When I was a kid, my mom would take me to my grandparents house every weekend and they had a fireplace in the living room.
They always had lots of different wood burning on the fire and the smell would fill the house.
They had cherry, hickory, and pine. Some of the wood was hard and would burn for a long time and some of the wood was soft and would burn up very quickly. It’s much easier to start the fire with a softer wood, so we always keep some dry pieces by the fireplace in my house. I grew up and bought a house that has a fireplace, because I wanted my house to smell the same way that my grandparents’ house did when I was a kid. The fireplace in my Orland Park, Illinois house is in the middle of the house in the living area where my family and I gather to watch television and play board games. The hearth has a mantle that is made of maple wood from a tree that was harvested close to Orland Park. This is where I display all of my kids’ recent school pictures. My son attends Orland Park elementary this year. He was supposed to wear a shirt with a collar and I put him in the clothes that he was supposed to wear when he left the house. He had a Spider-Man t-shirt on under the shirt with the collar. He took off the shirt with the collar and got his picture taken with the Spider-Man t-shirt instead. It wasn’t exactly the formal picture that I was hoping to see when the pictures arrived. It was still funny and his smile was cute, so we decided to get that picture package.