Northwoods Cabin Decor

Welcome to our little cabin in the Northwoods.

Please join me for a tour of our little cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Here I will share pictures of our cabin decor and information on where we collected the pieces that make our cabin cozy and personalized. I hope you find inspiration in the pictures and stories. Please share your favorites in the comments.

Growing up, I enjoyed summer visits to my Aunt and Uncle’s lake house in Minocqua, WI. As a kid I loved lake life, including boating, fishing, water skiing and catching frogs. There were also many fun activities in the area including a wildlife zoo, horseback riding, and many great restaurants. My favorite was the Little Swiss Village with the chipmunk feeding and delicious blintzes.

After my husband and I married and purchased our first home together, we began saving to purchase a lakefront cabin. We spent many years searching for the perfect place and finally purchased our cabin in the fall of 2010. It did need quite a bit of work and over the years we have done a lot of renovation work. Check out the boat house restoration and mud room addition.

Where We Shop

Since purchasing our cabin, we have collected a number of decor pieces to create a cozy space we love. Here in the Minocqua area there are plenty of antique stores. One of our favorites and the best place for antique furniture is Ages Past Antiques. We have also found some great items at Island City Antique Market and no trip to town is complete without a visit to Gaslight Antiques and Collectables to see what treasures we might find. This is where we found our cute little cabin storage box. Turns out to be the perfect place to store our binoculars because there is a lot of interesting wildlife to view.

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Newer stores that we enjoy include Found Artisans and Antiques along with White Arrows home shop. There are also several stores in town that offer nice home decor. This is where we found our log slice switch plate and outlet covers. We love the scent and crackling sound of the Woodwick Frasier Fir Candle. While they are available on Amazon, we always purchase these in town to support a local business.

In the kids room we have two sets of bunk beds with Pendleton wool camp blankets. I love the cute fishing picture we found at a local antique store and the canoe rug.

We found these vintage, mounted Smokey the Bear posters at the same antique store as the picture above. Love having this collection in our guest room. Unfortunately, the owner of the shop retired. We found so many great items in her beautiful shop.

Over the years, we have made a lot of great memories fishing and boating on the lake. We created a gallery wall to display pictures. It’s so fun to look back at how much our son has enjoyed life at the cabin and his fishing adventures. Too bad he grew up so quickly.

Cabin Lighting

The lighting in our cabin came from horrible glass pendant chandeliers that didn’t give off a cabin vibe in any way. These were replaced early on. We found antler chandelier lighting and a ceiling mounted light fixture at Menards and the size and lighting was perfect for our space. At Christmas, I hang small ornaments from the antler chandeliers and it looks so festive. We also changed out the cover on the fluorescent light in the kitchen and added a similar ceiling mounted light fixture in the mudroom adjacent to the kitchen.

More Cabin Decor

Near our back door, we have a lake sign that we purchased at Hobby Lobby. We also hung this old antique drawer organizer to display antique fishing lures that we recently started collecting. Honestly, it is always more fun to shop antique stores when you are searching for a specific item. Like a treasure hunt!

A little tricky to hang the lures, but we managed with small screw eye pins and a pair of pliers.

The very first purchases we made was this string of carved fish. We purchased this at a log cabin home show in Madison Wisconsin long before we owned our cabin. It was the first item in our wish box for our future lake home. A similar version to our fish string is available on Amazon: Hanging fish.

Many of the antique stores up here have canoe paddles and oars. We found a pair of long oars that were perfect for above the picture windows looking out at the lake. It took quite a while to figure out a nice way to hang them. I bought branch wall mount hooks for jackets and coats by the back door, but they turned out to be perfect for mounting the oars. I purchased my hooks from Ballard Design, but you can find similar long oars and branch wall mounted hooks on Amazon.

On the mantel I have several decorative candle lanterns. These add to the cozy cabin vibe (hygge) during the dark winters. I also have a set of Birch flameless candles on the storage chest turned coffee table. The chest was another Minocqua antique store purchase.

Inherited Decor Pieces

I inherited my passion for antiques from my mom. She used to drag my siblings and I through stinky antique stores all the time. As much as I hated it at that time, I have come to enjoy wandering through these stores to spot items I grew up with and interesting items that can be repurposed or have a perfect spot in our home. When my mom passed away, we tried to incorporate as many of her treasures as possible into our cabin. Funny thing…she probably bought many of these items in the Minocqua area and brought them back to her home in the western Chicago suburbs. Now we just brought them all back up north.

Some of these items include a marble top cabinet, a duck lamp, old chairs, and an old book rack and small drawers. We also hung bells that my parents brought home from Germany. My mom also had a collection of little brass hanging items sitting on one of her dressers. I believe they were decorative saddle tack. Check them out below and please let me know if you know what they are. The designs include a bear, an equestrian, a duck and a seahorse. I have room for more 😉.

Want to learn more about our cabin? Check out this video.

Reading Collection Tips

We really enjoy reading at our cozy cabin, especially in the fall and winter in front of a fire when the weather prevents outdoor activities. Some of my favorites include Anne Rice and Elena Ferrante. Our son enjoyed reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I’m a sucker for a good mystery or treasure hunting book. Some of his books that I really enjoyed Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage and Treasure Hunters by James Patterson.