The Leisure Seekers

Our title today refers to a wonderfully poignant movie with Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren.  Helen's character busts her husband out of the nursing home and they set off on an adventure in their family's ancient RV to Ernest Hemingway's house in the Florida Keys.  

When we're in the woods, I often sit quietly and just absorb the nature around us.  At Buck Pond, we listened to loons call each other for hours until we fell asleep.  In the Smokies, we enjoyed our morning coffee with a herd of deer and several titmice.  We try to get a campsite next to water if possible and are completely spoiled when we wake up to views like this:

Minister Creek Campground
Allegheny National Forest

I don't want the interior of the camper to compete with the views outside the windows, but I don't want it to be basic either.  I've seen more than a few remodels on Pinterest that I like a lot but won't translate well in a small space.  So, I'm focusing on a simple aesthetic on a very tiny budget.  Our biggest expense will be recovering the cushions and we're going with an upholsterer for that because we want them to be in the hands of someone that knows what they're doing with upholstery weight fabric (aka. not me).  

Since the Apache is straight out of the 70s, I wanted to honor that with what is probably the most popular DIY craft of that decade: macrame!  I found a tutorial on Pinterest, spent $5 in supplies, and learned how to tie a square knot.  

Am I seriously going to put a plant hanger in the camper?  Unlikely, but I like the idea of it and it kept me busy before I brought the camper home, so it's a win-win.  I ended up with an unspent gift card leftover from my birthday and did a little shopping, coming up with this:

Not bad for an initial idea

I quickly changed my mind on the peel-and-stick paper there, and while I love the gold metallic spray paint I don't think there are a ton of accents that I can spray paint gold.  

I love this.
Snagged from Pinterest that redirected to a sketchy not-original-post site
so I have no idea who to credit it to.

This is gorgeous.  I love how airy it all looks, but there's too much white for the amount of dirt that our kind of camping and hiking generates.  I have white kitchen cabinets now and it seems impossible to keep them really clean.  But overall, I love the vibe that this gives off.  Simple, understated, restful.

There are four more months before our next camping trip.