Cute Cottage

In the Catskills, Comfort in a Gingerbread House

THE most magical things in life are the ones that spring up where you least expect them — the rosebush in the abandoned lot, for example, or in the case of Sandra Foster, the tiny Victorian cottage in the Catskills that shares space with a 1971 mobile home, two aged trucks, a pen full of chickens and a hand-lettered sign advertising “Farm Fresh Eggs, $2 a Dozen.”

The chickens and their eggs are the remnants of a restaurant that Ms. Foster’s husband, Todd, a great bear of man, tried to run in this sleepy college town last summer; like the landscape business he started a few years earlier, it failed. Mr. Foster, who is working at a local poultry farm, is still recovering from back troubles, making Ms. Foster, a fiscal administrator at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, the primary wage earner.

No matter. Ms. Foster has her own shabby-chic retreat. It may not have a bathroom or a kitchen, but it is a dream of Victoriana: stacks of Limoges china with tiny rosebud patterns; chandeliers dripping crystal; billows of tissue-paper garlands.

This is all the more impressive because she renovated the 9-by-14-foot cottage, an old hunting cabin, herself. The cost of renovating and furnishing it: $3,000.

The rest of the article here. I would DEFINITELY suggest checking out the page to see more pictures of this cute place!!