Hope Chests - Still a Popular Bride-To-Be Item

The tradition associated with hope chests dates back to a time when brides were expected to have dowries. This was considered an important part of the woman’s contribution at the beginning of a marriage and contained such things as tablecloths, bed and kitchen linens, and doilies, runners, and furniture scarves. Since these items were then made by hand and sometimes took many months to create, it was important to store them in an environment where they were protected from humidity, heat, and insect damage.

Today, people continue to use hope chests as a traditional gift to a someday-bride so that she can begin her collection of important items to be put into future housekeeping use. Perhaps considered old-fashioned by some, this decades-old tradition continues to be a popular custom cherished by many families with daughters.

Not only do hope chests serve to store valuable linens, but now they are also used to protect photographs, important documents, and many other items considered precious and in need of safekeeping. Once the hope chest becomes part of a newly married couples’ household furnishings, it then becomes a cherished item for storage, often handed down as an heirloom from one generation to the next.

Hope chests used to be exclusively made from cedar, highly noted for its preservative properties and ability to repel moths and other damaging insects. Now it is quite common to find chests made from all types of wood – pine, oak, maple, cherry, mahogany, etc. – and then simply lined with cedar in order to maintain the protective qualities of cedar while enjoying the different beauties of other species of woods.

One excellent online source to find some of the most beautiful, well-built hope chests for any future bride – or for the homeowner who simply wants an extraordinary piece of storage-type furniture – is www.Cabinfield.com. This Web site offers a huge selection of not only hope chests, but a huge variety of all kinds of handcrafted furniture and other home furnishings – all created by the Amish.

Hope chests are part of our American tradition. And if you are in the market for one built with the quality needed to become an heirloom in your family, visit Cabinfield’s. They offer hope chests that will keep your keepsakes and treasured home items beautifully and safely for generations to come.

Cedar Chests - A Classic Tradition

Cedar chests have been used as a method for safe storage of clothes and other valuables since the days of the ancient Egyptians. Hollowed out and carved from a single, solid piece of cedar wood, cedar chests provided preservation and safe storage for delicate papyrus documents, fine linens, and other items made from cloth, and also served as seating in the home.

During the Renaissance period, artisans and craftsmen began to build cedar chests using panels nailed together instead of carving them from a solid cedar tree trunk. Less expensive and easier to create, cedar chests began to appear in the homes of those other than the wealthy. Soon, although cedar remained popular – as it does today – it became customary to select other types of wood for the chest and then lining it with cedar. That way, if the looks and characteristics of other species of wood were desired, the preservative properties of the cedar could still be retained.

As popular as ever, cedar chests are considered today as one of the necessary articles of home furnishings. This furniture item is where a family’s most cherished items are kept for safekeeping. It also serves as a beautiful piece of furniture to accent a room, with some of them including cushions to act as additional seating – just as the Egyptians did in ancient times.

Cedar chests can be purchased all over the Internet, but when looking for the finest quality at the fairest prices, Web sites that offer chests built by the Amish cannot be outdone. Cabinfield’s (www.Cabinfield.com) is one of the premier sites featuring cedar chests – and a host of other fine-quality, Amish-made creations – to be considered when shopping for this crucial home item.

This site offers an excellent array of cedar chests as well as chests made from oak, cherry, and maple that are lined with cedar. All of them come singly built of solid wood by Amish artisans who create them by hand – right down to their dovetailed joinery and hand-rubbed finishes.

So the next time you are considering cedar chests as the smart, beautiful, and practical way to add to your home décor, check out the Amish creations at Cabinfield. You won’t find a better product at a more reasonable price.

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.