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.

 

Adding a Preppy Touch to This Rustic Mountain Cabin

When we bought this cabin near our farmhouse a year ago, we knew there would be plenty of work to do to make it aesthetically pleasing for guests.  It served as a hunting cabin for a couple of older gentlemen for decades.  It was dirty, incredibly cluttered, and smelled like it had been closed up for a very long time.  Additionally, there were layers of various carpets throughout, bare concrete walls in spots with insulation and wires showing, a paneled ceiling with holes that had been patched with duck tape, and different sized windows in every room.  Oh, and did I mention the cracked pipes that had frozen over the winter?  Probably the ugliest thing in the cabin was the shower.  Mostly concrete and brick, it looked like it had a rusted tin base.  I thought it would be the perfect shower for A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Before any company could stay there, the shower would have to go.  Once my husband started hacking away at it, we learned that the floor of it was not tin after all but concrete painted a rust color.  Who would have thought?  Unfortunately, it cracked into pieces when we started working on it, so we had to purchase a new shower that took some work to install.

We were blessed to have the help of our eldest son who recently moved nearby.  It took a couple of weekends, but I am so happy to report that a new shower is in place, and it was tested by family from out of town this past weekend.  Everything works, and it doesn't leak.  I had my eye on a woodsy shower curtain in Kohl's since last fall, and I couldn't wait to run out and finally get it.  It works perfectly in our mountain cabin.

Kohl's has quite a collection of various decorative items for a cabin or lodge.  Since our nineteenth century farmhouse needs constant maintenance in addition to our cabin, we can only tackle about one project per year for each building.  This is frustrating for me since patience is not one of my strong virtues, but I do what I can by adding a little decorative touch of rustic preppy wherever I go.  Since Kohl's is having some great sales right now, I perused the cabin/lodge sections last evening and snapped pictures with my phone so I could think about the selections later.

For the bathroom, they have towels, rugs, shower hooks with bears on them, owl cup and toothbrush holders, bear soap dispensers, and that little boat soap holder.  I didn't buy any of those, but they are too cute.

There were so many moose, bear, and deer towels and shower curtains.  I haven't decided yet if I'll purchase any of these or not.  The cabin came fully equipped with linens, but none of them were of a mountain forest theme.

I love this moose waste basket for the bathroom, but it needs to come down in price some more before I can justify buying it.  The bathroom floor is currently concrete, and I think we should probably take care of that first before I go crazy on bathroom accessorizing.

One more towel.  If it said "cabin" instead of "lodge," I might have bought it.  I definitely can't give our cabin the name of lodge though.  It's far from that.

For the bedrooms, Kohl's has these woodsy comforter sets that I really love.

They have cabin/lodge sheets, coverlets, and pillow cases.

And they have lots and lots of throw pillows.

Then there are all these curtains.  It's so tempting to get some of these, but since every window in our cabin is a different size, and I'm not sure what we're going to do with the walls, it would probably be unwise to purchase any window treatments at this point.  Right now there are blinds and curtains up in every room (although none of them match) so I can't deem new curtains a necessity.  I'll have to wait on those.

Finally, there are so many kitchen items for the cabin: trivets, charcuterie boards, coasters, bottle openers, and more.  Our cabin came fully equipped with more kitchen gadgets than I have in my own house, but these would be nice to put on a wish list.

I love these dish towels.  I'm still contemplating picking up one of these because you can just never have enough dish towels, right?  Not sure which one I like best.  I think I'm leaning toward the tan with pinecones.

You know how much I love plaid, so when you combine plaid and cabin, I cannot resist getting something.

I ended up getting these bowls a few weeks ago, but they never made it up to the cabin because the children have been using them for their cereal in the morning.  It turns out they hold twice as much cereal as the bowls they had been using, which means that a typical box of cereal doesn't even make it through all five of my children in the morning.  Which also means the last person up is grouchy because the best cereal is gone as soon as it's been opened.

There is an entire aisle in Kohl's devoted to cabin placemats, napkins, and tablecloths.

Since the cabin didn't come with enough placemats, I did justify buying five of these last night.  I really liked the plaid moose variety, but there were only two of those left.

Several weeks ago there were quite a few signs and wall hangings for cabins in the woods.  Last night I could only find a handful.  I really liked this one, and I think I might go back and get it.  Do you think it would do well on the outside next to the door?  Or maybe it needs to be in away from the wind, snow, and rain.

I've also found a number of crafty cabin creations on Pinterest that I'd like to try.

Any ideas from you readers?  I am open to suggestions on incorporating some rustic preppy into this mountain cabin.

And just in case you're wondering if I'm receiving any kind of kickback from Kohl's for this post, they have no clue they're mentioned in Preppy Mountain Farmhouse.  I just happen to really love their cabin/lodge selections.  Although, it would be great to get a discount on the above items. ;)