Decorating!

I'm feeling inspired by Molly's blog about her new curtains, and by a suggestion from my Primary President to decorate.

Jason and I have about forty-seven hundred windows in our apartment. It's lovely. We get so much light. Light that lets me grow herbs and tomatoes* in the dining room. The only downsides are A) lack of privacy, and B) it's kind of hard to watch TV during the day, especially if the action in the show takes place at night. Jason and I will squint and ask each other repeatedly, "Wait, what just happened? I think that was important."

However, all of those windows are bare except for the ones in the bedrooms and the bathroom - and our bedroom and the bathroom just have cheapo mini blinds. Plus, when I open the bathroom window in the summer, Tiny likes to sit on the ledge behind the mini blind, meaning he has carved out a little hole for himself in the mini blind. Apply enough cat pressure to those slats and they snap right off.

The problem is, hanging mini blinds in all the windows is both expensive and very time-consuming. And then all you really have is mini blinds, which are not that attractive. I love Roman shades (which some kind soul before us hung in the guest bedroom), but those are even more expensive. I thought about just buying one long rod and hanging a curtain or valance over several windows in one fell swoop, but half our living room is the shape of a turret, in the Victorian style, which means every one of the 5 or 6 windows is on a differently-angled wall.

Last Saturday we had a Primary presidency meeting and beforehand Bonnie, the president, came in and I gave her the tour of our (embarrassingly messy) home. She commented on all the windows and the light and I mentioned to her how I had been trying to think of a good way to dress up the windows because we don't want to do anything too expensive or time-consuming since we don't know how much longer we'll be here and we're cheap. She looked at me and just said simply, "Tension rods."

Um, duh. I can't believe I didn't think of that.

So now I'm looking at tension rods and while I really like ones like these, they are almost as expensive as the fancy-pants shades. I'll probably end up getting something like this. But then I get to go find some curtains or fabric to dress them up. So excited! Any Providence people want to go curtain shopping with me?

* I plucked 9 bright red tomatoes off the two plants this morning and chopped them up for the stew I put together in the crock pot. Yes, it's January 29th and we have fresh tomatoes! Granted, they're very tiny and they take forever to ripen because of the hit or miss sunlight we get in the winter, but they're still growing. There are a few that are kind of orange right now and several more that are green AND there are more blossoms on the tops of the plants. Indoor gardening rocks!