Glamping decor essentials:
Usually when we go camping (which is rare but it happens sometimes) we’re super practical. We’re such responsible adults. We take the bare essential things to sustain life and stay socially acceptable – things for food, hydration, hygiene and caffeination.
But over Fourth of July weekend, the only food I took was a bag of smoked bar-b-q potato chips from Whole Foods. Other than that, no food. But I made absolutely sure I packed:
- A carved wooden hand from Bali
- A short length of dyed silk jacquard with a Chinese pattern on it
- A suede and silk chenille pillow with elephant trim
Whaaaaat?
Because, this was glamping. This was glamping in a yurt. And I recently posted some photos of tricked-out yurts and I wanted our yurt to be decorated like that too. So I studied the yurt photos from our campground’s website, and decided to pack some fancy frivolous things — of which my husband was completely unaware until they were unpacked and fluffed up around the yurt, then he could only laugh.
So here … scenes from our yurt for a short weekend …
I even packed a yak bell. Just in case our yurt came with a yak. You want to be prepared. But yet we had no toilet paper. So much for being prepared.
Thankfully we were not in Mongolia or Khazakhstan, the kinds of places where people live in yurts for real. We didn’t have any hygiene catastrophes and no one collapsed from starvation or dehydration. We were in Door County, Wisconsin with its cute little harbor towns and all the organic non-GMO food, recycled toilet paper and DEET-free mosquito sprays you could ever want.
We ate like privileged vegetarian localvores. We drank like fish that drink wine. And yes, I decorated a yurt like a silly person. Glamping at its finest!
There is one sorta practical thing to learn here. I can show you how to hide a basic bunk bed with textiles. This actually is practical for traveling because you can choose lighter-weight textiles that pack in small light bundles. Here’s a before and after:
The textile at the top is draped over part of the bunk bed purely as a decorative feature. Its job is to make this feel more like an exotic Asian nook, than a pine bunk bed in northern Wisconsin. It’s a silk dupatta from India, from Jaypore. It weighs only ounces and packs super small.
The rest of the stuff there, I gotta admit, was not so compact. But glamping isn’t practical. So that’s my excuse. The textiles here reflect our formerly more nomadic traveling life (appropriate for a yurt, I thought) and they gave me wanderlust:
- Big pillows covered with silk Jim Thompson fabric we found in Bangkok
- A silk elephant pillow, also from Jim Thompson in Bangkok
- A pillow I sewed with elephant trim ribbon, brown suede and silk chenille
- Alpaca blanket from Peru
- A small piece of dyed silk jacquard, found at a fabric store in Austin, Texas
- A soft slightly fuzzy gray and peach color fabric that goes so well with the dyed silk jacquard, I must make something with these two textiles together!
- Sheepskin rug. Probably from IKEA.
Nothing matches exactly, nor should it if you are picking up bits and pieces of things along your travels. And that’s the idea here. Yurts should have nomadic style.
The other silliness I set up here:
- Vintage Indian slippers from an Etsy shop
- An old yak bell we got in Gangtok, Sikkim
- A patterned inlaid frame found at HomeGoods
- A burnished brass tribal style bracelet also from HomeGoods
- A wooden carved hand from Bali found at Novica
That carved hand did have a practical job – we dangled keys from its fingers!
I painted a little tote bag in a style which I’ll add to my new Etsy shop as soon as a shipment arrives with more bags in this size. I call the color combo “Nilgiri Nutmeg.”
From its handles dangle “camel swag” from Woman Shops World on Etsy – vintage decorations from Rajasthani camels. So if our yurt had a yak, we have a bell. If our yurt had a camel, we got the swag!
This little bag wasn’t frivolous – it was so handy. Because we didn’t pack toilet paper, I had to buy some. It also toted DEET-free mosquito spray, bottles of wine, packages of goat cheese and hummus, crispy crackers and a Door County road map. If you need a bag to carry things home from a market or perhaps to your own temporary weekend yurt, follow my Etsy shop where I’ll be adding more colorful patterned bags through the summer, just perfect for traveling down your own Silk Road.
