Making My House A Home: Kitchen Curtains

So a long time ago (at least it seems that way) I started a series called "Making My House A Home".  I did one post and haven't done another since then.  Fortunately that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything to make my house a home, I've just been tardy in blogging about it.

Ever since I can remember I've always wanted a bright cheery kitchen full of red accents.  During high school, or maybe even college, I can't really remember, I was at Meijer with my mom and I saw these adorable cafe style curtains that I wanted for my kitchen.  They were white cotton with a red panel at the bottom.  There were also red buttons with green stitching to make little cherries and I thought they would be perfect.  Since I didn't have my own kitchen and they weren't on sale I decided to let them go.  

Several years later I was getting ready to outfit my very own kitchen (and house) and was perusing the clearance aisle at Meijer.  Guess what I found!!  Those curtains!  I could hardly believe it, I was so excited!  Looking back I think I was more excited about the fact that the curtains that I had loved so much were still available than actually getting the curtains.  I put them up and they looked cute, but there was too much white, I wanted more red:

I don't normally keep my curtains that high, I just rehung them quickly to take a picture of them a) for the blog and b) so I could sell them online!

  After a while I decided I did indeed need more red but I didn't want to pay $20 for a new set.  I stopped in at Joann's Fabric one day to pick up some fabric for another project and happened upon this fabric:

I fell in love right away, it was classy and intricate but wouldn't be too overwhelming on our small window.  Best of all, it was on sale.  I only needed a yard and on sale it cost me just $2.25!  Now that's a bargain!  So I set to work with my sewing machine while Liam was napping.  I won't go into all the gory details but I followed this helpful tutorial and despite a few seams that look a little like a drunk person trying to walk a straight line I think they turned out pretty well:

I thought briefly about making the curtains the same height as the window because the view out that window is anything but pretty.  However I'm a big fan of natural light so I decided to just make them a couple inches taller than normal to cover some more of the less than pleasant view.   Something I didn't expect is that I've been enjoying using my sewing machine more and more.  However my skills are definitely a work in progress.  Hopefully I'll be able to post about the curtains I'm sewing for our office and the inches I added to my new dress soon!

Making My House A Home: Wall Clock

So it's been 7 weeks (ish) since I made my resolution to blog at least once a week and I have officially failed.  As much as I'm not a fan of failure it does feel good to not have that pressure anymore :-)  I would check my blog in a panic trying to remember when I last blogged.  It's not for a lack of ideas, I've got a ton of posts started, but then I forget to take the pictures I need and then...yeah.  So I'm moving forward!

Want to know a secret?  I'm not very good at decorating.  Well I guess I should be a little more specific.  I'm not very good at decorating walls.  Yes, it's sad, but true.  If you come to my house the walls are sadly lacking in anything.  In fact, besides a State Seal signed by all the State Representatives and the artwork on the walls in the nursery we don't have anything on our walls.  It's shameful, especially since we've lived in our house for 3 years now.  Oi.

I can't really explain why, I guess I'm just intimidated by all the blank space. It's kind of weird because I don't have that problem with shelves or centerpieces.  I see an empty shelf or flat (horizontal) space and I have almost no problem envisioning what I want there.  For example these are the built in shelves in our 2nd floor bathroom:

There are a couple more things on them now than when this picture was taken, but it looks just like I pictured in my mind.  It took some scouting at antique stores, but I got the pieces and I love the clean look.

This, on the other hand, makes me shake in my boots:

Too. Much. Empty. Space.

Part of the problem is the fact that several of the rooms where I want to put things on the wall  need to be painted, and for some reason I feel like they should be painted before I put stuff up.  I'm not sure there's any real logic there, just a feeling I have.  Plus to put things on the wall you have to have things to put on the wall.  That takes money which, to quote my mom, doesn't grow on trees around these parts.  So my walls remain bare.

However, since the advent of Pinterest I'm beginning to realize that it doesn't have to take a lot of money to make your house a home, but doing so takes more than just art on the walls.  It's the little things.  So that's what I'm hoping to accomplish in the coming year.  The little things around the house that make it a tad more cozy, a tad more inviting, and make my husband excited to come home after work each day.

That being said I'm going to be starting a series called "Making My House A Home" where I blog about cozy-fying (spell-check doesn't like the word I made up) my house and turning it into a home.  Doing it on the cheap will also be a key feature since, you know, we have that whole money not growing on trees thing going on.

So my first post in this series is about the wall decal clock that we recently put up.  This was a huge decision for me because it means that we aren't planning to paint our living room anytime in the near future.  For whatever reason this particular type of decal can't be removed and reapplied.  Once it's up, it's up :-)  I picked up this clock decal kit at Target three years ago for about $5 on clearance.  It was a great find and I was excited to put it up.  But once I got home I became indecisive and my palms got sweaty and I put it down in the basement. 

Fast forward three years and I rediscovered the clock while I was cleaning the basement and Will and I decided to put it up.  Will did most all of the work, and believe me, it was work.  But I think it turned out great and I love hearing Liam exclaim, "Clock!" every time he comes downstairs!

The kit came with about 12 extra little birds that you could add to the wall around the clock.  That's a lot of birds.  So far I haven't done anything with them because I'm liking the simplicity of the clock with just the one bird but we'll see, I might get adventurous and add some more!

Cost: $5 (Target)
Time Involved: 45 minutes of Will's life