Outdoor Decor - Handcrafted & American-Made

The outdoor decor you select personalizes your outside environment. It tells the world a little something about your interests, your tastes, and your relationship to the rest of the world. And choosing outdoor decor that not only “speaks” to you and your neighbors, but also lasts season after season can make a difference between buying new things every year or having the same, beautifully crafted items to enjoy for many years to come.

From whirligigs to windchimes, outdoor décor runs the gamut from fun to functional. High-quality items made to endure for many seasons can sometimes be hard to find. Products that come handcrafted, hand-painted, and created with an eye toward beauty as well as long-lasting usefulness aren’t usually found at the corner big-box store. You may need to look online. And you may need to consider where the items come from.

Many outdoor décor products are produced overseas. There, they are made as cheaply as possible and as quickly as possible to offset the cost of shipping them around the world to the U.S. But there are still places here in America where one can find American-made, high-quality outdoor décor products: from the Amish.

The Plain People (the Amish) place quality first and create outdoor decor items just as well as they build, construct, and produce everything else they make. Everything comes carefully thought out and designed, crafted by hand, and made to last.

Just a few of the American-made outdoor decor products handcrafted by the Amish include:

- Lighthouses and other nautically themed items
- Wagons and wheelbarrows
- Planters
- Wishing wells
- Windmills
- Birdhouses and feeders
- Windchimes
- Mailboxes
- Waterwheels
- Whirligigs and other novelty products

To give you an example of the quality Amish-made outdoor décor items possess, consider the Lighthouses they create. Built to lend an imitable sense of enchantment to a water garden, pond, or to stand alone as a focal point of a landscape, these exquisitely rendered Lighthouses come with a host of unique characteristics found only from the Amish artisans who make them.

Painstakingly handcrafted from T1-11 pine, identical to the durable material used to build outdoor sheds, they come offered in many sizes – from 18 inches to 5 feet (and taller, if requested by the customer). You can get them electrically or solar powered (powerful enough to illuminate an entire typical walkway) and with or without rotating beacons or blinking lights for a unique and eye-catching touch of interest. Additionally, this outdoor décor item can be had in standard colors or you can get them custom hand-painted.

So the next time you think “outdoor decor,” think, “Amish, American-made, handcrafted outdoor decor.” You’ll not only get the best looking outdoor decor, but you’ll also have it to enjoy for years longer than you ever expected!

Beautiful Lawn Furniture, Made to Last

Well-built, attractive, comfortable lawn furniture makes the difference between enjoying the outdoor season and avoiding it. Whether entertaining friends, spending time with family, or taking time for quiet moments alone, good outdoor lawn furniture takes precedence.

People spend hundreds – sometimes thousands – of dollars each year on lawn furniture, many times only to find themselves purchasing the same items again after only a year or two of normal use. Sometimes lawn furniture items are of such poor quality that they see no use at all – an uncomfortable seat goes unused, a broken armrest on a lounger puts that item out of use, or nails/rivets/screws come loose or are lost making a swing unusable or too uncomfortable to bother sitting in.

There are alternatives to cheaply made, uncomfortable lawn furniture, however, but consumers may need to search a little to find them. One option lies in Amish-made lawn furniture. Now here is lawn furniture that ranks in a class by itself.

Like so many Amish-made products, the lawn furniture made by these craftsmen is made with the utmost sense of quality. You won’t find uncomfortable seats made by the Amish. Instead, you’ll find body-contouring chairs, swings, loungers, and other outdoor seating built to fit the human shape – much of it optionally available in styles suitable for tall people.

As for materials used in Amish-made lawn furniture, you’ll find nothing short of full-grained solid wood or maintenance-free, high-grade polyvinyl. No fiberboard or cheap plastic is ever used in the creation of lawn furniture handcrafted from the Amish.

As for connectors like screws, rivets, and nails, much of the lawn furniture made by the Amish utilizes inset (countersunk) screws. This means that not only are screws used – instead of nails – but that the screws are inset into the wood so that they don’t snag on clothing (or skin!), plus make the piece look better overall and don’t work themselves out of the wood nearly as easily.

Amish lawn furniture is made to last. You won’t be replacing this type of lawn furniture anytime soon – maybe not until your grandchildren are grown! So the next time you consider buying furniture to use outdoors, think about investing in a lifetime (and longer) of quality, beautifully handcrafted lawn furniture – made only by the Amish.

Outdoor Furniture - Is it All the Same?

Buying outdoor furniture often becomes an every-year occurrence and can easily run into thousands of dollars in just a short time. Have you ever considered that the inexpensive chairs, table, or other outdoor furniture you bought just last season seem to prematurely be showing signs of wear – or maybe even already falling apart? And so, as a result, do you find yourself each spring replacing items that any reasonable person would assume should last at least twice as long?

Most outdoor furniture you find at the “Big Box” home stores and other discount retail outlets sell furniture made from production lines – and from offshore sources where unskilled labor is cheap and plentiful. Getting the finished product out the door is the main concern – not the quality of the item. Another reason quality never becomes a criterion for a finished product lies in the fact that these companies WANT the consumer to replace items every season. That’s what keeps them churning out the cheaply made products year after year after year. When something constantly breaks, it’s replaced – repeatedly – over and over and over again.

Unless the consumer finally learns that buying quality outdoor furniture in the first place can stop the cycle of endless repurchasing of the same products every single year. But where does one find such quality nowadays?

In America there still exists one sure source for obtaining remarkable workmanship at a fair price: the Amish craftsman. Outdoor furniture constructed by the Amish comes with a guarantee of good work and is built with the integrity inherent in a people who earn their living based on the premise of reasonable compensation for a job well performed. Details in their craftsmanship include things like countersunk screws instead of nails; extra bracing, durable wood finishes; hand-sanding; hand-painting … even their non-wood products come from high-grade vinyl and polyurethane materials.

It takes some consideration, but even when you initially pay more for outdoor furniture created by the skilled hands of Amish craftsman, are you REALLY paying more? If, for example, an outdoor rocker costs $45 dollars but lasts only one or two seasons, is it really less expensive than a $350 rocker that you may even be able to pass down to your grandchildren? A so-called “bargain” is supposed to save money, but when you buy cheap outdoor furniture that needs replacing nearly every year, are you actually saving money? Think about it.

How Do I Select the Right Gazebo for My Backyard?

Nothing adds an old-fashioned sense of charm to your property like a gazebo. And you just can’t beat the workmanship that comes from a gazebo handcrafted from the workshops of some of the best craftsmen in the world: Amish artisans. But from which of the myriad of styles and materials that gazebos come offered in today does one choose?

Gazebos are offered in all sorts of materials – pressure-treated pine, vinyl, and wonderfully aromatic cedar. All these types of materials make excellent materials for gazebos, but is one better than the others? And of all the different styles and shapes – Victorian, Brookside, oval-, rectangular-, octagonal-shaped – how in the world can one make a choice?

Pressure-treated pine gazebos offer a durable, long-lasting alternative to those made of more expensive materials. You get the inimitable beauty of real wood without the high cost of more expensive types of wood.

Vinyl provides a low-maintenance type of material that many people prefer over that of wood. Its longwearing stability and good looks rival that of wood, yet taking care of vinyl-made gazebos is simply much easier. Although more expensive than pine, vinyl doesn’t carry quite the price tag of some other types of longer-to-grow woods, such as oak or cedar.

And then we come to cedar. Ah, the unmistakable and matchless qualities of Western red cedar – finely and carefully constructed in the heartland of America. Gazebos made from solid-wood cedar are insect- and weather-resistant, fragrant, and fit in perfectly with just about any décor scheme.

And then there’s style, size, and shape. Selecting a rectangular, oval, or octagonal shaped gazebo should complement your home, if possible. A huge gazebo would overpower and look out of place in the yard of a small home, while a too-small gazebo would get lost in the dimensions of a large home and the property surrounding it. Of course, style is another matter. Sticking to a simpler design makes sense for homes of a more modern style. Gazebos with clean, straightforward lines and not too much ornamentation work best in that scenario. But if your home is traditional or leaning toward a style of earlier, more decorative times, perhaps a Victorian or Brookside-style gazebo would be more to your liking. With gingerbread galore and lots of turned-post railings, spindles, pagoda roofs, cupolas, and more – the imagination’s the limit with these fine, fancy gazebos reminiscent of yesteryear.

Whichever gazebo you choose, the benefits abound. Whether for friends and family get-togethers in the larger-sized styles or used as a quiet haven for simply relaxing alone in the smaller versions, all gazebos add a unique degree of enjoyment to outdoor living – in addition to adding a highly attractive feature to a yard. It boils down to this: no matter which gazebo you choose, you just can’t go wrong with something that brings such pleasure at such a comparatively low price – an American-made, handcrafted gazebo created with the artisanship and integrity that comes only from the Amish.