It all started innocently enough

I've never been a good decorator. Truth be told, I suck. I know what looks good in other houses but I'm too scared to *pick* a color and go with it. I'm always afraid I'll hate it later, so instead, I do nothing. In the year + that we lived in this house the first time, I never put up a single curtain. We had sheers on every window, but not a single drapery.


Well, that's not true. There were some in the bedroom and master bath, but I put them up on tension bars because I was that undecided!


Now that we're back, I have to bite the bullet and decorate. We replaced all the sheers with mini blinds before we moved because we did not want tenants hanging and rehanging blinds. (We didn't know we'd be back so soon.) That being said, our tenants' kids pretty much destroyed the blinds. They planned on replacing them but I told them not to bother since I don't like them and intended to take them all down. Much to my chagrin, The Husband likes the blinds, so we will be replacing them. *sigh*


We get a LOT of sunlight at our house. It seems as though the sun shines in both the front and back windows equally in the morning. We needed something over the kitchen sink window because it was blinding to stand there in the mornings! I ended up with this.

I really like how it enhances the color of the cabinets and decided this was definitely the direction to go. It led me on a quest for drapes. Finally, I found these for the sliding-glass door.

We had to hang the tie-backs pretty high so we could go in and out the door.



I really liked the rod I chose but it was not a double rod, so I ended up sewing the valances to the panels. I also mistakenly purchased only two panels instead of four. This was not a problem for the door, but I definitely should have had four panels for this window, further down the wall.



Our kitchen and den span the entire back of the house, so I wanted to be able to tie the whole area together with draperies.

While I was on my quest for the perfect draperies, I ran across this coverlet and decided it was time to make a change in the bedroom too. I've had sage colored bedding for the last ten years or so and was ready for a change. I really wanted more blue.

It is hard to see, but this has blue, green, and a touch of brown as well. There is also some grey.



Once I had the coverlet, I needed draperies for the bedroom as well. This time, I went with the double rod and chose these.



Here is a closer look. They were not necessarily meant to go together, but the colors coordinate so well and I like the contrast. I thought The Husband would balk at the little fringe on the valance, but he didn't.



Here is the completed look. Notice I still need a new bed skirt and I'll probably go back and get some shams and throw pillows as well.

The only one *not* impressed with all the changes is The Dog, but that might be because her bed no longer coordinates as well as it once did!