Why were these even invented?

Here is a picture of my dining/front room area.  Now the question I would like to ask is who and why would someone ever invent vertical blinds?  They are ugly and noisy and I just don't like them.  (No offense to anyone who loves them-to each his own right).  We have lived here for over a year now and every time I see those ugly blinds I want to rip them down, but I have just never had the time to really deal with them.  Well enough is enough!  For some reason the other day I remembered that I have a tote somewhere full of plain white panels from pottery barn.  I bought them for our last house that had tons of windows.  I don't know why I hadn't thought of them before, but they would be a definite improvement over the vertical swingers.  Good-bye ugly blinds......

......Hello better lighting and a softer glow.  

Much better!  Probably not a long term solution, but it is so much nicer during the day in there. 

 Even at night it looks better, but really it couldn't look worse, right!?!

Garden centerpiece

I was so excited when I saw these two beauties growing in my garden.  

 But since it is only September, I had to figure out something to do with them, so I got a little crafty.

 ....And made a centerpiece full of some of the things that grow in my garden.

It's actually a little cuter in real life, you can't really see the glitter very well in the pictures.  Yes, those are circles on the white pumpkin, I envisioned it turning out differently, but oh well.  The circles are glitter circles and then I threw in our initials for the fun of it.   It does bring in a touch of fall though; which is getting me really excited for Halloween. 

DIY on a budget

The only thing better than adding something useful to your house is doing it for a little amount of money.  A couple weeks ago my uncle gave Don an old ceiling fan.  I am not really sure why.  Originally we were just going to throw it away, but then I got a little creative and wondered if we could paint it and turn it into something that we could use in our bedroom.

 So here is what it looked like to begin with, shiny gold and reddish brown blades.  Not really something that matches any of the stuff in our house.

 First we took it all apart.  Then we spray painted the blades a beautiful cream color and the gold parts Oil Rubbed Bronze (love this color).  Then we put it all back together and installed it.  Which by the way, I have to give major props to Don because the brackets were very strange and the fan itself was very heavy.  He did a great job modifying the ceiling attachment.  You are the man!

It looks much better, cools our room wonderfully and it was super cheap!  Love it!

Another example.....Our slider that goes into our backyard is a pretty big door.  It is over 100 inches wide and nearly that tall.  We have lived in this house for over a year now and ever since we moved in I have wanted to have something nice to cover up the massive window to the world.  Unfortunately, I have only been able to find drapes that large online at some very nice stores.  In order to cover the whole slider it would cost somewhere between $250 and $270 without the hardware.  I decided that instead I would just sew my own drapes and save a little money.  I went down to the craft store and looked at the home decor material.  I found some very cute material that was around $20 per yard.  Since I needed about 7 yards that worked out to be $140.  I felt so proud that I may have cut the cost in half, but then I walked by the clearance reams and found a beautiful pattern that matched my couch color exactly and was marked down to just $6 per yard.  That means that instead of $250, I spent $42 for my drapes.  Then I found the rod on sale and total only spent $65!  Here they are....

Later I found some cute metal hold backs that make them look even better.  Not bad for something I made myself.
Our next project is a kitchen table that we found on Craig's list for $20.  We are in the process of sanding, painting and coating it.  I will share pictures when it is finished.