Kitchy Curtains

Rule # 1...When making curtains, resist the temptation to hang your unfinished curtains just to "see how they look".  If you give in to this temptation they WILL hang unfinished for weeks, months maybe.

I made this mistake with these curtains, but finally got up the motivation to finish sewing them!
Nonetheless...now they're up!  Yay!

Before curtains...

 After curtains...

Better, right?

(I'm going to order this little plaid rug in a bigger version, to cover up our awful linoleum floor!)

Made-em-myself Curtains

After getting a great deal on some great printed fabrics from Premier Fabrics in Madison, MS ($9.99 per/yard)....I got to work making some cafe curtains for our living room and dining room.

Here are my fun fabrics.  

Here are the before and afters for the living room...

the LIVING ROOM

Before:

(curtain panels from ikea, white faux wood blinds, jumbled tv wire situation)

After:

I removed all the faux wood blinds, and put bamboo blinds on the large window.  (Woop woop for the bamboo blinds garage sale steal!)  I added the chevron print cafe curtains to the large window, which are hung on a oil rubbed bronze metal cafe curtain rod, with clip-on cafe rings.  So far I haven't been hugely happy with the metal rings, because the curtains move around a little TOO much, and it's hard to ever spread them evenly.  The metal also doesn't have the homeyness that I want in our living room.   I may go back later and try to figure out a different treatment at the top of these panels.  For my little window, I used a floral print that matches the cafe curtains I made for the the dining room.  I think this is a good way of relating the two conjoining rooms, and not letting the living room get too matchy-matchy.  

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Dressing up this window really brought some color to the mantle, which is much needed since we chose to put our tv over the mantle instead of artwork.  I want this window to draw the eye, instead of the tv.  

There have been a few other improvements as well...

Before:

(one pretty lamp)

After:

(two is bettah)

Before:

(jumbly tv mess)

After:

(wireless wonder)

Way to Go, Chris!  He worked so hard on this.  All the wiring goes through the wall, up through the ceiling, and down into a hall closet where all of our components live, i.e. W.C.C. (Walker Command Center, figure A).  We use a radio frequency remote to control everything.  

figure A

So that's the living room.

As for our dining room...

Our Dining room really needs some help.  I'm just not happy with it lately.  I'm brainstorming completely re-arranging it.  But here are the curtains at least.

Before:

(Again, curtain panels are cheapo from IKEA)

After:

I opted for no blinds instead the white faux wood blinds.  I'm hoping to stumble upon another set of bamboo blinds for cheap!  I used pinch pleat hooks and tape to make these pinch pleat curtains, which was an awesome cheater move!  I left the cafe curtains a little long for a more luxurious feel, since there is nothing below them.  

  ************************

I'm very pleased with the results from my little curtain project.  I went ULTRA cheap, with my IKEA curtain panels, and so I think adding interest with cafe curtains is a great way to get a big effect on a budget.  

So, if you're on a budget, use your cheaper fabric on your panels (more yardage required), and then you can go back later and use your nicer fabric to spice things up with some accent curtains (less yardage required).  Then later, as another thought, I hope to add some trim to my panels for more interest.  

I have loved having these cafe curtains because it allows us to not use our blinds at all.  So we can look out our windows and see the outdoors, yet we have enough privacy that anyone outside our house could only see us from the neck up.  So that's right, Chris...you CAN walk around in your boxers now without me jumping up to shut all the blinds!  

Thanks for reading.  

Making it feel like HOME: Our Living Room

It's time to get into the fun stuff...decorating.

Our living room went from this...

To this...(smooth ceilings, paint, crown moulding)

Wall color is Benjamin Moore Coastal Fog 976, Trim is Benjamin Moore Sandy Hook Gray HC 108, Ceiling is Benjamin Moore Tapestry Beige OC-32.  

To this...(refinished floors)

Floors are high gloss Dark Walnut.

To this... (first night in house)

To this...

And finally, to this...

(*Please disregard hideous TV jumbled wire situation.  We are waiting to get a new TV and then mount it and wire it through the wall)

Here are the details...

Our living room, and entire house, is all about coordinating hand-me-downs, thrift store finds, discount & sale items, wedding gifts, and a few nice things (gifted to us by our parents), to create an eclectic rustic feel that we happen to LOVE.  

We also planned our living room around entertaining and providing plenty of places to sit.  It may be a little crowded in this tiny space, but making people feel at home in our home is our primary goal.  

My curtains are Lenda from IKEA.  There are hung on bamboo poles, which I had to cut and join together to make them extra long.  I hung them at ceiling height to accent our 9 ft ceilings.  I hung them using walnut stained wooden brackets from Lowe's which I distressed.  (More on the details & how-to's in a future post.)

The lamp in the left corner is from IKEA, and I got the shade for it at Target.  All throw pillows, except the white fuzzy ones are from Target a couple of years ago.

I have a box full of antlers (killed by my husband's family) and I wanted to incorporate them somehow.  I always felt like the screen was really drawing your eye up, and it bothered me that there was nothing there to see, so I created this mobile to give visual interest and a rustic feel (details in a future post).

I found these vintage board games and game pieces at my parents house and incorporated them into our coffee table setting for a "family" feel.  Our coffee table is "very old" (not sure exactly) and it belonged to my grandmother on my dad's side.  Most of our antiques were hers.  

View from the dining room...

I styled our book shelf with odds and ends and then filled in with these gorgeous old books I found at my parents house.  They have the most beautiful covers!  I need just a few more to really fill in that bottom shelf.  (More details in a future post).

Another view from the dining room...

I painted this "starry sky" while hanging out with my sisters one night.  I love that the lamp looks like the moon and the painting is of a starry sky.  I have another of the same lamp on order to mirror this one on the table.  

I turned this basket into a side table and placed a tray on top to finish it off.  I LOVE this little paint color dish that we got as a wedding gift!

After I hung the curtains, they were really framing the center panel of the window...but there was nothing of interest there, so I hung these three pictures.  The top is my grandmother with my dad as a little boy, the middle is an angel painting my sister Liz did over her paint palette, and the bottom is a picture of my dad as a teenager.  (Although I love him, this is not intentionally a tribute to my father, ha, but it's just the extra pictures I had laying around.)

This may be my favorite corner.  I LOVE the mirror that my Mom got for us at a consignment store!  It is amazing how much this mirror lightens up the room!  I LOVE the cow painting that I asked my sister, Liz, to paint for me!  I love the IKEA lamp!  Ratty old chair is no visual highlight...but I keep it covered with throw blankets and it is DANG comfortable.  (This is where I sit to write my blog posts.)

During our trip to Austin, TX I saw these stars everywhere on the outside of people's houses.  I love the little western touch it brings to the room.  I know it's a little weird that I put that basket in the fireplace.  But the fireplace doesn't work (it's coal burning) and I use this basket to store things and I wanted it out of the way...so there ya go!  I know I should probably put some candles, or logs or something in there that's fire themed.  But for now...it's the spot for the basket that holds the stuff.  

Our rug was loaned and then given to us by my sister, Liz.  She and her husband bought it when they got married, it is a vegetable dyed oriental rug.  Their dogs wouldn't stop peeing on it and so they finally decided they had to remove it from the house and they gave it to us.  

My sister, Liz Landgren's artwork found in our living room (and ALL OVER our house)...

Thanks for reading.