A Natural Home

I love those commercials when they say you can get a whole bedroom suite for $599, and that includes a wonderful mattress… just what are those pieces really made of.

Did you know that when a piece says wood, it can be the following: plywood, chipboard, particble board, sawdust board. So just what are you getting for $599?  NOt real solid wood, that is for sure.

When you get something from A Natural Home, you are getting a solid wood dresser, or solid wood bed.  We do not use plywood, we use real wood. Our wood is also sustainably harvested, and we use non toxic glues.

When we say solid walnut, we meed everything in the entire piece is solid walnut. WE do not have a plywood back, or poplar drawers, no the enitre Armoire, bed, dresser, or nightstand is walnut. Sure our stuff might cost more than say something you can buy from Target, or Kmart, or even Walmart, but we are using real solid wood, from sustainable sources.

Real wood, real simple, real world price.  If you are looking for good furniture, we can help. 

Running a business is fun, but it is also challenging.  Once of the things we face is what to price things.  Many of our competition is going to India and China to produce mattresses, and even sheets.

We choose not to do that.  INstead we buy organic cotton fabric grown and milled in this country.  We do have to get organic wool from new zealand, but we have little choice in that matter as there is so little organic wool in this country.

We make our own flange, which most people do not even see in their mattresses. Our competition ofen uses a synthetic fabric since the cusomter does not see it what does it matter. It matters to us, we have to sleep at night knowing that when we say something is organic it really is organic.

From organic cotton to organic wool to organic fabrics we stand behind what we use and how we construct our organic mattresses.

Why spend hundreds more on orgnaic mattresses when you are not really sure if they are using all organic materials.  We welcome you to see your mattress being made.  GIve us a call and set up a tour, it will nto be like anything else you have ever done when buying a mattress.

I think one of the main reasons why people think convertible cribs are cool is that they can function for more than just one thing. I mean you go out and spend $800 plus on a crib and all it does is convert to a toddler bed, how much fun is that?

When we decided to make cribs we all thought, well really I thought, we wanted something that was classic and simple and could be more than a crib. Sure the simply affordable crib is just a crib, but it is cheap (not cheaply made however).

I looked around at many of the cribs that convert to fulls out there and I found them lacking. I thought they were whimpy looking as full size beds. Sure you want the crib to be cute, but you want the full size bed to be fab looking as that is what is going to be for the longest part.

The legs were skinny and not very substantial and frankly the whole line of the bed looked like it had once been something else.We wanted more than that.

Enter the Spencer collection. Spencer is bold, big and expensive (we are working on the costs,but what do you expect with solid walnut).  He is a canopy crib bed that converts to a toddler bed and then to a full size canopy bed.  A shaker style, he is simply and classic, sure to be bold as a crib and a full. No whimpy legs for Spencer, no sir! He has 3.5 inch legs that taper gently to the top and has a simple but classic canopy style at the top.

With his matching Armoire (wow this baby is impressive- 36 Wide, 76 tall and 24 deep) and macthing changing table that converts to dresser/ mule chest.  The Spencer collection is solid walnut (not a spec of anything else).

This bed is not on the cheap, it is solid walnut, hand crafted by the Amish in ohio.  Hand rubed with tung oil with 3 coats. The piece is assembled for you when it is delivered.  How easy could that be?  It is easy to put together as a full size bed and it looks good, not shabby.

We are currently working on a few convertible toddler beds that go to twins. Best of all we are excited about the modern cribs that convert to twin beds.  YEAH, maybe you do not have the space for fulls, or just like the freedom of twin beds (goodness knows we do).

Yesterday, I was supposed to meet a young man who wanted to make case goods like toddler beds, crib sides, and a shoji screens.  I had told him I would be over there at 11 am. 

The last time I saw Atley, the young amish man, he told me not to go over the creek if it was below 10 degrees.  I took him at his word. They even had a little sign before you reached Owl Creek that read NO CARS.  Fine, I did not like going over that creek when it was 90 degrees outside, let alone 4.

So as I was talking to Vernon and Ella the couple who makes our organic mattresses, Ammon, Atley’s dad pulled up in a buggy.

He got out and ask if I wanted a lift over the creek.  My son Ben (who is 10) was with me and asked where he was supposed to sit. I said, he could sit on my lap.  So Here we were climbing into the plain black buggy, with the well fed, hairy work horse ready and anxious to get moving.  We climbed up the buggy, and it was slippery as there were these small 3 inch round steps that were covered in snow and ice.  Ben had a bit of trouble climbing up, but we got all settled in.

The snow was falling and there were no cars on the road.  All you could hear was the jingle of the horses tack and the bump bump bump of the buggy going down the road.  We approached the creek and you could see huge chunks of ice, about 10-15 inches in diameter.  The buggy and horse struggled just a tiny bit over the ice and thru the break in the low riding creek, but we got thru with not too much trouble.

Despite the snow and the wind, and the 4 degree weather, it was a lovely way to travel.  It was pretty warm in the buggy, with the buggy blanket and the vinyl cover that snapped onto the side of the buggy.  You could see the world go by at a slower pace.  When I got off the buggy after we finished the ride, I told Ammon that the buggy was a lovely way to travel and that I thanked him for the ride.

All the way home I traveled at about 20 miles per hour, due to the amount of snow on the roads and the wind.  I thought about how much easier it was to traverse thru the snow in a buggy.

I had taken a buggy ride before, but never when it was cold outside. I do not dream of saying I know what it is like to be Amish, but it was nice to take it easy and take a slower pace cross over a frozen creek and travel down a snow covered road while seeing and hearing things that I never paid much attention to before.

Thank you Ammon for sharing.  

My friend Gretchen asked me to take photos of her daughter’s doll Flat Stanley in the area.  So we took photos of him at the store on an organic sofa, and on an organic bed.

It was cold outside, a high of 15, so I was not overly enthusatic about taking photos outside.  Turtle one of my twin boys was with me and he said he wanted to stand with stanley in front of Eli’s barn.  So we both stood outside and took photos of this silly little fat doll on an Amish farm.

Then we took a photo of Stanley in front of Eli’s house. He has a big house, so we just put him on the front steps.  Frankly you can barely see him, but in order to get the house in the photo I had to shoot back in the scene.

Eli thought it was a little odd that I had a paper doll and I was taking photos of it.  Then I told him about the story that Stanley was traveling the country on an adventure and Kallie a 6 year old little girl was very excited about him visiting the Amish families.

Of course I could not take any photos of an Amish family with the doll, although that would have been interesting.

I am going to take a photo of Stanley on top of a mattress machine today and maybe with an Amish hat or bonnet next to him.

If I had the time I might have asked if one of the Amish kids could have held stanley and I could have taken a photo of an AMish girl or boy.  However I did not have the time to talk about the school project with on of the families, other than Eli and his son had already gone inside. 

Looking for a puddle pad?  Maybe you saw some and thought they were just too much money. Here we will explain how to easily make your own. If you can shrink your favorite cashmere sweater in the washer and dryer, you can make this puddle pad.

We like MacAuslands woolen mill blankets at http://www.peiisland.com/wool . If you have a king mattress you can get a queen blanket and use that for the top of you mattress.

Here are the basics steps:

1. buy a wool blanket (all wool not a blend)

2. throw it in the washing machine an dryer at elast 3 times- you want it to shrink and felt

3. Fold it in half on your chid’s baby crib mattress or twin bed or full bed (just because kids are more likely to have an accident)

4. USe the blanket on top of your bed. Wash it when needed. We rec at least once a month to get rid of mositure built up and dead skin cells that you loose during sleeep.

It is that easy.  Really you do not need to spend a fortune on a puddle pad.  Those other puddle pads out there you have to handwash and take gentle care of, so that is why we tell people to make their own and be able to abuse the thing with very little time.

It is pretty easy to find organic fabric, but it is getting harder and harder to find organic fabric that is grown and made in the USA.

Why is it important to buy american made fabric?

1. Supporting USA farmers and USA grown agriculture

2. Support USA spinning mills

3. Support USA woven mills.  WE used to get all of our fabrics from the USA, from all the clothing we wore. In fact if you say made  in “antoher country” on the label it was of USA components and the fabric was shipped over there to have the garments made. No, so much of our fabric is made in China and other places that is it almost impossible to find fabric that is made in the USA.  Countless mills are beign shut down and people are out of work. Expensive equipment is being broken down and sold for scrap. What a waste!

4. Keeping shipping down in within the USA. Reducing the amout of fuel used from overseas production and shipping.

5. Better control over Organic grown fabric.  When something is made and shipped from overseas to the USA, it can be sprayed and you may not get something that is really “organic” as in example things that are coming from China.  The government is in charge of certification there, and it is questionable what a governemental agency will allow.

Of course #5 on the list is sujective and I am sure that someone out there could slam my opinion with bold facts from some company that they work with overseas. That is fine.  We choose to work with fabrics grown and milled in the USa becasue we believe in America and frankly we are tired of seeing plants and jobs go overseas.  When you buy from A Natural Home we go out of our way to support America.