I've been mistreatin'

Have I told you about my blog friend, Dawn?  I am not talking about myself here, bloggies.  Dawn blogs at Beyond Grace and she and I connected early on in my blog-life.  Somehow I managed not to tell you all that she and I got to meet in real life this Christmas!  She lives in FL, and we were just a few hours apart while we visited Dave's folks--so we made it happen!   We had a grand time--Dave and I and Dawn and her family.  We ate lunch at a restaurant and laughed our heads off.  What a treat! 

I tell you this as a prelude to my Life Lately post.  I bring Dawn up, cause I had to laugh when she commented on my last post about the needles, that she hoped my next post would be more "smiley".  So, for you Dawn, a much more smiley post:

I knew since before Christmas that I wanted to make a little color update in my family room when the holidays were over.  That room has had a navy couch, tan chair and dark red accents for a long time.  I had really cute window treatments my mom made--and I'm sorry I can't find a picture--but imagine valances with two fabrics, one floral and one ticking.  The colors were muted and I loved 'em for a decade.  And then, all of a sudden, I was done with them.  I wanted to add a fun color to the room--something I could mix with the dark red ( the room opens to my red kitchen) and that would work with the navy.  I chose one of my favorite colors these days--aqua/light turquoise/robin's egg blue.

I was inspired by the nester's window mistreatment ideas, and by my mom and sis who had already mistreated some windows in their homes.  I decided I could make me some curtain-like mistreatments.  With my mom's help, I bought some fabric on sale the first day I looked.  (Can I just say that is a miracle for normally-indecisive me?!?).  The next night, I did it!  No sewing, just folding and ironing and hanging and fiddling.  All by myself--like a big girl!

Ta-da! Here is how they look in my little family room.  Yes, you can still see the spots where we took the old valances down.  We'll get to painting that soon.    A very different vibe than I had before...but I like it.  What do you think?

I then (of course) needed to replace the valance in the kitchen.  I took some scraps of the fabric from the family room, and a piece of a canvas dropcloth, a little help from my mom and Pickle, and voila!--a little kitchen valance!

I'm fairly proud of myself--mostly cause it all happened within a few days (that's unusual for me)--but also cause they don't look half-bad.  I'm no nester, but it still works.  And I bought all the fabric, the rods, brackets and clips on sale and the whole project was under $90.

How's that for smiley, Dawn?  :0)