, we fill this back in and move the entire firepit two feet back! Doh, doh, doh, doh…

Matt and I collected rocks from the neighbor’s drainage ditch (there was still plenty left when we left, don’t worry), and Matt did a professional-grade job arranging them! One key criteria I had was that I wanted to be able to rest my feet on the rocks while there was a fire.

Finally, Matt added some blue crushed gravel.
Top it off with eight adirondack chairs, four tables in between the chairs, six tiki torches around the yard, three citronella buckets, beer, wine and lots of friends, and you’ve got a great party!

Awesome job, Matt!

At night: