When I decided to take up blacksmithing as a hobbie I went looking for an anvil... before I went looking for information about anvils! I checked around at a few places and ended up at Harbor Freight. They had a 55# anvil on sell for ~15$ so I go it and brought it home.
The next day I was looking around the web for more information and found several sites talking about anvils and discovered what you guys already know! This anvil is not an anvil it is merely an Anvil Shaped Object.
After I built my forge I tried to make a leaf key chain and found this anvil was great for that, the more you used it the more dished the face became and made it possible for you to use the face directly as a spoon/leaf swage... good if that is what you wanted to do... not if you wanted an ANVIL!
So I decided I had to build a new anvil and set off to the local scrap yard to buy some steel for the purpose. I settled on some forklift forks and grabbed some other stuff for later while I was there.
In the back of the last image you can see my first attempt at creating a forge. Think it turned out more like a smelter than a forge.