Fresh Starts *or* I Can't Believe It Took Me That Long To Finish A Project...

Well...good-bye total surprise 3-day weekend and hello to the rest of it.

I thought after such a romantic and dramatic start to 2010 on the blog (that would be the photo of myself that I am totally in love with from January first and the addition of a somewhat zombie looking New Year Baby photo in the header...Really?  What was I thinking?) I decided to carry through with all the drama and fantasticness and let it spill over into my home.

Not too long ago (going on 2 years now, ahem) I noticed that the black metal clip curtain rings that hold up my curtains in the living room were kind of loosing their mojo.  More in the form of, whenever I tried to open and close my curtains (twice a day to be more specific) some of the clips would either fall off their wire and just the clips would be left on the tops of the curtains not connected to anything curtain ringish, or loose their grips on the curtains all together.

This had me scrambling up and down chairs and stretching my full short body length quite a bit trying to fix them...with all sorts of nasty thoughts going through my head about curtain clips and rings the whole time.  So, it was only natural that when I was down visiting Claudine before the holidays that I pick up 2 new sets of rings while at Ikea.

OK.

Not so natural as it was astounding that I actually remembered that I needed them (and it was only when I was standing directly in front of them or I would have never even thought of buying them at all)  It was more natural that I bought them and then put them somewhere in the house when I got home...and then stumbled upon them several more times before moving them to a place I could not possibly forget and then loosing them again...only to realize when I was looking for them on Sunday, that they were on the floor of my bedroom quite near the door way and I effectively have been tripping over them for 3 weeks.

Give or take.

So, after all the PJ Relaxing Guitar Hero competitions You'd better take down all the Christmas decorations before they get dusty New Years Day while packing away all my decorations, I decided to do something about the curtain and it's rings...because with half the clips either not working or totally disconnected, the curtains let in a lot of light...especially in the morning, when the sun rises from that direction and shoots me in the eye with its electrifying beams.

Oh.

And possibly because when I made the curtains, I lined them (so they'd be darker and they wouldn't fade...cause' I spent $200. on the fabric, and that was after it was 50% off at the fabric store) Now, You may think lining your curtains is a great idea...

Thank you.

I thought so too...

Unfortunately, due to my Aries nature...I am your go-to gal when starting something and then I mostly loose interest towards the end...or half-ass my way through to the end.  (and no, this doesn't ring through on everything in my life, only mostly creative projects.  And cleaning...definitely cleaning)  So, it was to my utter shock and horror after I lined the enormously large curtains that hang in the front widows (I had to patch two pieces of lining on each one because they were so big...which tired me out so much that I still haven't lined the other 4 curtain panels in the room, but I figure they don't mostly get direct sunlight anyway so who cares?) that the way the curtains hung meant that I most probably and definitely should have sewn up the middle of the lining on each curtain to hold them together better.  Cause' they have some serious gapping...

Which, as you can imagine, still lets in light.

A lot of light to be exact.

I decided this weekend since I was changing out the curtain rings and clips and I had to take the whole rod down anyway, that I would finally fix the lining by sewing it together up the middle (and yes, I actually thought of duct taping them at one point, but decided that the silver would seriously clash with the paint job)  So, I wrestled everything down and sewed up the middle of each lining (one the right way and one the wrong way, but who really cares?  You only see them when they're closed and if you were standing outside looking in my windows.  And would you please stop doing that?  Because it's totally freaking me out!) totally attaching the linings to to each other once and for all.

It took me longer to take the curtains down and into the studio than it did to sew them.

And don't you know that I used whatever thread was on the sewing machine because I felt so hastled about the whole ordeal (that's my excuse) even though someone's voice in my head was saying, "A job worth doing is worth doing well."  While I rolled my eyes, and said, "Hey.  At least I'm finally doing something about this...and if you don't like it, you can move out because I have a sneaking suspicion that you're not paying rent anyway..."

The thread was black, in case you were wondering.

The curtain lining is white.

After I got done, I popped the whole mess into the dryer with some smell good sheets to get off the dust and whatnot, and hung them back up.

They are perfect.

They hang beautifully, are much easier to open and close, and let almost no light in.

I wish I would have done this years ago.

How many years, you ask?

Oh.

Well.

About 8...give or take.

Fine.

Eight.

Sheesh, OK?

Now...I wonder how long it will be before I decide to sew on the green pom-pom trim that is decorating the tops of the curtains and hanging there in a rather haphazard way instead of letting the curtain ring clips do all the work?