Increasing Our Living Room’s Privacy, Sort Of

I mentioned waaaaay back in this post that one of the things we needed to do in our living room was to add blinds so that our neighbors couldn’t watch PBS with us. Well, we finally got around to doing that, sort of, as well as adding new curtain panels. We didn’t end up going with blinds because A) it would’ve been a nuisance to climb over the couch when we wanted to open or close them and B) they would have blocked too much of the light coming in. So, we settled for sheer curtains instead, which means that the neighborhood technically can still set up lawn chairs outside our bay window and live vicariously through our cable-less existence, except the quality of their picture will be significantly reduced.


In Enchanted, Giselle cuts apart McDreamy’s Robert’s curtains to make herself lovely little dresses. In my life, which frequently contains just as much spontaneous singing as Giselle’s does, I cut apart old prison garb from my former life of crime and make them into curtains. We’re practically twins.


Seriously, though, black and white stripes do really make me think of an inmate sometimes. (Has anyone else wondered why Robert has silky aqua drapes with pink and gold embroidery in his living room, though? I mean, really.)


Nonetheless, I am happy with our new curtains.The fabric is 54” Premier Prints Canopy Stripe in black, purchased here and then rotated and sewn together to make extra wide curtains with horizontal stripes. You can’t tell from the fronts of the curtains, but they are made of two separate rectangles of fabric:


The sheer fabric is extra wide 108” fabric purchased here.



As always, the cats were super helpful with the creation process, and graciously took turns making sure the fabric didn’t run away.



We needed a way to easily slide the sheers open to let in more daylight, so we attached them to silver shower curtain rings. This might be a temporary solution, but at the same time, I really don’t even notice them all that much. We’ll see.


Next step: hang stuff on walls. ASAP. As soon as I figure out what stuff to hang on the walls, that is. We’re also in the middle of giving our curbside dresser a makeover and are hoping to have that in as our new TV stand by sometime next week month year. Hey, we’re sort of slow around here. Silly things like needing a paycheck just always get in the way, you know? Plus, writing this post just took me way longer than it should have due to a certain relentless feline who thinks that the mouse arrow and the words being typed on the screen are just about the greatest things since these packing peanuts.


Do your cats “help” you with your fabric projects and computer work? Any inexpensive but slightly nicer replacements for shower rings that you can think of? Anyone else love everything about Enchanted, with the possible exception of Queen Narissa’s creepy tongue? I’m all ears. (Or would it be “all eyes”?)