Why it Smells Like a Bonfire in My House

Finally, I fixed the pictures. I think. (2/16)

So here you go, my bonfire story:

We got home last night from my parents' house just before 10pm. I was working on winding down the kids and getting ready for bed when dh decided to start a fire in our fireplace. We have lived in this house since April 05 and have never had a fire. We have had two kids born here, one in the dead of winter, and we've never used the fireplace. It's not because I didn't want to, on the contrary, I would love to have a big fire burning and keeping us warm. But my darling husband has been holding out that someday we'll get a gas insert.

So needless to say, I was surprised when he cleared the candles out and started piling up kindling. He got a flame going and it looked like this:

He went outside and got some logs and it looked like this:

After 20 min or so, it looked like this:

Yes, that's snow. You see, it apparently isn't wanting to draft properly and my upstairs was looking a bit like this:

And these pictures are after I've already opened windows and let it ventilate for a bit. When I went up for these I could actually see without my eyes burning. He was so frustrated, he was snapping at the kids (it was after 10, they were tired and cranky... so was he) and immediately got online to find out what he could do to fix it. Keep in mind now, my husband is a firefighter. Wouldn't it have been nice if the neighbor's called the FD and said it looked like our house was on fire? Not so much.

We have decided to keep it wood burning, because I figure if the world all goes to crap at least we can chop down one of the trees in our yard and keep the kids warm.

So, it smells like a bonfire in here today. :)