Friday Finds on Mackinaw Road, Take 5: Timeshares, WhatsApp, and a Reno
Happy Friday!
This week was again surprisingly busy with coordinating kids’ activities, trips to apples orchards, vet appointments, celebrating birthdays, catching flights, making schedules, and ruminating on renovation (nope, I’m not talking about Reno today) decisions. Where to begin…
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Since this is supposed to be a travel blog, let’s begin with a couple of oldie-but-goodie suggestions.
As I’m sure you could tell from this post (and this one too), Paradise Island in the Bahamas is one of my happy places. I recommend it to all of my favorite friends (if I haven’t suggested it to you before, you probably haven’t asked- or hinted about asking- or just generally mentioned island travel). We are fortunate to have a place to stay when we visit, which is perfect for travel with family. If you are traveling with a larger family or several friends, it is sometimes difficult to find (and afford) so many hotel rooms. Herein, comes Redweek. A couple of friends have used Redweek to book timeshares on the island (both booked the Harborside Resort at Atlantis) and were pleased with the results. Having not personally used Redweek, I’m unable to endorse/not endorse Redweek but rather am just throwing it out there as another resource to consider when traveling.
WhatsApp is one of my favorite apps. I downloaded it when we went to India almost three years ago and used it to stay in touch with my parents via text (there is also a call feature, but we just used my husband’s international plan on his phone for that). It has since been fun to communicate with my brother-in-law’s family, who lives in India. There are birthday texts, travel texts, and cute kids and dog texts thrown around occasionally. It is a great app to stay close when we the distance between us isn’t.
Okay, I know this is a travel-inspired blog, but we have been spending quite a bit of time on a cabin renovation/facelift. As our wood floor guy said about the 1912 structure, “it’s like a box of chocolates…” And we certainly didn’t know what we were going to get. Turns out that under one layer of linoleum and 3 layers of thick plywood, there were the original wood floors… in two-thirds of the room. Just sand and rotting joists in the other third (insert eye roll emoji here). After quite a bit of brainstorming, we finally came up with a solution that is probably only exciting to me, so I’ll just keep it to myself. But, something to share…. based on The Lily Pad Cottage’s post here, I have been listening to Chris Loves Julia on my trips back and forth to the cabin. They are a DIY couple in Idaho and have so many relatable stories (and make me laugh when I sometimes want to cry).
That’s it for now– Have a wonderful weekend!
6 Comments
woodyworldpacker
Great insight into the light of a busy blogger/renovater/wife and mother. Would love to see more about the Cabin Renovation! We just renovated a caravan and it is so cool to see it come alive.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mackinaw Road
Thank you so much! I’d love to see pics of your caravan- how fun!!! This renovation is taking longer than expected, so hoping to have it finished by Thanksgiving 🙂
Katherine
Redweek sounds like a great resource to check out. Especially for bigger groups, I’d actually never heard of it before. That cabin floor sounds beautiful in places – the places that aren’t rotting or just sand. Good luck with the renovation!
Mackinaw Road
Thanks so much, Katherine! I’ll take all of the good wishes and luck I can get 🙂
evagabrielacontreras
A cabin renovation? How exciting! I hope you’ll share the process on the blog!!!!
Mackinaw Road
It is super exciting! Last week was a little rough but things are moving again this week and I even may get to start painting 🙂 I’ll definitely share the progress. Thanks for sharing in our excitement, Eva!