Hey, wow! I never expected it to be nearly a year in between posts. Shit. How fucked up was that last year? What an absolute major bummer quarantine was. I felt like before covid I was in such a groove with the blog, and then it turned quickly turned into ...

Check out my summer project - the new cedar barrel sauna at the cabin! A quick little background, we jumped on the home improvement bandwagon just like everyone else did this year. We were looking for a project that was fully DIY to bide time this summer, but we also ...

We've basically been living at our cabin for the last six months, so we've got to know how it functions pretty well. One of the things that really tends to grind our gears is the refrigerator! Not only are drawers constantly cracking and breaking, but shelves fall too - and ...

Last week marked the third year that Jeff and I have been cabin people! I thought it would be the perfect time to look back and see what's been happening during the last three years. Sometimes I don't realize it, but it's been a lot. We've really made this cabin ...

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has felt an array of feelings since quarantine began. Most of the time I fall somewhere between a complete lack of motivation, and sheer boredom. And then every once in awhile I'll get a sudden burst of energy and I'll do all ...

About three months into quarantine we realized that the home goals that we had made for the year were quickly changing. We had talked about getting the house painted and adding onto the deck at the cabin maybe even getting a hot tub, but all of that began to melt ...

Well folks, I've been struggling with how to start my first blog post in awhile and I decided that maybe a recap is the right thing to do. As I am sure many you have experienced the ebbs and flow of this pandemic and what it doing to all of ...

The spring is by far my favorite time of year. Us Minnesotan’s savor any and all outdoor time we can get in the warmer months. Every spring season I try to focus on a small space and give it a bit of TLC and this year I have teamed up ...

We’ve been so happy with our new range and range hood at the cabin. It looks great in the space, except for the patch tile patch job that needed to be done. Perhaps this has happened to you? Maybe you needed to remove an over the range microwave or hood ...

Hi Guys. I'm back! I needed some time to process all of the new things happening in life while also settling into a routine with the kids and school. It's am keeping my goal to post twice a week, although I'm sure I won't be able to every week. I'm ...

Wow! I've been trying to wrap my head around writing a post for a while. How am I supposed to write when all of our lives are changing? Right now I am in our cabin bunk room writing this post from inside a small closet, my kids are working on ...

I am so excited to share this post! It's been a long time and a lot of long weekends in the making. I started our cabin bathroom remodel at the end of July last summer. Our cabin is a busy place, and we needed our small bathroom to stand up ...

Early on in my bathroom remodel I realized that I wouldn't be able to include a niche for the shower as I had hoped. Two of the three walls that surround the bath and shower are exterior walls, and because it gets so cold in NW Wisco (aka Wisconsin) in ...

Being that it's the last day in January, I wanted to squeeze in a post about my plans for an upcoming organizational project. I know you have all heard of "spring cleaning" but honestly, what gets me through the middle and end of winter are indoor organizational projects. For me ...

Hey Team! I wanted to dedicate an entire blog post to just how much I love the innovation that brought me/you/us the Samsung Frame TV. If you’re not familiar with the Frame TV, it’s a TV that moonlights as framed art! Samsung designed a TV that displays digital art (when ...

Having the cabin has taught me a few things about design. It can be done in stages and having a plan is a really good thing. When we took ownership of the cabin we knew that we needed to make it our own, and fast. Jeff especially has a hard ...

Today I wanted to share how we share and save memories at the cabin. In addition to a guest book we have also started filling a bowl full of polaroid photos. Remember polaroids? They went extinct in the early oughts but have been recently brought back to life by The ...

Hello! Hope you guys are all well! We are doing great over here. I celebrated my birthday on Wednesday and last week we spent five whole days up at the cabin over Thanksgiving break. It has become a tradition to set up the tree the day after Thanksgiving for our ...

I have always envisioned our cabin furniture being updated in phases, to get us started, we purchased affordable "get-cha-through" furniture and repurposed hand-me-downs from our home. It has always been a work in progress and I had planned on updating some of our cabin furniture pieces with comfier, cozier and ...

I know I have been missing the last few weeks. I’ve been racing the weather trying to tie up a bunch of loose ends at the cabin before the winter really starts to set in – which it’s starting to do right about now. I’ve spend a handful of extra ...

I did something that I don't normally do a few weeks back. I impulse shopped. I'm a planner when it comes to design and I really enjoy the process of dreaming and scheming and double checking before I purchase anything. For me, it makes my purchases feel really good and ...

Hello Team! So many things went through my mind this weekend as I was beginning phase 2 of our budget bathroom remodel at the cabin. I made a mental list as I was working so that I can share with you now. If you need to catch up, phase 1 ...

Hey-a! Friends. I got a project done on time! I had planned on using August to demo and redo phase 1 of our cabin bathroom and I actually did it! Normally I try and save this sort of inside project for the winter months, BUT because phase two involves a ...

Hey-O! I’m back, fine people of the internet! Hope you have all had an amazing wonderful summer. We sure a nice one. School started yesterday, and I’m excited to get back to a more regular schedule of projects, taking photographs and blogging. I have to admit, I’m a little overwhelmed ...

Oh woah, it’s nearly August already? I forget that having two kids with July birthday’s really makes the month fly by. I’ve been working on a lot of little things this summer, each of them taking up a day here and there, sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’m really ...

Ooooh, I’m so excited to share with you guys so many outdoor spaces at the cabin this year! To bring you up to speed, we purchased our Northwoods Wisconsin (aka West Wisco) cabin nearly two years ago. We’ve done a lot of improvements to the interior spaces since moving in ...

As you can imagine or maybe have experienced, it’s hard to furnish an entire cabin. Your basically starting at square one, and a lot of what we have at the cabin has been stuff I’ve been socking away in hopes of one day having a cabin. The room that really ...

I want to spend a good chunk of the summer focused on updating the exterior of our Wisconsin cabin. I’ve got big plans, and at the top of the list is a new paint job. Since the day we looked at it, we talked about eventually painting it black. I ...

I’m feeling really good about where our cabin bedroom has started from and come to. I think we can call this reveal worthy! This is maybe my favorite space in all of the cabin. I am a big sucker for a small cozy room. Back in the early aughts, when ...

Hey Guys! So far I’m sticking to this two posts a week goal that I set for myself for 2019. Two posts a weeks means sometimes I’m just going to share something really quick and simple, like this new dresser we just had delivered for the cabin bedroom ...

Guys! Last month I shared with you guys how I installed a stair runner on the cabin staircase using multiple small rugs. Today I wanted to share the method I used to add a mitered corner on the landing and continue the runner around the corner of our stairs ...

Budz! I know it’s taken awhile, but I finally got all items ordered, styled and photographed for our tiny bath at the cabin and I think it turned out soooooo good. Doing projects at the cabin is a super slow process, so I appreciate you all hanging in there with ...

For the last year I have been slowly removing the wall-to-wall 40 year old carpet that plagued our cabin. Can you imagine how many wet feet and soggy bodies this carpet had seen? Barf. The majority of the carpet was ripped out the minute we closed on the place exposing ...

Budz! Big news on the blog today! Did you happen to see the December issue of Better Homes & Garden’s, cause if not, you should! Last year BHG asked us Allen’s to share with the world how we celebrate Christmas at our new-to-us cabin. I was a bit skeptical because ...

At home, on the weekends we spend a decent chunk of the mornings listening to records, sipping coffee, and flipping vinyl. We absolutely love the ritual of it. That's not so easy to do at the cabin where we have run into problems with wiring speakers. Recently the clouds parted, ...

Hey guys! Just wanted to pop on in and share a little progress report in the bathroom. I was hoping to be able to share a more finished look sooner, but working on a project remotely means that project come together very slowly. Take a look down below to see ...

So stoked to share the cabin kitchen revamp (mostly on a budget) with ya, I mean it’s only been a year in the making. Talk about slow design! Of course, some of that slowness is by necessity, renovating a small cabin kitchen when you leave 120 miles away isn’t going ...

Hello my friends! I didn't mean for my absence to be so long, but the summer just got away from me! Things have finally started to settle down and we are having some chill time. Chill time for me usually comes with some sort of project, because I like projects ...

I began looking for replacement slipcovers around the new year. I did lots of research, and after ordering some samples, I decided that Comfort Works as the brand that had what I needed. A huge reason I choose Comofort Works instead of other slip cover manufacturers is because of the ...

Hi Guys! The snow still has not melted (because it’s a total jerk), but typically this would time of year would be the beginning of the gardening season. Not only am I excited to get into my garden at home in Minneapolis, but this will mark the first season of ...

↑ drag cursor over image ↑ Wazzup team? I wanted to share instructions for these two plug-in sconces that I recently made for our bedroom at the cabin. I wanted to design something that had retro feel to reference the age of the cabin (circa 1968) but I wanted it ...

It's so hard having so many windows and glass sliding doors in this cabin, I mean where am I supposed to put our tv? It's a real problem. No matter how much of an eye sore the tv is, we can't survive without it, and because this is just a ...

This post is in partnership with Beddy's Hey Guyses! Hope all is well in the new year! Things are starting off with a bang around here, and I'm ready to hit the ground running! I'll fill you in on my next post, but I'm ready to get back at a ...

Happy Holidays, Team! So glad I was able to click “Publish” on this. I have at least three different posts in the works and I haven’t been able to pull the trigger on a single one of ’em. I think part of the reason for my “writer’s block” is that ...

Hello, budz! It’s so weird writing posts without having the luxury of easily photographing the subject. We have such limited time at the cabin, that when I’m there, project time is strictly for projects and chill time is strictly for chilling. Get it? I bring you my best stab at ...

Hey Team! I’ve been meaning to blog so many times lately, but I just couldn’t get it together to do it. Earlier this year I decided to only write and work on the blog when I really truly felt inspired to, and I didn’t like the stress I was putting ...

Hello people! I wanted to share with you a few ideas I've been knocking around for the cabin kitchen. A little background, the kitchen cabinets are currently painted a light sage green, and the cabin's exterior is also green. Green is also my favorite color, so it seemed pretty natural ...

Guys! I guess I just took a month of from the blog, whoopsiee. Normally I would feel guilty about that sort of thing, but I don’t, cause I had good reason. I shared with you guys that we were about to buy a cabin two hours from MPLS (aka the ...

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 ...

First of all, let me start this post off by saying that the enthusiasm I received from the last post is just the right sort of positive energy I needed, thank you so mucho! Yes, I am the type of person that needs to know that what I am is ...

Hey buds, I'm sure you've noticed my lack of blogging lately, I've been posting about once a week, and I will be the first to admit that the posts have been kinda lack luster. We have been busy with cabin things, there has been so much to do with inspections ...

+++ sources +++ | Hey Homies. Things are so exciting and crazy busy around here. Summer is in full swing, the kids finished school yesterday and we've got every weekend of the entire summer filled-up (midwestern term). In our free time we talk about mortgages, and money, and furniture, and ...

We are cabin people forever in our hearts, but now in real life too! We are under contract on a small A-frame-ish cabin nestled in a forest that sits above a sparkling lake. If you have ever spent any time around this blog you know I talk about cabins and ...