Naked Windows No More

{This is an old post with a good picture of my mantle for The Nester's linky party. Scroll down and you'll see the mantle pic. I still like my mantle so it's looked this way for over a year.}

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I've lived in this house 3 years. We bought it brand new because we can't fix stuff and low-maintenance sounded nice.

I love this sweet house. It is nothing fancy. Just a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom white vinyl-sided home in a small neighborhood of similarly-sized vinyl-sided homes. But it's our home (well, in 27 years it will be ours.)

One thing I love about this home is the giant great room. It's a monstrous room that takes up most of the home's square footage. You know the type: kitchen, dining room, and living room all in one. And our family manages to squeeze even more uses out of this gracious space: media room, schoolhouse, skating rink, library, laundromat and indoor playground.

And because this house was brand new, I envisioned jumping right in and prettying it all up. Fabulous paint, lovely window treatments with bamboo shades, lots and lots of flowers in the Spring...

But life did not allow for much pretty stuff at that point. Life in general was not pretty for quite some time. Between my career and two young children and a family crisis, all the prettying-up never happened.

A year later I quit my job to be home. Two months later I was pregnant with our 3rd child who is now 13 months old.

I have been craving some long-overdue beauty.

This past summer, my best girlfriend referred me to Nesting Place, which totally inspired me. I loved this blog because it's for real people. People who cannot sew. People who have children. People who are not rich. And people who do not want to spend all the livelong day fretting over just the right window treatment.

My fellow Americans, I have thrown off the shackles of perfectionism, excuses, and cluelessness. For the last couple of months, I have been a decorating freak.

My great room has lived with naked windows for 3 years! I had the perfect design in mind. Beautiful bamboo shades with raw silk panels hung high on a big chunky rod with big chunky rings...with a big chunky price-tag. It would have cost hundreds. And I could afford about 1/5 of a hundred...$20 to be exact. For the whole room. Five whole windows.

AND I DID IT!!! IN ONE DAY!!! WITHOUT A SEWING MACHINE!!!

I forgot to take "Before" pictures. But just imagine plain, sad, naked, clear boxes on the wall...

Naked No More. Look at these beauties:

Here's a little peek at the fabric. It's very fancy, isn't it? A lovely taupe botanical print on a cream background. You can get it for $3.77 a yard at Wal-Mart. I used just 3 yards and still had some left over.

(I'm also easing into Spring with my mantle. I live down South so it will be here before too long. I had the vases left over from my sister's wedding several years ago. I filled it with potpourri from a $1 bag of potpourri I bought after Christmas at Target. Then I just put sprigs of green berries down in there (purchased from the Dollar Tree and with the fakey green leaves removed.)

Here's the rest of the window. The fabric wasn't quite wide enough to go the length of these two windows so I matched up the pattern in order to stay cheap and work with the width I had. And you totally can't tell!

By now, you know this method. It's a rod-less wonder, I tell you. Tap in your upholstery tacks (94 cents for about 30 at Wal-Mart.) Clip your fabric with drapery clips and hang them on the tacks. The trim is just some plain canvas trim also from WM for $1.13 a yard. I already had the drapery clips. Purchased those several months ago at a thrift store. A whole coffee can of them for $4!!!

Here's my big bay window. I did not straighten things up for you or even tell my kiddo to get out of the way.

The beauty of these mistreatments? I can still add to it. If I can ever afford beautiful bamboo shades, I'll just mount them underneath these valances.

My kitchen window turned out so pretty I couldn't stop staring at it. Once again, I'm keepin' it real. See those dishes in the dish drainer and that messy counter? Actually that counter is pretty clean compared to right now. Blogging is such blissful avoidance.

This is another mistreatment idea ripped straight from the Nester's site. You just pinch up the fabric from the back on either side and put a safety pin through it. I hung it on a tension rod because I had one. You could also just tack it up.

And here's a close-up. (Do you like my thrift store plates for 25 cents each? I've always loved the cheapness and laziness and elegance of plates on a wall.)

Oh, and I just hot-glued some $1.37 a yard canvas rope trim...also from WM.

The moral of the story?

If you have naked windows, cover them up. Valances. Panels. Fake Roman shades. It doesn't matter. Just do something.

You know that recurring dream you have where you show up at school or work in the morning and you're naked? Don't you hate that dream? Well, that's how your naked windows feel every day of their lives! It's a nightmare. And it's wrong.

Don't let them live in shame and humiliation another day.