K guys, shopping for this cabin has kinda been pretty great for me. I love buying house stuff! I suck at buying clothes and dressing myself, but I am pretty okay when it comes to knowing the right things to buy for spaces. Besides buying living room furniture back in 2012, I have never bought so many new things for one space, at one time. This is equivalent to Christmas, Mother’s Day, and my birthday all rolled into one.

We (The old man and I) made a spreadsheet for this shopping spree, pretty cool of us, huh? It made Jeff really happy, and I was semi-okay with it. Budgets used to stress me out, but I’m slowly coming around to them. We listed out all of the things that we would needed to furnish a cabin, and then prioritized them by importance, and room. Jeff is really into pivot tables and other cool spreadsheet shit, so he made this excel doc work really slick for us. Our budget was 4k, and it was pretty easy to go through the line items and pick out what we would purchase this summer, and what would get pushed into coming years. We decided that the most important stuff was fresh linens, bunk beds, and mattresses. With the remaining dough we would purchase a sofa and chairs for the living room, stools for the counter, and stuff for the kids to make them feel at home. We bought a Sega Genesis console for the basement kids’ lair (can’t wait to kick those little dudes’ butts at Sonic), and a trampoline for outside. They better not tell me they’re bored, or else. The rug budget didn’t make the cut this year (Jeff hates rugs, don’t ask me), so we will be rug-less but cabin-rich.

There are a few little things from the above list that I’m excited about too. We are huge on throw blankets, especially once the fall starts heading our way. We have throws all over the house here in Mpls, but I am not willing to sacrifice any of them for the cabin. Instead, I ordered a few for the cabin, and a basket to “throw” them in, get it? Throw? Sometimes it’s just spending a little bit on a few accessories that help to make a space feel finished. That’s why we decided to spend just a little bit on the rattan tray and tri-footed bowl. I plan on setting these on the coffee table, and I will fill that bowl with cabin crystals – we are still on this crystal kick. Oh right, the coffee table. We’ll be borrowing the coffee table I made earlier this summer from our new outdoor living area. A new-new coffee table will be a line item on our 2018 budget, I hope. Also, the outdoor rug from our backyard patio may become the indoor rug at the cabin – I’m not making any promises, we’ll just have to see how that works out. I’m also going to be bringing our giant fiddle leaf fig because it is at least a foot taller than the tallest room in our house. I think it will appreciate the light and ability to grow tall into the vaulted ceiling, plus I think the fig will be one of the only plants that will be down with me watering it every 10 days or so. We are bringing up our collection of enamelware, plus some new stuff so that we can have enough to serve 12 people. I had been buying the enamelware from West Elm until I realized that Urban Outfitters sold the same enamelware, but in sets (instead of individually) – that was a no-brainer. I love, love, love the olive drab canvas pillow from Camp Provisions, but I just couldn’t spend the dough this time around. Instead I ordered vintage military laundry bags from ebay, and am going to try and sew a poor-mans version of that pillow. That pillow basically sums up my vision for the space. I want the space to feel minimal with a tilt towards woodsy, campy, outdoor feelings via the use of army olive-drab canvas, cozy textiles and more shades of green repeated throughout the space. Typically our midwestern cabins are covered in red accents, black bears, deer antlers, and logs. My job is to figure out a way to make a cabin feel like a cabin, without all the off-the-shelf, cliché cabin, up-norf decor that comes with it.

Anyways, Imma say it again, we are stoked. Only 13 days until this deal is done, and then I’m gonna be chomping at the bit to share tons more with you guys. Thanks for listening to me!

P.S. The Vornado Fan is on sale r n. We have two (and love them) and I just bought a third, they’ll be coming to the cabin too.