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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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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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March Madness, Hoops, Feature Champions

March Madness, Hoops, feature champions in College Basketball, played like no other sport! We rally around our favorite teams, pick our brackets and generally go a bit crazy during this time of year!

My memories of basketball go back to high school when that was the”big” thing that happened in our High School in the winter months. We all went to the games in Wisconsin Rapids. When our family moved to Madison, we invited our friends who were attending the State Championships to camp out at our home. Very fun times!

Then I went to the University of Wisconsin and it became bigger and better to be a basketball fan. I do have to admit the word “bracketology” is a new one for me. I’m of the era of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird; I don’t remember hearing that one until recently! Does everyone have their bracket sheets filled in? I hope all are my readers are happy with their favorites to win. My 3 year old Granddaughter is working on hers with her Dad and doing it well – what a hoot!

As you entertain your friends while you watch the games, you’ll be serving goodies  and partying in your homes, where you want things to look their best.  That often starts with a quick clean up, that would include focal points in your rooms, such as your window treatments.

Many readers have our Hunter Douglas Silhouettes® or similar products in their homes. They are such beautiful shadings, which have insulating qualities when they are in the viewing position, covering the windows in the vane open position. Unfortunately, debris and insects often collect in those openings and need to be removed. It can affect many shadings, like Nantuckets™, Pirouettes®, Vignettes®, Luminettes®, Soleras™, Illusions, Shangri-Las and Allen Roth blinds.

As a designer, frustrated that this problem existed, I invented a tool to solve that issue. It is CamilyWand™ Sticky Bug Removal Tool™, an extension pole with a washable, removable sticky tip on the end. Works like a dream and our CamilyWand™ owners think it is an ingenious tool. We have it available in our Shop here on our site and by phoning Lynn at 719-598-1018.

Camily, LLC and Lynn wish you happy times at whatever you do during this first full week of SPRING.

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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.