Smoky the Snowman

Jeremy and I love to have fires in our fireplace in the winter. We have one almost every night when it is cold out. Well, we had a fire last Monday night (2 weeks ago now) and we always let the fire burn out when we go to bed so the dapper(sp?) was left open. Jeremy closed it Wednesday night (2 days later) and Thursday morning we woke up to the smell of smoke. I started freaking out thinking it was my heating blanket or something but then I followed the smell to the living room. Apparently, there were still some red hots in the log and the log was smoldering from the inside out and it was smoking since the vent was closed! Our living room stunk!
When my sister came last weekend we had a fire Saturday night. Again, we woke up Sunday morning to the smell of something burning. Jeremy barely made it to the bedroom door before the smoke alarm started going off. We walked into the living room and all we could see was smoke. I started opening the windows and we were fanning the smoke detectors to make them stop! It was insane. The wind was blowing just right so that all of the smoke that should have been going up and out the chimney was blowing back down into our living room.
Everything in our house smelled like smoke. We washed all the jackets and blankets that weren't in a closet and we were trying to air out the house but it was FREEZING outside. We went to Target and got Frebreeze and I was spraying it like crazy but it was still smelling. Everytime you walked out of the house for about 5 minutes to clear your head you would smell it as soon as you walked back in. We were sitting in church that Sunday and all I could smell was smoke because it was all in my clothes. And we had a Christmas party at our house that night. Luckily, no one mentioned the smell. I lit lots of candles trying to mask it!
Now, a week later the smell is almost all gone! And we had another fire Saturday night. So far so good!