Say Yes to Fun
by Dan Mitchell, Farmer’s Son Co.
In early August, my husband Rory and I ventured north for our annual summer break, spending a week at the cabin with our family. It’s always good to get out of the city, but there’s just something about heading north that really makes you appreciate how beautiful Manitoba truly is. The further you drive, the more the landscape changes around you and the everyday noise seems to fall away.
Rory’s been making the trip to the cabin, near Flin Flon, since he was a kid, and I’ve been happily tagging along for close to a decade now. There’s a familiarity to the week that I’ve really come to love over the years. We get out on the water with our kayaks and paddleboards, settle into happy hours on the dock, enjoy great food and drink, and of course, fit in a cabin nap or two. Mostly, it’s just a chance to slow down, spend time with people we love and enjoy having nowhere important to be (other than those secret fishing spots).
We had a few beautiful days when we arrived before the weather changed and four straight days of rain settled in. There’s something almost welcome about being forced to slow down by the weather at the cabin. You play a few rounds of cards, linger over that extra cup of coffee, spend extra time in the kitchen perfecting something good for everyone to eat and enjoy that extra downtime without feeling the least bit guilty about it.
After a few days of rain, someone pulled a murder mystery game from the cupboard, and I was completely on board.
The cast of characters was just as ridiculous as you’d hope: the business tycoon, the mysterious clairvoyant, the Frenchman, the daughter of a mob boss and a whole collection of larger-than-life personalities that really felt as though they’d been pulled from every old murder mystery cliché at once. The fun, of course, was figuring out how any of us were going to look remotely the part with nothing more than what we’d packed for a week at the cabin.
When you’re at a little cabin in the woods with no Tickle Trunk, no plan and only whatever happens to be tucked in the bunkhouse, games cupboard or suitcase, you get resourceful quickly. Before long, we were pulling together costumes from whatever we could find, fully leaning into the ridiculousness of it all.
At some point, a family member turned to our group and said, “Let’s say yes to fun.” And that was it.
No overthinking. No worrying about how goofy we looked or whether the game itself was going to be any good. Just letting go, committing to the moment and having fun with the people around us.
That idea’s stayed with me since.
Before long, everyone cobbled together their looks. Rory had become a business tycoon, my mom-in-law was the daughter of a mob boss, my dad-in-law had transformed into our game’s resident Frenchman and, somewhere along the way, a collection of Turkish hammam towels were repurposed to create my clairvoyant look.
None of us looked particularly convincing, which made it all that much better.
The game itself was terrible. The story was questionable (at best), the characters were ridiculous, and after a few glasses of wine, I’m not sure anyone was concerned about solving the murder. But we laughed. We laughed at the costumes, at ourselves, and at just how completely a group of adults had committed to this ridiculous game.
It ended up being one of my favourite nights of this summer.
I’ve thought about that evening quite a bit since, but mostly, I’ve thought about four words: say yes to fun.
So many of us get good at talking ourselves out of things. We’ll have people over when the house has been cleaned. We’ll make the dinner when we have more time. We’ll open that bottle when there’s something worth celebrating. We’ll use the good dishes when there’s company. We’ll burn the candle later.
It feels like there’s always a reason to wait.
By the time autumn rolls around, our routines are firmly back in place. Summer’s wound down, school’s underway, the garden’s being put to bed, and the days are getting shorter. Calendars fill up with work, appointments, errands and all the things that come with preparing for another Manitoba winter.
There’s nothing wrong with routines. I quite like it. But sometimes, I feel like we get so focused on everything that needs doing that we forget to leave room for the things that are simply enjoyable.
Maybe saying yes to fun isn’t about adding more to an already busy life. Maybe it’s just about being a little less quick to decide that something can wait until later.
This autumn also marks ten years since I began crafting candles as Farmer’s Son Co., and over that decade I’ve had so many people tell me that somewhere in their home is a cupboard, cabinet or bookcase filled with candles I’ve made that they haven’t burned. Sometimes they’ve been saving them for years.
They’ll come into our shoppe and tell me how much they loved a particular fragrance or how beautiful they thought a piece was, followed by the admission that they couldn’t bring themselves to light it because it was “too nice to use.”
I do love hearing that. Truly. As an artist, I’m genuinely moved that something I’ve made meant enough to someone that they wanted to keep it.
But I also want them to enjoy their candles. That’s why I make them.
I think about that more as FSCo. has grown from a candle studio into the shoppe it is today. We spend our days surrounded by beautiful treasures, pieces meant to be enjoyed. Linens, glassware, garden tools, food, fragrance and chocolate, all meant to be part of someone’s everyday life.
Every so often, someone will pick something up and say, “This is just too nice to use.”
This always makes me think about all the beautiful treasures so many of us already have tucked away. The crystal received as a wedding gift. Grandma’s good dishes. Great-Grandma’s silver. The linen towels we don’t want to stain. That bottle we’re waiting for the ‘right’ occasion to open. The candle we love so much that we’re afraid for what happens when it’s gone.
Honestly, what are we waiting for?
I’ve had so many conversations with people wondering what to do with the collections of things that previous generations carefully preserved. Dishes, silver, crystal, linens that spent decades boxed up. Tucked safely away, only for families to discover that the next generation may not want them.
I keep coming back to the same answer: use them.
I have a hunch Great-Grandma would be happy knowing her silver were still making their way around the dinner table. Sometimes using something is part of loving it.
That idea’s become a key part of the way Rory and I think about our shoppe. We want the pieces in our shoppe to be beautiful and thoughtfully crafted, but we also want them to be enjoyed. The linen towels should soften after using. The coupe glass should be clinked. And the candle should be lit again and again until it is eventually gone.
There’s something beautiful about the evidence that something’s been enjoyed.
Maybe that’s another way we can say yes to fun. Invite the pals over and for dinner without waiting until the house is spotless. Crack the seal on that bottle. Enjoy the good bar of chocolate. Bring out the dishes, light the candles. Put on a favourite album as you make dinner together. Make that dessert on a weeknight because you feel like it.
There doesn’t always need to be a special occasion waiting for us. Sometimes the occasion’s simply that we’re here.
One of my favourite evenings of the summer came together from almost nothing: a rainy night, a little cabin in the woods, a questionable game and a few glasses of wine. Nothing about it was polished and none of it was particularly sophisticated.
We simply said yes to having fun.
As we head into another busy autumn and winter, I’m trying to carry a little of that cabin evening with me. Invite the pals over. Use the nice stuff. Open the bottle. Burn the candle. Let the night be a little imperfect, a little unplanned and maybe even a little ridiculous.
There’ll always be another reason to wait for the right time, the right occasion or the right mood; maybe it’s better to just say yes to fun every once in a while.
Maple Old Fashioned
A classic cocktail with a Canadian twist. Bold, slightly sweet and well balanced.
Ingredients
2 oz quality Canadian rye whisky
2–3 dashes Dillon’s Aromatic Bitters
Garnish: Dried or fresh orange slice and Luxardo cocktail cherry
Method
Add maple syrup and bitters to a mixing glass. Pour in rye whisky and add ice. Stir gently for 20–30 seconds until chilled and diluted. Strain over a large cube in a rocks glass. Float orange slice on top, then garnish with the cherry.
Photography by Jerra Fraser
