Backyard Campfire
Hi, everyone! Cheryl's post made me think I ought to post about what we did last weekend.
With the weather getting cooler, my husband and I just kept thinking about campfires....but we didn't want to actually go camping! (I just can't bring myself to sleep in a tent with the baby...rolling over and nursing all night is okay in my king-sized bed but not in a sleeping bag.) We went to Lowe's and bought six 12-inch landscaping stones. They're about 3-4 inches tall. We put them in a circle in the yard to make an inexpensive fire ring. (I think the cost for the stones was $11.) My husband can get scrap wood from work, so he brought home quite a bit.
We invited everyone from our church over Friday evening (there are only eight families in our church, about 25-30 people with the kids included). We were hoping everyone would come, but some were out of town and some had out-of-town guests. We had ten show up, besides my family of five.
We ringed the chairs around the campfire and made s'mores and hot chocolate. (Which I stumbled on the idea of putting the styrofoam cups in a cupcake pan so they wouldn't fall over when I carried them outside.) We have an old fashioned popcorn popper that you hold over a fire, so we popped popcorn too. Everyone thought the old-fashioned popper was really neat. (It's like the one the Wilder family uses in Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Farmer Boy. I think we bought it at a Cracker Barrel, but I really dont remember.)
Anyway, we had loads of fun just talking together and letting the kids play. We have a kid-sized tent that is actually three little tents connected by tunnels (available at Wal Mart for about $20, and we've had ours for five years). The kids had a blast with it.
I hope we can do it again before winter comes!
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Cindy-This reminds me of the way that we've spent our weekends this summer, only we live in the suburbs so having an open fire isn't really allowed. We bought a tiny little charcoal grill from Lowe's (about $15) and we would put it in the driveway and grill hotdogs or hamburgers over it. We tried eating outside once and it just wasn't much fun, so we started just carrying our food back inside (I know...city folks) and eating at the kitchen table. Then we head back outside with marshmallows to roast smore's. Aiden even has a little camping chair that we set up just for him.
We've had so much fun with it that we've ended up doing it nearly every Saturday evening! It's inexpensive, but it's so nice just to get away from the cell phones and televisions and spend time outdoors playing cornhole (a beanbag game that is really catching on around here).
~Elsie