The Boathouse!

When we were kids we had a cabin "up North", everyone in Minnesota has something "up North" if you don't a friend does.. and that's where you go in the summer. You would think that Minnesota were North enough... but NO in the summer you have to go UP NORTH! Well, ours was in Garrisonon, on Lake Mille Lacs. When we were very young it burned down in a storm when lightning struck the fuse box. My crafty dad decided he was going to build the new one and make it a fancy (yes, in the 1970's it WAS fancy) A frame!

photo via remodelista (it's in Sweden though... close!)

So each summer we would go UP NORTH and my dad would work on the cabin. It's beyond me to remember how long we would stay up there, if we only did weekends or what... (I was 7 or 8 years old?) But to me it seemed like we spent the whole summer up there! And each year we would have wildly different and unusual living quarters, I'm sure it had something to do with mosquitoes?! or bed comfort and really just trying to get it right (Swedes do that...). One year (or maybe it was just a weekend... who knows?) we slept in a tent, my mom made fantastic dinners on the fire and all of my memories are incredibly happy about that time. The next year my dad built a mini-A frame, it JUST fit the four of us but the top of the A frame made a GREAT place to hid during kick the can! and again, my mom cooked on the fire. Still fantastic memories!

Then one year, one GLORIOUS but creepy year, we slept in the boat house! We cleaned it out (why do I remember that possibly the boat may have still been in there while we slept!?) but you can NEVER truly clean out a boathouse... spiders, well I don't even WANT to think about it. BUT we had this huge leftover piece of off-white low shag carpet from our home that we put into the boathouse and my mom managed to turn that crazy place into a really fun place to sleep! You know that bench that every boathouse has where all the work is done.. that's where she got a cook-top! The photo above is AMAZING, but envision dirt and spiderwebs and not anywhere as clean and it looked a LOT like that!! When I saw it on Remodelista I had to GASP!

via remodelista

Okay so all this because REMODELISTA ran a story on boathouses (fantastic!!) and I just had to share that really special memory with you! There is nothing more cool as a kid than waking up in the morning and throwing open those BIG boat doors and Lake Mille Lacs is right there!!

(I'm sorry I don't have photos to share with you... I will see if I can dig any up on my next trip to Minnesota)

totally chic via piet boon - on remodelista