New Window Treatments AT LAST

Unfortunately, this is really the only true BEFORE I have of the original, dirty, broken blinds that were in the master suite. 

Lovely, right? 

A little over a year ago, I got this great idea to make faux roman shades based on this tutorial at the Little Green Notebook (aka Pearl Street Interiors) and bought this material: 

and then I let that sit around for another year... 

In the meantime, this past February, we decided to finally replace the gross blinds we'd been living with and bought some inexpensive light-filtering mini blinds from Home Depot.  Quick and easy to install, and SO much better looking than what we'd been living with, we couldn't figure out why we hadn't done it a year earlier. 

At that same time, my dad came down to visit and help with a few projects -- biggest of all being the painting of our bedroom.  Valspar Premium in Pale Cowslip 1. I love it. LOVE it. My husband is okay with it. The color makes me feel happy and sunny and warm, although you can't really see the color whatsoever in that last picture... 

Anyway, jumping ahead to the month of June -- I finally found made the time to complete the actual window treatment I'd been intending to make all along.  I like my room to be VERY dark when I sleep, so I knew I wanted to incorporate a lining into the shades (which was not included in the tutorial, so I hemmed and hawed over how to do it.  In the end, I created a sort of slip cover and actually left all the mini blind veins intact.  I used a button hole for the cord to come through and did all the sewing on my machine except for the closure at the bottom, which I sewed by hand.  

(you can see the new paint MUCH better in these pictures: L-O-V-E, right?)

And for anyone wondering, they do open higher than I show in the picture.  I just didn't. 

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There are a few things I could  have taken a little more time on and done a little better... maybe if I wasn't 9 months pregnant I would have. Haha

Our Window to the World

aka the Living Room Window Finally Got Some New Blinds

I really had to dig to find some "before" pictures of our blinds because I got overly excited when the blinds arrived and didn't bother to take any pictures... so these are the best I could come up with... you can see in the first picture that there's a gap at the bottom because THEY COULD NOT CLOSE COMPLETELY

After Christmas, I started shopping around a little more seriously for new blinds and we ended up with the 2" premium wood blinds in deep mahogany from Blinds Galore, which is the same company I had ordered the blinds from for my son's room. 

I took the opportunity to repaint the trim around the window... and the more dirty, white trim I paint in this house, the more I realize the white isn't paint. Someone went to the trouble of priming a lot of the woodwork around the house and left it at that. Needless to say, it looks a LOT better now. 

 out with the old, in with the new!

 and the finished product!

 my goofy husband demonstrating the relative ease with which we can now open and completely close our new blinds

 I love them.

Me + Power Tools = Better Night's Sleep?

With the onset of summer has been longer days... meaning later evenings and earlier mornings. When I say this, what I really mean is, our little guy cannot tell time and when the sun is up, he finds no rational reason (unless he is completely wiped out) to be asleep.

To curb his 5am mornings, we were forced to tape tin foil to his windows until we could get something a little more permanent.

Pretty classy, right?

So I ended up ordering some custom 2" wood blinds in white from Blinds Galore that only took a couple weeks to arrive. And so I set to work. Here is the end result:
a huge mess

the bit I used to pre-drill the holes for the bracket screws holding up the blinds

the finished product - up

temporary solution for keeping the cords out of my son's reach

the finished product - down

So at least that's one more project I can mark off the to-do list.

I need a garage...

for obvious reasons.

This room is supposed to be my husband's music room - a space for him to keep and play his guitars, electric piano, etc. Unfortunately, we're lacking sufficient storage for all the piles of boxes, baby paraphernalia, Christmas decorations and such. We're working on getting the permits to enclose the carport... and hopefully we'll get it started soon.

My small compensation is that I finally got some curtains up in the bonus room.

I already had the curtains from another house we lived in, I just needed a curtain rod... and in following my dad's advice to wander the aisles of Lowe's and Home Depot for clearance items, I found this steal of a deal:
(no idea why this picture refuses to post upright)

Now I'm just waiting for the chandelier I want to drop in price like this!

Carpet and My Son's Room

Thanks carpet-installers-who-took-three-days-to-install-my-new-carpet-when-it-only-should-have-taken-one for all the little reminders of why it was so much cheaper to get our carpet at Lowe's and have you put it in.

thanks for reminding me my work is never done...

but we do love the carpet, and having new carpet in general.

Here is a before of my son's room... I got a little excited when we got the keys and forgot to take pictures before we ripped the carpet out. To get the full effect of what this room was like, you have to imagine the dark red carpet is still on the floor...

my husband hard at work removing yet another old heat registerand here it is all patched up like it was never therethis is the only before picture of the closet doors... I don't have an after yet, but we removed them and now they're sitting on the back patio drying. I decided to spray paint the gold trim white to better match the rest of the roomZinsser Bulls Eye Primer -- for obvious reasons
We decided to use these child-safety outlet covers in my son's room because he really can't plug anything into these (he can pull the standard safety plugs out... they just slow him down). These covers automatically slide over when not in use. Because they cost about 800% more than normal outlet covers, we only put them in the one room.
The trim and ceilings throughout the house are painted with Valspar's "Clean White." The walls in this room and the spare bedroom are painted with Valspar's "Sky's the Limit" in a satin finish. I actually wanted a different color, but the woman at the counter accidentally scanned the wrong barcode. I could have had her mix up the right color... but did you know Lowe's will sell you the gallon of wrong color paint for only $5?!! Who can say no to that? Obviously not me, and I think it worked out pretty well.

You can see we still need to put the base trim up and order some blinds for this room. The curtains I got on clearance from Target and I really like how they contrast the lighter blue on the walls. Like I said before, we still need to re-install the closet doors. I also want to refinish the two book cases you see here. I need to get a dresser, find all his hangers, and possibly build a toy box, too