The Patchwork Quilt Country Inn

We have just sent out our 2nd newsletter about the Inn and all the changes we have made. We will be calling it The Patchwork Quilt Country Inn buzz-letter. I hope you take the time to read and comment on it. Thanks Ed

Please Click Here To View The Buzz-Letter

I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to see the garden quilts in the area but if you are in the area this is a must see. Please click on the link for information pertaining to the tour. http://www.amishcountry.org/quiltgardens/ and http://www.amishcountry.org/Quilt-Gardens-Tour-2009

                         My life here at the Patchwork Quilt Country Inn has been the biggest challenge of my life. My Husband and I bought this beautiful Inn in Feb of this year 2009. I will not lie it has been a very busy road to tarvel  for me. How I came to learned about B&B’s was my husband, Ed would take me to a lot of  B&B’s in this country and others and I experienced what a B&B was. I never know that people rented the rooms out and offered a great breakfast. Well a  lot has been done to the Inn since we bought it and it looks so beautiful thank you “sexy”, I love it and so do our friends. How I manage to stay strong and hold it all together, there is this one man who taught me how to work my butt off and walk that extra mile to get were I wanted to go, or who I wanted to become and that special  man of my life that I married 25 years ago next month August 17th 2009. I want to say a special thank you to my husband “Sexy”, I have not told you this enough that I love you so much and thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything, with out you I would be lost. My life here now that Ed is working on otherthings,  has been hard and fun but worth every long day. My daughter Samantha and her girl friend Heather have been a very big help. Becoming a Innkeeper has been a wonderful experience and I love it, I get to meet new people that become new friends that come back to visit us often. At first they are our guest but by the time they leave they are our  friends and that is what I enjoy the most. I was very afraid of trying something new, I have been so used to construction I was sure I would do that for the rest of my life. Being an Innkeeper is a lot to handle to say the very least. I  have to make sure that our breakfast is the best and no one goes away hungry, In deed that’s what I always do. The rooms have to be cleaned to my standers (and if you know me that is very high) and comfortable for when the guests or friends arrive. I will be here blogging so I hope all you Innkeepers and everyone else that blogs come and blog along with us. There is much more to come. Tammy

In this category of the blog site we will be issuing redeemable coupons to be used for your upcoming stays at the Inn. The specials we will be offering will be at random and only can be found on this part of the site. Furthermore we will be Twittering free gift certificates that will be redeemable for a one night stay in one of our beautiful standard rooms which also will be transferable to a person of choice by the winner. The gift certificates will be redeemable on any date excluding blackout dates and subject to availability. To be eligible for the gift certificate you must become a member of the Patchwork Twitter family.  I will be updating this category on how to follow the Inn on Twitter. The coupons will become available as of the July 25th 2009 so keep checking back. I will also be sending them via Twitter as well as the special. The first Twit will be at 11am August 10th 2009 so join and be ready. Thanks Ed & Tammy McKean

A new kitten showed up out of the blue the other day. We found it tucked under the finder of my truck. The kitten seems to be about 4-5 weeks but it is hard to tell due to malnutrition. The kitten seems to be blending in just fine with the other cats at the Inn. I will keep the blog updated with the kittens health.

I am very happy and proud to say after all the hard work Kevin has done ,we have reached the pinnacle of the Internet. As of late last week our website WWW.Patchworkquiltinn.comis on the first page of goggle on nine types of key word and key phrase. If you know anything about getting on page one of goggle you know that this is very hard to do. I want to take time to thank Kevin for all his hard work. Thanks little bro.

It just amazes me on all the different types of birds that life at the Inn. My wife Tammy is very active with them to say the very lest. On an average we go through about 20 pounds of seed a week. That right a week. For the longest time I thought it must be the raccoons or some other animal eating all the seed but to my amaze as I watched the bird more closely it was the birds. From time to time a raccoon will try to get to the feeders but with no luck. As mentioned in the last posting in The life as a Innkeeper I mentioned we painted the exterior wood on the Inn. My wife was very careful to make sure we did not damage the bird nests and we where forced to clean and paint around them. Let me tell you that is a task of it own. The mother and father birds would dive bomb us to protect the chicks. We have had three new animals arrival last week at the Inn a mother cat and two kittens. The mother showed up first to make sure thing where safe and on day two she brought the kittens. Being the animal lovers that we are with in a day Tammy had a cat house and all the little goodies that go with it set up in the barn. Do not get me wrong we needed some hungry cats. Like any farm we have mice and field molds. Since the arrival of the cat they have brought us many gifts (if you know what I mean) to the back door around 8 mice and over a dozen of the field molds. Needless to say they are part of the family now. Other animals that consider the Inn home are two mother raccoons one of the mothers and three cub coons live in the bard while the other mother and one cub lives in a old tree just outside the main door of the dinning room. Must guests enjoy them as well as the cats. This blog category is truly for Tammy and I hope she will start writing in it. She truly is the one that takes care of all the little animals and knows all the different types of birds at the Inn.

It has been far to long from the last posting but as always there seems to be more work to be done in a day then hours given to us. We have just completed putting a new roof on the Lodge and rec room and repaired other areas of the roof on the main Inn and barn. Must of the last 3 weeks where dedicated to exterior items. We painted all the exterior wood and replaced the main exterior columns at the dining entrance. Since we purchased the Inn I have cleaned the gutters and downspouts every month so it did not take me long to figure out I need to install gutter guards so I did that as well.  We then cleaned what we could of the old owners junk from the barn. Just to let you know how much junk there was it took a 40 yard dumpster (no joking) The old owner was a real collector of junk. But we all know the saying one man junk is a other mans treasure I just would have hope he took his treasure with him. Other items worked on where fixing all the drains so the water would drain off the driveway and repairing the concrete stairs to the dining room and the computer room. As always Tammy is working her tail off with the cleaning of the Inn. I swear she must start at one end of the Inn and A week later she right back at the same area doing it all over again. I am not sure what kind of grass we have but it grows like a weed. If rain is even in the forecast it well grow three inches. Until the next posting thanks for reading the blog and take care Ed

Well where to begin. So much to write  about and so little time to do it. My wife and myself  better know as aka Tammy and Ed McKean are truly newbies to the Innkeeper world. We have just recently purchased the Patchwork Quilt Country Inn. A Bed and Breakfast in northern Indiana in a small but lovely town of Middlebury in the heartland of the Amish community. We also have are hands full with four children 3 on their own and one still in the nest and a construction company (EKM Construction) needless to say we live a very busy life. If not for my wife Tammy who gives me all her love and strength this dream of ours would not be possible (I love you sexy)
The blog site is brand new. This is the first post of many to come. My wife and I will be posting the daily (if possible) life of the patchwork with many other postings on categories ranging from local events to recipes, website building, Quilting topics and many other topics we feel will help people understand what is going on at the Inn.  I would like to take some time to thank my bother Kevin who has worked very long nights building the web and blog site, Thanks Kevin for all your help we truly could have not done this with out you.  This blog site is known as a blogalong if you do not understand it like myself you should really click the link  What is a Blogalong?  and blog along with us. I hope to have other Innkeepers, quilters, self website builders  just to name a few types of people to help us with the day to day problems and joys in being a Innkeeper. I hope you keep up with the site and please feel free to leave a post or comment. Thanks Ed

Before we begin I would like to take a minute to introduce myself. My name is Kevin McKean. My brother Ed McKean and his wife Tammy McKean are the InnKeepers of the Patchwork Quilt Country Inn. I am also the website designer and Blogalong contributer of  http://patchworkquiltinn.com.

At Patchwork we often get many compliments regarding the website and more often than not questions about who made it and how was it made. Through the Blogalong site I will go over not only where to start but how to build, advertise, get good google rankings and things we have tried. All of our successes, secrets and failures.

So where do you start? The very first thing you do before entertaining any thoughts of hiring someone to build it for you is get a good web hosting company. A web hosting company stores all your data for your website. Unfortunately most website design companies will try to get you to hire them to host your site and most of the time at over inflated rates so they can recover the money they lost while making your site for really low rates. There are many web hosting companies out there like GoDaddy or Ipower but for me the best is Startlogic. I like Startlogic because they have good prices great tech support and a ton of useful tools to not only help build your site but to promote it and make it sucessful. If you choose Startlogic make sure you get the prologic plan as it is perfect for all sites.

After you have decided on a site name and have purchased a hosting plan your next big step is to find your wysiwyg. (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) a wysiwyg is a web design program that uses drag and drop properties to create your website. For any of you not feeling technical have no fear. After a few short hours of tinkering around you will be able to create vibrant content derived sites with ease. Most wysiwyg’s come jam packed with tons of features that can add flash movies, sound or even slideshows. We’ll go over all of these in later post. There are many different wysiwyg’s out there but if your a mac user your in luck. Freeway is one of the best out there and its only available on mac. If your a pc user than you should take a look at Namo.  Which ever one you choose make sure you try it first as these usually cast between $100.00 – $300.00.

Well there is your starting point. In future post we will cover:

Site Plan, Master Pages, CSS Style Sheets, Meta Tags, The Dublin Core, Geo-locator service, Html safe colors, Graphic-vs-Html text, Hard coding, Uploading and much much more.

If you have any questions, suggestions or if you know some tips or tricks please join or Blogalong and become another stitch in the quilt.