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SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS

School Days, School Days, Dear old Golden Rule days~~~ announcing the beginning of fall to come! Late summer and early fall are always exciting times for children and young adults who are heading back to school.

 

It’s a time to get new school supplies, maybe some new clothes and to begin registering for classes, sports and other extracurricular activities. Parents are taking their children to the bus or to schools or driving them to campuses for orientation as we all seek to learn more. It is an exciting time for learning and social activities. As young children, my brothers, sister and I used to buy one new “outfit” that we would possibly wear the first day of school, maybe new shoes and of course all of the new supplies we needed. We went “down town” in Wisconsin Rapids and later Madison to buy our clothes and shoes in anticipation of all the great things that would be happening as we entered a new grade.

At our homes, our parents would be making  necessary transitions  from the summer time laziness and outdoor activities, to more structured schedules and preparing for the fall and winter holidays to come. Organizing our homes from the casualness of summer to the entertaining times of the fall is renewing and refreshing. We’ll have football parties, Halloween preparations and all of the decorating we enjoy at Thanksgiving and the Holidays.

Our readers are tidying their rooms and homes as the seasons move towards fall and winter. We are updating our interiors and the outsides of our homes in preparations for celebrations, the fall and holidays. This interior “tidying” includes our window treatments, blinds and window shadings. Many readers have Silhouette® Window Shading and similar products dressing their windows. They give you 3 options for viewing – a clear view when they are in the headrail, a closed position and an open position when they are covering the glass. In the open position, there is a slightly filtered view of the outside along with insulation and some privacy. An amazing option.

I have directed many clients to the Silhouette® and similar shading options and they love them, as they have so many options and the light coming through the sheers is so iridescent. The light occasionally draws bugs and debris into the vane openings. So we invented and manufacture our CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™ to easily and safely remove the pests without hurting the shadings. With our tool, the views through the shadings are preserved, pristine and beautiful. As you prepare for your fall entertaining, our CamilyWand™ is a great tool to have handy for your shadings or to remove light weight particles from any inaccessible places in your home.

We at Camily, LLC wish you a very enjoyable and safe start to school and fall.

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Rainbows Beautifully Color, Light Stormy Summer Skies

Rainbows Beautifully Color, Light Stormy Summer Skies, merging with a tornado on the horizon during a summer storm. This amazing image captures light in the rainbow and the wind energy of the storm in this stunning photo.

We all have opportunities to see beauty in nature: the amazing prism effect of light and rain mixing together to form rainbows, or the raging wind forming the funnel clouds of tornados during hot summer months. This image with the rainbow starting to join the funnel cloud at the bottom, is especially unique. Mother Nature provides us with these wonderful views, which we should treasure as we move through each day.

Many of our readers have discovered a way to enjoy these gorgeous happenings from inside their homes when their window shadings are covering the glass, and they can see outside with the filtered views through Silhouette® Window Shadings by Hunter Douglas. These products give insulation when covering the glass, yet the sheers with the horizontal vanes allow the outside views to be preserved at the same time. These qualities are wonderful for bringing the outside into our homes and at the same time saving energy.

As we enjoy the light and the views through the Silhouettes®, we often find little gnats and bugs who have made their way into the vane openings from the side. Clients and readers both need a solution to remove the offending insects. We invented the CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™ to remove the bugs and debris easily and safely, to protect the shadings and preserve inspiring views from homes and offices. It’s extension pole with our perpetually sticky CamilyTip does the trick , keeping your Silhouettes®, Nantuckets™, Shangri- Las™ and many other shadings in great shape.

Our CamilyWand™ has other interesting uses as well. It will retrieve items and debris from a myriad of inaccessible places, and is helpful for bug removal in the garden. One reader successfully removed aphids from her delicate rose petals with our tool – so it is very useful to have in your home when the need for it arises.

Camily, LLC hopes you have a wonderful summer, enjoying the longer sunlight hours!

 

 

 

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You Scream, I Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream

You Scream, I Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream! On hot summer days, ice cream cones, shakes and sundaes are such a refreshing treat at home or on vacation.

On our summer vacation we ate lunch at this very ice cream parlor, Wilsons, in Ephraim, Door County, Wisconsin. Last Sunday I was enjoying a Cherry Shake and Cheeseburger at this ever popular ice cream shop, established in 1906, on my vacation there. We spent time with relatives enjoying the good life on the Green Bay shores – and even spent some time on the Lake Michigan shore beaches too. Great extended family time!

Often homes and the life style in Door County are published in shelter and vacation magazines. It is a life where time moves more slowly, people enjoy water sports, hiking, biking, boating and other fun summer activities. Many have vacation homes there, allowing escape from the hustle and bustle of city and business life. Even delivery companies move slower on this magical Northeast Wisconsin peninsula north of the city of Green Bay.

Since there are beautiful homes, there are also wonderful interiors with upscale furnishings. Many readers have installed the popular Silhouette® window shadings to capture all the glory of amazing sunsets over Green Bay. Or the gardens and unique quality of the Door Peninsula. They enjoy their views through the shadings while gaining insulation and UV protection simultaneously.

Because the light is so attractive to people and insects alike, bugs and flies find their way into the shadings through the side openings and get caught in the vane/sheers of the Silhouettes®, Nantuckets™ and other Hunter Douglas products that offer similar characteristics. We realized that many clients and readers struggle with that phenomenon and invented a tool to remove bugs and debris from inaccessible places like the vane openings in the blinds the CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™. It’s perpetually sticky tip (when clean) grabs onto bugs and lightweight objects, allowing for safe retrieval. We answered the “why” of the problem and have a creative solution to preserve beautiful views from homes and offices.

As you move through summer and vacations, CamilyWand™ hopes you have a relaxing and safe time!

 

 

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Beautiful Snow Frosting the Rocky Mountains

Beautiful Snow Frosting the Rocky Mountains was our Mothers Day gift this year in Colorado! It was a wet snowman kind of snow – just what we need in the springtime!

What a Mothers Day Gift from Mother Nature herself! I couldn’t resist sharing this photo from my friend Linda, as my tulips in Colorado Springs haven’t quite woken up yet! We have such a gorgeous frosting of snow in the mountains and on the front range, providing us with much needed moisture. May flowers love it; we wait to plant or cover our vegetation during our occasional frosty evenings.

This past weekend I’ve was a homebody, like I used to be when growing up in Wisconsin during the cold months. We would put together jigsaw puzzles, knit or sew, work on scrapbooks, have fires in the fireplace, roast marshmallows, bake cookies, and in general hunker down during those times. It’s strange to do that in May in Colorado, however it happens often here at odd times. Many years we have had blizzards that can and do leave feet of snow along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. This snow had enough moisture to make great snowmen!

In my home, I keep my Silhouette® window shadings covering the glass for insulation and enjoy the view through the sheers. It helps with energy savings and I still see the budding bulbs and perennial flowers that can withstand the frosts. Many of the Hunter Douglas Shadings have similar properties where readers may enjoy views, insulation and partial privacy at the same time. They have side openings, which allows for part of their energy efficiency.

Those same side openings allow bugs and debris to enter the shading, because they love the sunlight and warmth. Those pesky insects often die in those openings and need to be removed. That is WHY we developed our CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™ to preserve your views and investment in your shadings. It is an easy to use, safe tool, made of an extension pole and a sticky CamilyTip on the end. It “grabs” the insects from the spaces between the vanes to easily keep your shades clear of debris. One Silhouette® owner commented that it “is a brilliant” tool. What a nice compliment~~~

We at CamilyWand™ hope you’re enjoying your Springtime fun and are safe!

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Spring Skiing, Budding Flowers Evoke Nature’s Beauty

Spring Skiing, Budding Flowers evoke Nature’s Beauty in the mountains and on the plains. Our gardens are waking up, bulbs blooming and trees blossoming.

On any given day in April, these blooming daffodil bulbs could have snow on them in Colorado, possibly into May, as well. The beauty of living in the Rockies is the ever changing weather, especially in spring!

I love spring skiing too – the weather is balmier, the snow amazingly beautiful as we schuss down the mountain ski runs or cross country ski in the woods. Skiing is a favorite sport of mine, as I’ve been skiing somewhere since I was a teenager. Our family skied in Northern Wisconsin, where I chipped a kneecap on one trip. We also went to places like Rib Mountain, Cascade, Mt. Horeb and other nearby hills.  Our family came to Breckenridge, CO one spring break with another Madison family, taking a week of morning lessons and then enjoying the beauty during practice afternoon skiing. People today wouldn’t believe the old skis we used back then!

But now, with the warming temperatures and longer daylight hours, I’m ready to get in the garden. Greenhouses are tempting us with beautiful flowers and bushes, even though we will still get hard frosts until at least the middle of May. So our planting time happens quickly here nearer Memorial Day than now.

To enjoy my garden during the evening, I have outdoor lighting, where I can see my garden through my Silhouette® window shadings. I get sun protection, insulation and partial privacy when I have the shadings covering the glass and in the open position. So I can see the garden, the mountains, and the recent eclipse through the blinds. It is wonderful to have so many choices of window coverings and view through ability of shadings like the Silhouettes®, Nantuckets™, Pirouettes®, Vignettes®, Luminettes®, Soleras™ and many other Hunter Douglas products. The view through is especially enjoyable during the day you have your shadings protecting your furnishings with great UV protection and you want to see your gorgeous view outside.

Seeing the views is such a plus with the shades covering the glass, that we always want to preserve the light giving views. We are attracted to light and so are bugs, gnats and other pesky things. As a long time interior designer, my readers and clients would want answers to that problem. So I invented our CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Toolfor that purpose, as well as to retrieve items from inaccessible and difficult to reach places. It has proven to be a unique, very popular tool throughout the world. We are in Australia and Europe as well as North America.

We are looking forward to enjoying the views of our gardens and landscapes or our snowcapped mountains.

CamilyWand™ hopes you’ll enjoy your surroundings and views this spring.

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Easter, Passover, Celebrating Beliefs this Week

Easter, Passover, Celebrating Beliefs this Week is a time to reaffirm our traditional ways of living and being.

As we celebrate Passover, Easter and other religious holidays we reflect on our lives and our new paths to come.

My recollections go back to our church in Wisconsin Rapids, across the street from the Wisconsin River. At the time it was an old stone Congregational Church, where I was baptized and confirmed, as is our tradition. One year the church basement flooded and I am still able to picture us teenagers in our high rubber boots bucketing water out of our classrooms during a spring river flood.

Later after our family moved to Madison, the church was remodeled.  Our Barker family donated a Carillon tower and music to the church in honor of and Grandmother, an avid supporter of our church and faith. All of us Grandchildren and our parents contributed to that memorial, which provides peaceful music as it plays in Wisconsin Rapids. It is a multi – generational gift, reminding us of our impact on society.

As I composed this blog post I saw a butterfly in my garden, through my sheer window shadings; then saw a couple of birds on the deck railing, further reminding me of the circle of life and what we are celebrating this week. The butterflies on flowers are truly an amazing universal sign of hope, I enjoy sharing the image of a butterfly on a flower blossom.

My Silhouette® window shadings allow my excellent filtered views to the outside, which I enjoy. They allow me to see mother nature in action with birds and animals. Many of my blog post readers share my love of having the ability to insulate my home, receive some privacy and see all that nature offers us outside our homes.

The Silhouettes® and many other products manufactured my Hunter Douglas provide similar attributes and functionality. The side openings in the shadings allow bugs and debris to enter the vane openings, and need to be removed. We at CamilyWand™ saw this problem, invented a solution and offer it to those who want to remove little critters or other light weight objects from inaccessible places – the middle of their shadings, behind furniture, high ceiling corners, near appliances and many other places. One reader removed aphids from her roses using her CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™ ( with its perpetually sticky tip) for this delicate task – worked like a charm.

As we move through our Holiday week, we at CamilyWand™ wish you happiness and peace, always being safe.

 

 

 

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Spring Beauty Evokes Peaceful Loving Thoughts

Spring beauty evokes peaceful, loving thoughts as we celebrate new beginnings in our lives and new growth outside.

The sky is blue, the grass is green, birds are chirping and in North America it is becoming warmer – all signs of wonderful new beginnings. Flowers that grow in ponds, like lotus blossoms and water lilies have always held fascination for me. The gorgeous blossoms reflected in the water are doubly beautiful.

During my college years at the University of Wisconsin, in my interior design curriculum, I studied textile design, where we created designs and then printed them on fabrics. Our focus was on design ideas from Greco-Roman times in the Mediterranean area of the world. We used many themes, and my favorite ones were the Lotus and Pomegranate blossoms. We would pick portions of the plants flowers and use them as inspiration to make our textile designs – possibly using the lotus blossom centers repetitively in creative ways, forming a design.

I always enjoy gardens and especially those with ponds. In the Midwest, water lilies are almost wild in some areas. In Colorado, we have some in private ponds and have beautiful water displays at the Denver Botanical Gardens. This lotus image is from a Denver friend, Dick Gentry, taken at Krabi on his recent Bali and Thailand trip.

Some readers are able to see their flowering water plants through their windows of their homes. If they have certain window shadings, such as Hunter Douglas Silhouettes® and Nantuckets™, they are able to see their gardens and views through the sheers of the products, while maintaining good insulation and partial privacy. Many other products on the market offer similar attributes. I hope to have a water garden one day, and know I’ll enjoy it throughout the day, preserving my view with my Silhouette® shadings while protecting my heating and cooling at the same time.

The gorgeous Silhouette® and Nanucket™ Hunter Douglas shadings  have open sides, helping create their wonderful insulation. Lucky owners of these products find that debris and bugs collect in between the sheers, in the vane openings, over time. Many other window shading products have the same issue. To solve that problem, we invented and market CamilyWand™Sticky Bug Removal Tool™. It simply, easily and safely removes the pesky critters with its sticky CamilyTip on the end of the extension pole. Our readers rave about it and are so pleased they own a product that helps preserve their investments and views of their ponds, landscapes, gardens, golf courses, mountains and many other special vistas.

Camily, LLC wishes you a wonderful spring and the holiday, enjoying the outdoors!

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March Madness Celebrating Wisconsin Hoops

March Madness Celebrating Wisconsin Hoops in the Final Four is a thrill for us Badger Alumni! UW Students, Fans and Alums are excited to see our team make it to the Final Four in the 2014 March Madness.

As a UW Grad and diehard anything Wisconsin fan, its been a joy to watch all of the games with these great, talented players, especially Frank Kaminsky, III.

I was intrigued to learn about his and the teams thoughts regarding the  games and how they translated into life and business. Frank scored 28 points in the Elite Eight game against Arizona on Saturday, March 29. That included 6 in overtime. The win was 64 Badgers vs 63 for Arizona. During the on court interview he talked about playing every minute and point to the best of his ability. Wisconsin now has another 40 minutes this weekend for a berth in the Semi-Finals of the NCAA 2014 Basketball Championships. Frank was thrilled to get another chance at the final win.

During his speech in Anaheim on Saturday, he said ” We’ve all played basketball our whole lives and we’ve all dreamed of going to the Final Four…To actually accomplish that is something I can’t put into words. But we all know we still have a lot of basketball left. We’re going to enjoy this now, but this is business. We want a national championship now. We have made the Final Four, so why not go get it?”

What did they do? They LIVED IN THE MOMENT, they KEPT FOCUSED, they are REALIZING THEIR DREAMS!

These habits are ingrained in the minds of many successful business people. We operate that way at CamilyWand™. Our CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™ is developed to solve a problem for millions of homeowners who have Hunter Douglas Window shadings, such as Silhouettes®, Nantuckets™, Pirouettes®, Luminettes®, Soleras™, and Vignettes® in their homes. Over time, they collect bugs and debris. We invented and market the tool to solve those issues and preserve the readers views and shading investments.

We at Camily, LLC hope you will note some of the habits of successful people and enjoy your time relaxing with sports or other endeavors this weekend.

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Fun on Presidents Day Weekend

Fun on Presidents Day Weekend was the order of the day for a snowy, beautiful winter during this past week!

Whether or not we had Presidents Day, Monday, February 17th as a holiday, many of us did some fun things to celebrate the day off. One of my friends recently posted a photo of him and his daughter dogsledding near Breckenridge, Colorado. Spending time enjoying the snow either in the mountains or in our own backyards was a great way to get outside, exercise and become energized.

As I searched for an image to use in this blog post, I looked for a photo of Lincoln in various places. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison – my alma mater – there is a statue of Abe Lincoln seated front of our revered Bascom Hall. He looks down a long, grassy, hilly promenade which starts at one end of State Street, the other end a mile away running into the Wisconsin State Capital. Lincoln watches over  a great portion of the University and then looks on toward the Wisconsin government.

I thought a fitting photo would be Abe with Bascom Hall behind him on a spring day with welcome green grass surrounding him; it had great memories for me. But the present photos I found were either of his back looking toward the capital, or with a pumpkin or cheese hat on his head, or of a new graduate sitting on his lap. So the one shown here is from Lincoln’s Memorial in Washington DC – it seems respectful, even though the others were clever~~~

At my home, I have a metal heart sculpture outside of my great room. It looks very nice when snow covered, as I look through my windows toward the Rocky Mountains. It’s always fun to see it sitting outside as I look through my Silhouettes® towards the mountains. When they are covering the glass in my window, (in the down position) and the vanes are open, I’m able to see great views. It is especially fun to see that heart out there, even on days other than Valentines day. The filtered view is great when it is snowy cold outside and I want to see the Rockies.

The Silhouettes® and several other shadings, some from Hunter Douglas, are great at offering filtered views and insulation when they are down covering the window. They have side openings allowing excellent insulation. Inside those openings, the light is wonderful and warm. Debris and bugs are attracted to those openings over time, get inside of the spaces and then are unable to find their way out. They often dry up inside the vanes which are suspended by the front and back sheers, staying there until they are removed.

We invented our CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™ to solve that problem. After reading why the problem exists, our readers understand exactly what we mean. CamilyWand’s™ construction including a sticky tip on the end does a great job of grabbing anything in its path. It works on window shadings like Nantuckets™, Luminettes®, Vignettes®, Pirouettes®, Soleras™, Illusions, Shangri- Las and others besides the Silhouettes®. It’s other uses throughout the home and garden are  unlimited, only by our imaginations.

We at Camily, LLC  hope you let your imaginations rule as you move through your days, being safe and happy.