Temple of Adventure: Finally Finished . . . Well . . . Almost!

I have been so busy with getting back into the full swing of homeschooling, and moving rooms around, and sorting through old stuff, and doing outside work on the house, and . . . and . . . and . . .

I feel like life needs to slow down a little bit. Anyway, I finally finished a project that was bothering me. I just couldn't figure out what to do with my huge, pain-in-the-neck living room windows. Here is what I posted when Nester had her Mistreatment Par-Tay:

I had asked for help and many of you had some really great ideas. A couple of days later, I tried this:

I took down the panel from the middle window and added panels to the 2 end windows. I had all 3 toile panels up but it just didn't look right. So, I took them all down. I liked the way the bottom of the windows looked but even after I removed all of the upper panels, it still looked unfinished. I figured I would take a break and come back to it later. Maybe if I distracted myself with a different project, the answer would come to me . . . and it did!

We went to a birthday party for the daughter of dear friends. When I walked in to the kitchen I noticed that she had taken her blinds down but the room was still cool even thought the sun was setting into the windows. She told me they had bought this film for the windows at Lowe's that blocks out 99% of the UV rays and 80% of the heat that comes from the sunlight that shines in the windows. It looked so good! I couldn't even tell that there was anything on the windows and they had done it themselves. It is about $32 and I would only need one package so I have decided to leave the top of the windows naked and get some of that film. I will leave the blackout fabric in the windows until the summer is really over as it has helped with our cooling expenses. Thanks Kevin and Heather!!!

So, I returned from the party with renewed inspiration. I only had to put the finishing touches on the bottom half of the window. I dragged my mother and my sister with me to Hancock Fabrics and we were there for like 2 hours. Everything I LOVED was $24.99 a yard and I knew I needed 6 or 7 yards for this idea I had in my crazy head. There was NO WAY I was spending $150-$175 on those windows. I could have gone and had custom drapes made for that!!! After a little while, the lady in the decorator fabric department decides that she was going to help me. I guess I was getting on her nerves. I kept taking all the rolls of fabric and draping them over each other and walking across the room to see if I liked it. She was clearly getting annoyed. So I showed her the fabric that I had used to make my panels for the bottom of the window and explained my idea to her. She leaves and comes right back with a steely blue chintz for $4.89 a yard. It goes perfectly with the blue stripes in the panels. I think she was just happy to be rid of us. She recognized me the other day when I was in there to buy some fabric for a valance for Jeremy's room. She looked a little nervous. Anyway, here is what I've done:

I purchased some curtain tieback pegs on clearance at Target and 2 yards of brown satin ribbon. That paired with 2 safety pins and 2 tea cup hooks and I had successfully achieved my vision for this window. I successfully covered the awkward break between the windows. SO HAPPY!!! I also took the 2 side panels from the upper windows and covered the pillows on the 2 chairs. I love them!!! The only thing I still want to do is to add the trim in the following picture to the 2 hanging edges of the valance. Here are my fabrics all together with the trim: