Spreading Yuletide Cheer to Our Rustic Cabin

 

Even though we wait until the day after Thanksgiving to begin our Christmas preparations, this year we did begin a little early up at our cabin.  With the excuse that I needed to get it ready for company, the children and I went up there the day before Thanksgiving and tried to make it a bit festive.  I'm a month late in posting, but I wasn't sure I wanted you readers to see just how much of a fixer upper this cabin is.  But I decided, what the heck.  This way you can come along with us on this renovating journey as we pick a project a year to tackle, both at our farmhouse and the cabin.

 

Before we started any of the decorating, I whipped up two pumpkin pies for dessert in the working oven.  The old refrigerator at the cabin also works, so I was able to store the pies there since the one at our house was full of a thawing turkey and all the other Thanksgiving dinner ingredients. 

 

I hadn't ever used the oven before and I think that one side was hotter than the other because I nearly burned our Thanksgiving dessert.  Fortunately, my teen daughter checked them in time.

 

We also threw some cookies in the oven for the kiddos.

 

Between the pies, cookies, cinnamon pinecones, and the large scented candle burning, the musty smell of the cabin was fairly well masked.  We're thinking the multiple layers of mismatched carpeting is where that smell is coming from.  They will have to go.

 

All those extra Christmas decorations that I no longer use in the house got toted up there and were put to good use.

 

The girls and I decorated this little tree that is supposed to be 4 feet tall, but unless I'm actually much taller than my driver's license shows, I'd say this is just a tad inaccurate.  I even have the tree on top of a stool to give it more height.

 

Michael's had their pre-lit artificial trees, plaid tree skirts,  and ornaments 50% off the week before Thanksgiving.  I had a rule that I wouldn't buy anything related to Christmas until after that holiday, but I made an exception for the cabin.  And here in this photo, you can see some of the remodeling that needs to be done.  This one wall alone has paneling on part of it, bare sheet rock (I think?) in places, and noticeable insulation.  There's also a ping pong tabletop for the air hockey table that we moved up there.  And look at that yellowish carpet.  What color would you call that?

 

And while some of us baked, cleaned, and decorated, others were sprawled out watching Christmas movies.

 

That's because the cabin still has an old working VCR, and we still have quite a collection of movies on VHS, believe it or not.  I am just not willing to spend the money to upgrade to DVD when the videotapes are still good.  We almost always start out the Christmas season with Home Alone and A Christmas Story, which our youngest referred to as the "Shoot Your Eye Out Ralphie" movie for years.

 

After a few hours at the cabin, the inside smelled, looked, and sounded like the holidays, and it had warmed up enough outside to go for a hike before our out-of-town guests arrived.

I'll be making my way up there again later this week to prepare for Christmas guests.  The interior of the cabin hasn't changed since Thanksgiving, but outside it looks like this:

 

While the surrounding areas with more sun have melted, here on the north facing side of the mountain, we are still covered in snow and ice.  I think there's a good chance that at the Preppy Mountain Farmhouse, we will have a white Christmas even though there is no more snow in the forecast.