Roman Shades?

I forgot to mention several weeks ago that I finally tried my hand at making a roman shade for our kitchen door. I was thinking that if I liked it, I may do it in other rooms. I bought some white Egyptian cotton for the front and backed it with plain white muslin. I bought one of those Wright's Roman Shade Kits on sale for $12ish and I bought the fabric on sale for maybe $6. This is how it turned out.

Nevermind that my door is ugly. I'm not sure I like the shade. Its okay. Then I saw that Ikea sells them for $6.99. Okay, so this was clearly a dumb idea. My other problem is that after hanging it, there was so much condensation on the inside of the window, it started to soak up on the bottom of the shade. Now there's that faint brown line from the water on it. I've stapled the dumb thing to a piece of wood to hang it. Clearly this whole thing was a dumb idea. Back to the drawing board.

Oh, and about the kit? It was fine, but clearly overkill. The brackets were waay larger than I wanted to use and I have plenty of cording and tape left over. Maybe I could sell what's left on eBay and salvage something from this experiment.

Christmas Rehashed

courtesy of (or rather, stolen from) my sister

Okay, I didn't really mean to be away for quite so long, but I guess I just haven't been feelin it, ya know? I don't feel like I've had time either. But now I thought I'd share a few things that I didn't before.

First, a couple Christmas presents from Etsy. Remember the ring I bought for myself? I bought another one for one of my sister-in-laws along with a cranberry pearl ring from the same seller, lucie39. Cute. Darn, I wish I had bought one of those for myself. If hers was big enough to fit my ring finger, I might have.


I also bought one of these custom stamps from sweetpaperie. I want almost every stamp in that store. It came in a cute little white box with a green striped ribbon on the outside and it was sealed with a scalloped circle and a label with the name of the company on it. Very cute. I'm a sucker for cute packaging as well. I didn't think to take a picture of that, though.

I made a little coat for my sister's dog as well that turned out to be waaaaaay too small. Thus, no picture of it on her. She's a heck of a lot longer than I remembered and she's got a thicker chest than I guessed too. Darn. I do have enough leftover fabric to try again though. I'll have to make it longer and move the belly strap back a couple inches and maybe the second time will be a charm. Or not. With my luck. I thought it was cute though.

courtesy of (or rather, stolen from) my sister

courtesy of (or rather, stolen from) my sister

For Dutch, we bought him another coat. I know. Its pathetic. Its just too darn easy to want to dress a little dog. Its a brand we just found at W*lM*rt and it fits him nicely. Its Max-a-Million which I guess is a brand just for boy dogs, which, I suppose there is a need for. Most dog clothes, especially for the little dogs, are very girly. These were cheap enough and cute. Its his captain coat. Captain Dutch. Nice, eh?



Anyway. That's some of the Christmas gift highlights. The Man and I didn't buy each other anything this year because we've been buying so much stuff for the house. We got our new entertainment center delivered a few days after Christmas and ordered a new flat panel TV and signed up for satellite. Supposedly that is his gift. I want an iPod, but I haven't ordered it yet. I'm still freaking out about spending all that on TV. Oh well. I've never had cable or satellite or anything like that and he really hasn't either. The skies are falling.