curtains and coffee table

One of my favorite times of day is afternoon. The house is usually quiet (can anyone say naptime!?!), and the sun streams in my big living room window. I love how much light this enormous window lets it, as it takes up most of the entire front wall. And I have a lovely view of the trees just outside, which are just gorgeous this time of year.

That being said, a window that huge is not necessarily the most fun (or rather, the cheapest) thing to dress. I'm not the type to obsess over curtains, but certainly couldn't have a nekkid window! I had some dark burgundy drapes hanging for the past few years, but felt they were looking quite dated, not to mention fading AND were terrible dust catchers! But I just couldn't fork out the $$ for new drapes for such a large window. Then, I caught wind in blogland of some creative ladies using painter's drop cloths to make curtains, and figured I'd give it a try. I went and found me some big 'ol cloths for about $9.99 at Home Depot, grabbed some drapery rings at Walmart and lookey-lookey what I ended up with!!
I was greatly bothered at first by the seam running across them, but after asking everybody and their brother who walked through my door, the general consensus seemed to be no one else thought it looked bad at all. And now, after looking at it for a few months, and trying a bunch of different ideas to change it, I think I've settled in to being happy with it the way it is. And the BIG bonus for me is how easy they are to pull open and closed. My dear hubby is obsessed with having shades drawn at night, but all we had were the white plastic spring loaded kind (you know, the ones that can randomly snap up on their own and scare the very life out of you...and oh, by the way, they came with the house - I would never purchase such things) and again, no money to fork out fork out for some 'fancier' shades that we both could live with. So, for about 20 bucks, we have privacy without tackiness, so we are both happy campers. Couldn't ask for better than that!

And, I might add, that I didn't sew a single seam! I folded them over at the top to create that little valance look, and just clipped it in the ring. I purposely left them long and piled at the bottom because I like the casual, comfy feel I think it gives.
And I know I'm way behind the times here, but around the same time I did the curtains, I also was on the hunt for a new coffee table. I love my little one that was my Grandma's, but it was getting some pretty hard use around here and was coming apart a bit, so I figured rather than lose it completely, I'd tuck it away for a while and see if I could come up with something else that didn't have sentimental value and I could just not worry about being kid-friendly. I posted on Freecycle that I was looking for one, and by the next day I was picking up my new little freebie! It wasn't anything fancy, which was fine. I sanded her down, primered and grabbed my trusty old spray paint in the same color that I used to redo the TV armoir.

Here's the before:
And after:
We've been using this little table pretty hard for the past couple months and she seems to be holding up really well. And isn't she a cutie? And did I mention free??

(In the words of my infamous brother-in-law: "If it's free, it's for me!!) :)

As I took some of these pics, a few other things caught my eye, so I'll have a few more pics from the Clemmer homestead tomorrow...


Oh, and I'm joining this party again...