Living Large at the Lodge

It's not unusual for us to name things before we get them.

"Someday we'll have a red Siberian husky. We'll call him Killian, after the red beer."

Within a couple of weeks of our marriage, even before we'd acquired a house or a backyard, we drove to Ft. Collins, Colorado (we were living near Denver at that time) to adopt a red Siberian husky. We named him Killian. He lived a long and comfortable life and now lies in a burying ground outside my office window.

So when we bought our New England dream home, nestled between mountain and lake, we already knew it would be The Lodge. The reason for this has less to do with the architectural characteristics of the house--which to some extent are lodge-like--and everything to do with a hysterically funny incident that occurred in the L.L. Bean store many years ago. People here in New England pronounce "large" like "lodge."

Shortly after moving into the new abode, I purchased this sign from a mail-order catalogue. There's a moose at the bottom, you can see the tip of its antlers. It was made in Jamaica, and the metal craftsman must have enjoyed making a beast not normally seen in the Caribbean.



If you name your house, gift-givers often provide cool stuff with your house name on it. Here's a housewarming present from my husband's family. (That's my chipmunk Diesel on the railing, patiently waiting for food.)



My sister-in-law provided this nifty, woodsy sign, which hangs in our kitchen. (You can also see it in the first photo.)



The Northern lodge motif is a popular enough trend in decorating that we could go totally nuts. We manage to restrain ourselves. But it's fun to proclaim our home's identity, while at the same time perpetuating an old and still quite funny private joke about our adopted region of the country.