In the last winter or two, I’ve noticed a growing trend that completely confuses me. What is the deal with outhouse themed holiday decor? I first noticed this when I spied a rustic outhouse in the Christmas village section at Walmart a couple of years ago. I laughed about it and even purchased a couple of them as gag gifts for cottaging family members. This winter though, I’m finding more weird holiday outhouses. I’m not quite sure how this decorating trend began or why anyone thinks it’s a good idea, but it seems to be here anyway.
The other thing that’s odd about it is how every one of them has that silly crescent moon-shaped cut in the door. Living out on the islands, basically no one has running water. We all have and use outhouses regularly and that means I’ve seen and used lots of outhouses in my lifetime. Out of all real life outhouses I have seen, none of them ever had that crescent shaped cut in the door. I really think that the moon is only found in fictitious outhouses. It’s impractical to have in real ones as it would just let bugs in and give the mosquitoes a way to come in an bite you at night. Plus, if you’re so far in the wilderness that you need to make a wooden house to go to the bathroom in, it’s probably safe to say that you’re far enough away from electricity that you wouldn’t be able to use any nifty electric woodworking tools to make curved cuts like that easy to do.
Maybe I’m just reading too much into it that I’m missing the holiday message. Who knows. Though I might not be willing to decorate my house with outhouses for the holidays, I’m willing to try decorating my outhouse with garland and battery powered lights this summer. Maybe a Christmas in July theme will help the holiday cheer last for the whole year – or it will at least give everyone something to giggle about when they go down the path.
Happy holidays to all.
The Walmart Christmas village outhouse that may have started the trend:
Inside / Outside makes outhouse ornaments – I had to buy the ornament set that included it because I wanted the Muskoka chair:
A singing Santa’s outhouse that I found at Big Lots – no I didn’t buy it:
An inflatable Santa’s outhouse at Lowes – I didn’t buy this either:
The other thing that cottagers do over the winter is try to find ways to bring parts of the cottage back to their winter house. I got these rustic handmade candle holders recently to do just that.
While visiting Victoria and Mark, we decided to break out one of the Manly Man Candles to give their house a more rustic smell too. The hunting lodge scent smells like a more pine version of the cottage.
Here is a pic of the wonderful lighthouse drawing that I found at the town dump the other day. Isn’t it great? It’s framed and everything. I just need to put it back in the frame and find a place to hang it. Gotta love island art.
I finally added the terrible toilet seat clock to the outhouse decor. As awful as it is, I think it works here. Outhouse art definitely isn’t like regular art. I really like that the clock is broken. It’s permanently on island time.
Last weekend, Colleen and I went to an estate auction. The auction had very random things and there was so much stuff, that it was hard to see it all before the auction started. After the auction was over, I saw these three vintage buoy markers. I hadn’t even noticed them in the piles of stuff before. It turns out no one had bid on them, so I made an offer of $3. My offer was accepted so now I am the proud owner of these former Lake Oswego buoys. Who knows how they made it to Ohio all the way from Oregon. One even has a name, address and phone number on it. They’re pretty big – about 12 or more inches long for the top and bottom two, and the middle one is probably a bit smaller than that.
I have no idea what to do with them, but I’m thinking some sort of island decorating needs to be done with them. Any ideas?
Happy December! In honor of the new month, here’s a pic of something that I found while shopping for holiday decorations the other day. Who knew that there were outhouses for Christmas villages? I sure didn’t. Even though I’m not into the villages, I knew that I had to have it. Here it is with a few trees next to one of my favorite sunset pics from this past summer.
This year really seems to be the year of painting. The master bedroom was painted last week (pics forthcoming) and this week we are all tackling the kitchen. Here is a pic of what the kitchen looked like before we started painting. I’ll post some after pictures once we’re done.
Also, remember our very colorful outhouse that I posted about earlier this summer? Victoria and her husband are here and they are painting it today. It will be worthy of another video when it’s done. It’s really going to be that good.
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