It's Curtains for You!

Seriously, lots of curtains. Well, four sets anyway. But that's all the windows I have, plus one!
Don't know if I mentioned it, but I'm currently in the middle of redecorating our ENTIRE apartment. And I'm trying to do it on a shoestring budget, because, afterall, it's an apartment. I don't want to spend a lot of money on something that we can't take with us, but I don't want to live in a plain white box, either.

We've been in the same apartment for seven years now, and I originally painted it about five years ago.  At the time, I was really into Asian design, and tried to bring some of that into our place. Since I didn't really know anything about design, that meant that I painted my living, dining, kitchen area burgundy, and our bedroom bamboo green. Our bathroom was the worst victim of this color scheme. It has the layout where the tub and toilet is separated from the vanity by a door.  I painted the vanity area burgundy, and the tub area green.  And what's worse, I ran out of burgundy paint and never cut in.  Seriously, I lived with this for five years!  I never even put the switchplates back on!  No wonder Steven was a little hesitant when I said I wanted to redecorate!

But don't feel too sorry for my poor little bathroom.  It was the first room I started to work on.  Partly because it is the smallest, but mostly because it was the worst looking.  It had your standard plate mirror with a horrible mirrored frame around it.  I took it down, and after priming and painting the walls a beautiful blue, I hung up a large mirror I already owned, with a chunky black frame.  I also bought a new light fixture to replace the terrible brass dressing room light.  I purchased a wall cabinet and matching over-toilet cabinet for more storage.  My dad helped me lay down laminate wood floors that my mom had leftover from her house--she even had enough for me to do the kitchen floor too!  Then, a few days ago, I finally made my new shower curtain! I absolutely love it! I had found the fabric months ago, and that swatch was the jumping off point for the entire apartment, and the bathroom was designed around it, even before I bought it.

It's not done yet, but I'm too happy about it to wait.  It's in two panels, and right now there's a white fabric shower curtain behind them.  That curtain will be dyed black, and the floral panels will be tied back with black decorative tiebacks attached to the edge of the panel, so that they can be opened by sliding the whole thing across the rod.

Sorry these pics are really dark. I need to take new ones, but if I leave the computer, Janeia will try to take it over and watch her movies.

I have also bought new black towels, and replaced those white ones. And my switchplates ARE back on.

On to the next set of curtains.  I made a set for the small window in my living room out of a fabric that is exactly like the shower curtain, only it is shades of green instead of blue.  I love blue, but I didn't want my entire house to be blue.  Green is a little calmer. This fabric will also be on my dining room chairs, but more on that later. I guess I forgot to take a picture, because I can't find one. So you'll have to just imagine them until then.

I made a simple curtain for our bedroom. We have a short (height), really wide window, and I haven't found a curtain rod that will span it.  So I made two panels from some old sheets I had, and stapled them above the window, pleating it as I went.  Then I added some decorative nailheads over the staples. Nothing special, but a definite improvement over just the blinds.

The last set of curtains I made is in the girls' room. They're my favorite.  They actually have a really big window that goes almost to the floor, but I have the majority of it blocked by a piece of MDF screwed to the wall.  It used to be our headboard, back when we were actually in the master bedroom.  (Before we realized that Janeia had WAY more stuff than us, and this was before  we were even pregnant with Leslie.)  So now their window  is wide and short.

The MDF will eventually be painted to match the walls, when I repaint them.  And there's something wrong with these pics, because it looks like the panels are different heights, but they're not. 

After re-covering the girls' table and chairs in this floral, I decided to use it in their entire room.  I also made a changing pad cover to match, using a tutorial from Prudent Baby.  I love how it turned out, and to protect it from diaper messes, I just put a cloth diaper down before I put the baby down.

Well that's all my curtains, so I guess the show's over.  Tune in next time to see the other fun stuff I've been working on.

Gotta go, somebody's awake!

Double Stroller Recovery Project

Okay, I know it's been a LOOOOONG time since I last posted, but that's only because I've been so busy. I haven't been able to get the girls to take their naps together lately, so I'm always dealing with one or the other.  I have been able to be creative, but haven't had the chance to blog about it. Well, no more! Leslie is down for the night, and Janeia is too, or at least till Daddy gets home.  Then she'll probably wake back up to spend some more time with him.  But for now, it's just me and you. So what have I been up to, you ask? A lot, actually.

I have been needing desperately wanting a double stroller practically since I had Leslie, but they can be pretty pricey, so Janeia has been riding in the storage basket of our other strollers.  She's tiny, and she liked it, so I made it work.  But then I found this one on Craigslist for $30!

Kinda Really ugly, I know, but I had big plans for it. The frame is navy blue, and is in good shape.  The structural fabric is fine, too.  But the prints on the rest of it had to go! Plus, it was missing the second seat liner. Now, I have two girls, but I didn't want it to be too girly, since all my baby stuff gets passed on to our kids' godparents who are hoping for boys (who would then become my sons-in-law, if Tiffiny has her way), and plus, I didn't want to have to disassemble it and repaint the frame.  So I went to JoAnn's, and found this beautiful fabric:

and I recovered the whole thing.  This meant that my seam ripper became my worst enemy best friend, because I had to use the existing pieces as my pattern to make the new pieces.  I also took lots of step-by-step pictures and took notes to remind myself of any complicated steps.  I was really glad I did, because this was probably the most complicated thing I have ever attempted.  But I am SUPER happy with the end results!

And I'll have you know, I had to reattach the lap belts BY HAND without access to the underside of the fabric! That was by far the suckiest part of the whole thing. And I wasn't going to add the ruffle on the seat liners, but I didn't have enough fabric to make two backs (in fact the one I did make it actually pieced together from three pieces), so I had to use the original solid blue back for one of them.  The ribbon hides this from all but the most snooping of eyes. 

Janeia LOVES it!  She actually will climb in the back seat (Leslie's) and take a nap after I get her a pillow, blanket, Frankie (her fave stuffed animal), and put another blanket over the top to make it dark. And the best part? All in all it only cost me $38! And it's totally custom, which I love!

Ok, well I've done a lot more stuff, but this post is getting kinda long, so it'll have to wait.  But the pics are loaded onto the computer now, so at least that step is done. We'll see how tomorrow goes for getting another post up.

Gotta go, somebody's awake!