"...In the dance of sun and water and sky. In the faces of the people who need us most and of the people we most need. In the smell of breakfast cooking on a charcoal fire. Who knows where we will find Him or whether we will recognize Him if we do? Who knows anything even approaching the truth of who He really was? But my prayer is that we will all of us find Him somewhere, somehow, and that He will give us something of his life to fill our emptiness, something of his light to drive back our dark"
-The Great Dance -Frederick Buechner

Monday, May 7, 2012

What can I get for $500.00??

In my mind 500.00 is a lot of money especially to spend on something for the house so with our budget we set out to get curtains for the living room, baby room (we needed some blackout blinds) guest bedroom and maybe our bathroom if we found a super super deal.

We set out first to Home depot where we found all the hardware we needed for the extra long window in the living room as well as the blackout roller blinds for Molly's room.  While we were there I decided "to heck with it, I'm just gonna get all the curtains here to."  In the back of my head I remembered how cheap and awesome the curtains were at Ikea but I didn't want to have to make another trip into the city so right there and then we bought enough Martha Stewart Daydream Sheer curtains to fit our living room (4 panels total).  These puppies were $30.00 a pop so that's 120.00 total.  More than I wanted to spend but still within the budget so I felt ok.  We also decided on Habitat Swiss Dot Panels for Molly's room because I wanted something white and the polka dots seemed fun.  We needed 5 panels for her room (holy windows!) so at about 25.00 each this was about 125.00.   YIKES what was I thinking and why are curtains this much!?!?  We also picked up the blackout blinds for Molly's room so that pushed us up to about 500.00 exactly including all the hardware.

Needless to say, we got everything home Nels installed the blackout blinds and they had been measured inaccurately at the store (super annoying) we put up the living room curtains and we were less than in love with them too.  I HATE it when this happens but i kind of obsessed a bit and decided that nope, they weren't for me.

I didn't mind the pattern... thought it was kinda cool but the curtains were more of a cream than the white I was looking for and they just didn't seem right for a living room.  We both thought they looked more bedroomish so they had to go



I will spare some of the more boring details but we ended up taking ALL THE CURTAINS back.  The ones for Molly's room were way too sheer and just horrible looking.

We ended up making a trip to Ikea and picked these curtains up for 40.00 TOTAL!!  So we ended up saving 80.00 on the living room and these were the curtains I had originally wanted anyway.  Here's a little preview of what they looked like.  I had to hem and cut and iron and do all that fun stuff but they're finally up and I'll try to get some pics tomorrow.   We picked up some plain white curtains in a thicker fabric for Molly's room and I'm happy with them too but the hemming process is dragging out a bit longer on those.  It doesn't really help that the same Ikea curtains are often very different lengths and not exactly even so there is a lot of hanging and pinning and remeasuring happening and I am not loving that part of this whole thing :(



The happiest moment so far in the curtain saga is that we had enough money leftover to get this little table that we put under our floating shelves in the kitchen.  I'm working on making the kitchen a bit of a functional play area for Molly so this shelf is really helping.  I'm looking forward to filling it up and arranging things a bit better but we're pretty happy with it and Nels picked out so I can't even blame myself for spending money on it:)



I love how it fills the void space under those shelves!


So in the end I guess 500.00 did go pretty far.  We got the guest room taken care of because we moved Molly's current curtains in there to make way for the blinds and new curtains.  We also had one panel leftover from Molly's bedroom (the curtains we bought came in a set of 2 for 30.00 and we needed 5 so the 6th one will go in the bathroom upstairs). We bought hardware and curtains for the living room and we got the table.  
As it turns out we also scored some free hand- me- down curtains from a friend and I'm hoping to do some fabric painting on them similar to what was done to these chairs here.  The hand-me-downs will probably be going in the playroom and our bathroom (we got 4 panels in total)

So there you have it, that's what 500.00 will get for ya.  I look forward to the day when all the hemming and hanging is done so I can have a true before and after pic:)  I am told I am a little too obsessive about the length and the way curtains "hang" so this process is taking WAY too long.

In other news SPRING CLEANING is happening tomorrow!  Spring cleaning sounds so good in theory but I've found it super hard to do with Molly wanting to play all day.  The great news is Mom and Seonhee are hangin with Molly for a few hours tomorrow so I can get a few things done.  I'm so excited and grateful!!  



1 comment:

Krista said...

Wowsers!!! You have been busy! I can't believe all of the changes you've made to your place since I've visited last. It kind of makes me feel lazy!! I love those curtains in the bonus room that cover up the tunnel...so cool! And your guest room looks awesome!