Come Inside Our Cozy Cabin
A House Beautiful story debuted yesterday, and there's so much I want to tell you. Beginning with thank you...❤️
Friends…like so many of you, I’ve been so heartbroken over the loss of The Great Diane Keaton. Honestly, it’s been hard to put into words what it feels like waking up every morning and remembering all over again…she’s gone. I wrote a very tiny thing about her and everything she’s meant to me, which oddly seemed to fit into Thursday’s newsletter theme, so I hope you’ll check back for that later this week. Until then, here are two ways I want to always remember her (photo on left by Douglas Kirkland, 1977, photo on right from Steve Martin).
This month, it’s exactly five years since we signed the papers on our home upstate.
What began as a 1960s pediatrician’s office, complete with an 18-spot parking lot and a wide open plot of mowed land beside it, gradually became something of a dream. For the next five years, our family would set up camp and sleep in the tiny exam rooms of the doctor’s office (which we now affectionately refer to as The Dr.’s Inn), tricked out with collected artworks, second-hand furnishings, and piles of cozy blankets to make it feel like home (complete w/signs for co-payments at the door 🥸).
While we camped, we’d look out at the open field and dreamed about the cabin we would build someday—something small and natural and simple to maintain. Something architecturally linking the past and the future that helped to nourish and bring the surrounding land back to a wilder place.
Yesterday, a story came out in House Beautiful about our cabin. And, after the past four years of building it, you can imagine…it was emotional.
I don’t believe anything is really a coincidence, but do you want to hear something really WILD? One day over the summer when I was reading this book I’d thrifted w/Raffi called The Tiny Book of Tiny Houses, the author Lester Walker mentions in the foreward how he was once a judge for a Tiny House competition for House Beautiful magazine in the 1980s. And, I remember thinking in that very moment when I read that line aloud to Raf, “Uhhh, what?? How COOL that House Beautiful was into celebrating small houses in the ‘80s, a time notoriously linked to McMansions and shoulder pads and everything else gigantic.”). Fast-forward, when someone I used to work with reached out just a few weeks later from HB to ask about featuring our cabin, and it was like, whoa…really??
I called the editor back and told her about the book—she couldn’t believe it either.
And while the whole connection is sort of witchy and wonderful, it also doesn’t surprise me.
What I’ve noticed over the past four years of creating this new home—and also a home here in this newsletter—is that there is this undeniable flow that builds momentum as we move along. Listening to our intuition instead of the outside chatter, following that flow, even getting lost in it, there’s a kind of peace that emerges when we move in the direction of the thing we know is part of our story.
Maybe even THE story.
When we listen—and trust—as the vision and the story gets clearer. Even in the dark, even when it’s hard to know where exactly the story is going…the flow feels right. And, yet, that’s what this cabin has been. A living example of following the breadcrumbs through the shadows and the dancing and the continual reframing of the blueprint inside my brain. Over and over, continuously doing things we’ve never done before. Practicing…and getting better at the process instead of the end result.
When we accepted the invitation from House Beautiful, I knew better than to have any fixed expectation, so I literally just got out of the way. We kept moving forward finishing what we had to finish on the cabin to get it ready for our family coming to visit (they arrive this Friday), hoping only that this proposed story might become a part of ours.
Photograph by Christian Harder, courtesy of House Beautiful.
As we moved closer to the “finish line” (and let’s be real, we know that no home is ever finished…only maybe when we’re dead:), I kept returning to the beginning of it all. The empty mowed lawn. The “For Sale” sign by the road. Scooping up/doing magic tricks around all our savings to figure out if we could really do this. Initially, we mostly dreamed of building a place for our family and friends, and hopefully other creative people who might need a quiet spot to think or sleep or make something (ie: a p/t residency in the longterm goal). And during this time of dreaming, I thought a lot about what it means to be the caretaker of a house or land, thinking about all the billions of lives that have passed through here, knowing for sure that we will someday pass through + on, too.
An essay I wrote for Mother Tongue magazine right at the start of building our cabin, and the life (I hope) it will have one day w/my daughter.
A few years ago, I wrote an essay ⬆️ about what it felt like to build a house for our daughter that would be here for her if for some reason we weren’t. Facing that fact as an older parent, writing it and saying it out loud, strangely gave me the courage to pour more of myself into the cabin. More of my outrageous dreams, fears, and nakedness…all the soaring, gut-wrenching stuff that we can only face and process when we know there’s no other choice.
And yet, having Raf on the brink of 50 has had its advantages. Namely, that it’s revealed a sense of urgency in my life…to do and think and say things that I might never have had the courage to before.
Because if not now, when??
Photographs by Christian Harder, courtesy of House Beautiful.
Art on left by Anne Schaefer, terracotta masks were thrifted, the cork table was upcycled (ie: me carrying the two plywood tables home, which we topped w/leftover cork from construction ⬇️…one of the many things I salvaged or thrifted that found a home in the cabin).
And, the cabin has been a big part of that. Learning and practicing, building the muscle memory to keep moving, even when fireballs show up, even when the longterm seems absolutely staggering with things to fix and other bullshit. In addition to all the things the cabin has taught me, the act of building it w/Kevin has allowed me to face my life…and what I want it to be. And when that kind of clarity happens, you just can’t unsee it.
Photographs by Christian Harder, courtesy of House Beautiful.
Raffi’s bedroom and art above. The pink dresser was scored at a Public Sale auction for $350. The papier mache creature is by Grace Lang of Super Stories. The rug is by Sundays (they don’t make it anymore but I’m obsessed w/this one), bedding is a mix of Boll & Branch, Kassatex, and vintage. The print on the wall is by Anne Schaefer…all other art is vintage.
The kind of love and beauty I want to surround myself with. The way I want to spend my days AND my free time. The people I want to make things with and do things for and listen to.
And, also, all the compromises I’m not willing to make anymore.
This newsletter is one of those things I won’t make compromises on. I love making it. Some of the longer ones are real ball busters, but I love them, too. The bulk of my working time now is devoted to ATA because I want every single one to be special. Economical reads that feel cozy and satisfying like the perfect cup of coffee, exactly when you need it.
A Tiny Apt. sits in Substack’s Design category, but it’s also at the intersection of everything I know we all love—that place where design + personal style + finding the things/ideas that express the intimacy + history of it all intersect. How we make our lives/looks/spaces our own.
Bedding is all vintage…the pillow was made by our friend Samantha Gibson from some of my salvaged Alexander Girard fabric. The wicker sculpture is by Erin Pollard of Underwater Weaving. The rug is by Bertjan Pot for Maharam. Photograph by Christian Harder, courtesy of House Beautiful.
Rest assured, I fuss a lot over this newsletter. Probably more than I should. But the fussing is worth it because it always seems to lead me back to what’s important. And, I guess that’s sort of the cabin now, too. Technically it’s “done”…but the fussing will Never End. Our friends Lisa and Jonathon were the first to sleep there last weekend, and after we casually interrogated them for feedback, I got more and more ideas of things to tinker with, switch out, refine…(there are A LOT more interiors shots/BTS I’ll be sharing in the coming week, so stay tuned).
Photographs by Christian Harder, courtesy of House Beautiful.
When the House Beautiful story broke yesterday, I cried. And now as I write this, I’m crying again. Because I’m happy. And so thankful…to the House Beautiful team, to the writer Elizabeth Kiefer, to the photographer Christian Harder, to my family, and to ALL of you.
I’m sorry this ended up being longer than I wanted it to be! But I hope you know how much I appreciate each of you being here—for reading, for liking, for commenting, and for allowing me to share what I love with you. There is so much more beauty yet to be discovered…
So Much Beauty. xxCb
Closet design inspired by Charlotte Perriand created with Isla Porter…more on that soon, too:).
I did my best to track and collect all the links we’ve been using throughout the cabin on ShopMy right here….check it out, there’s some very fun stuff to peruse/discover. Remember if you click on a link or buy anything, we might make a commission, for which we appreciate so much.💋
The cabin is so beautiful and warm and seems to be a place to feel free and loved and at home. I guess your daughter will remember these days as especially happy and precious. I still can‘t decide what to admire more, your taste for clothes, rooms and furniture or your fine writing. Please keep on sharing all this with us.
After reading this post and the feature, I’m really moved — the cabin is a love letter from you both to your daughter, filled with your values, expertise, style 💌 Wishing you all many years of beautiful memories there!