Born and raised in Milwaukee, sixteen years in Colorado, then a lake in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin — frozen solid from December to April. My husband, Jeremy, and I bought the cabin in 2019 and have been renovating it since: the log siding stripped and stained from scratch, three porches (one's now our bedroom, one's the office I'm writing this from), a wall knocked out for a second bathroom, flower boxes on every window — Jeremy's idea, and he built them. That's the home-projects half of what I write about.

The other half is everything that comes from actually living here year-round, not just visiting in summer: what's growing in a zone 4a garden, what gets put up in the freezer before the lake ices over, what's for dinner on a random Tuesday because every meal is special in my opinion. Recipes, seasonal projects, whatever's actually going on that week.

These days it's running a marketing consulting business, a painting and design business with Jeremy, and Northwoods Table. Before that, for a while, it was a CMO title and traveling on an airplane every week.

I grew up watching Martha Stewart on Saturday mornings instead of cartoons, which is probably where this all started — wanting a home that actually felt good to be in, not just decorated. That same rabbit hole is where I taught myself to cook, glued to the Food Network as a young adult. Jeremy's shop is the same instinct pointed at wood instead of a stovetop: every tool imaginable, always building or fixing something. Put us together and you get two people who'd rather make it than buy it.

Jeremy ran his own painting business before he was a national sales leader. After 40 years in the corporate world (between the two of us), we started KJ Collective, a painting and design business based in Manitowish Waters, WI. After working on a lot of houses, we decided to start writing everything down, and that's where the guides come from.