Above is the enclosed porch at our new cottage in the Catskills.

I should note that our new cottage is, apparently, not exactly in the Catskills, to the extent that it is – being on the Delaware River – closer to the Poconos than it is to the Catskill Mountains and the land of lake cabins and Dirty Dancing – but we are still saying Catskills, because that’s what almost everyone else says, except for some of the other New Yorkers who we’ve met in the area who insist that it’s the Poconos, because: POCONOS.

(Non-essential tangent: I can’t say ‘Poconos’ without thinking ‘Kokomo’ and getting an immediate late-80’s/Beach Boys earworm. Which is part of the reason why I keep saying ‘Catskills.’)

ANYWAY. Enclosed porch. Apart from our plans for a zipline and a self-cleaning swimming pond and the writer’s studio/guest cottage (think big, y’all), the enclosed porch represents my most cherished ambition for this house. It is a sleeping porch, and it is adorable. You can hear crickets when you sit out there. You can watch deer. I love it madly.

It’s also the part of the house and property my ambitions for which are least tied to my Pinterest boards. Sure, I have some enclosed porch pins, but they represent inspiration and ideas, rather than aspiration and OH DEAR GOD IT MUST LOOK EXACTLY THAT WAY.

To wit:

I love these images, but MY sleeping porch is a SLEEPING porch – ‘enclosed’ just doesn’t capture its glory – and is going to be used as such. There’ll be a daybed instead of chairs, and it will be shabbily lounge-y, because that’s what sleeping porches are supposed to be like. I’ll incorporate design elements from pins like the two above – or not (I love the checkered floor, but just can’t see myself going to the effort) – but whatever they look like, they’ll be interpretations, made to conform to MY ideal of MY sleeping porch. (The second pin, I should say, is actually really close to what I envision, and what I think is possible, but: BED. NOT sofa.)

Which is, I suppose, the way that I should using and considering Pinterest all the time, rather than as the aspirational ideal that causes me to lose sleep over questions like, why can’t I make a proper cauliflower gratin? And could I really pull off animal prints? And how hard is it going to be to put up that zipline, anyway?

But, you know, baby steps.