Finally, a post on those nursery curtains! We’ve been a little hectic around here the past two weeks… no, not just because we have a newborn. Mike mentioned that his side of our walk-in closet system collapsed when Easton was a few days old, so Mike has been spending all of his spare time spackling, painting and installing that. Then there was the broken AC and the broken microwave (yeah we didn’t tell you about that one), then we both caught colds. Needless to say, we haven’t had much time to blog, but I’m trying to get back into a routine.

So anyway, while I was waiting for Easton to arrive in those final days, I was able to complete the chevron curtains I’d been planning. It only took me a few hours and was incredibly easy. As you probably guessed since Easton is a boy, we went with this nursery color scheme..

It’s crazy how close to these colors the final product ended up being! I ordered the navy chevron fabric from OnlineFabricStore.net, it’s Premier Prints Zig Zag Blue Twill and you can order it here. I believe I ordered 10 yards at the time because I was originally planning on making additional panels for the closet. It came in this gigantic roll…

The roll is 54″ wide. Since our window is only 36″ wide, I knew I could cut two panels out of the width and still be able to pull them closed. All I had to figure out was the length, which was easy enough.

I laid the fabric on our family room floor to cut it, which was insanely hard being overdue pregnant, but I managed to crawl around to make cuts.

I made sure that when I measured, I left about an additional two inches around each edge to be sure to have enough room to hem. Young House Love has a more detailed tutorial on no sew curtains, so I won’t reinvent the wheel here 🙂

Then it was as simple as cutting some iron on hem tape the length of my seams, peeling the paper off and ironing the one side on… (done on our island with a towel so that I didn’t have to fight the fabric on a thin ironing board)

Then folding the fabric over to create the hem, and ironing over the tape again to adhere the other side. These directions are all on the no sew tape, which was Heat n’ Bond I picked up at Michael’s.

You can probably see that I can’t cut a straight line for the life of me, which is okay just as long as your fold is straight. I did all four sides like this, for 2 panels. Also, for a pattern like chevron, you want to make sure your zig zags are going to line up when you hang them. Both of my panels were cut from one strip of fabric so it was easy, I just had to make sure my top and bottom fold overs were at the exact same part of the zig zigs on each panel. That way, when they’re completely closed in the nursery, they will look like one continuous piece of fabric, all nicely lined up.

For the curtain rod, we picked up this inexpensive silver one from Target with some matching clips. I think the rod was literally less than $10 on clearance. We needed something not so bulky since the right side of it would be very close to the corner.

When deciding how many clips to use, I just started by putting one each on either end of the panel, then I filled in the middle until I thought there were enough, but it wasn’t too crowded. I ended up with 5 on each panel.

They were really easy to make and took about 2 seconds to hang. I thought I’d have to fight them a little more to get clean pleats, but not at all!

The curtains even made it into Easton’s newborn photos, in one of my favorite pictures ever. How well does this sum up our lives?

(image courtesy of S18 Photography)

Yes that’s Darwin’s butt, my cats even photo bomb on a professional level. Darwin loves his baby brother and follows us around wherever we carry him.

I loved the way the curtains turned out so much that a few days later, I decided to make a matching crib skirt out of some of the remaining fabric. I’ll be sharing that soon, as long as the baby’s nap schedule permits 🙂

ps- be sure to check out our daily Easton pictures over at Macky & Co!

Last week, Mike and I hung a roman shade in the baby’s room. Since we just wanted a simple white one to put some bolder chevron curtains over, we decided just to use one of the 6 white shades we ordered for our master a while back. We bought cotton roman shades from JCPenney. Yeah we never hung them in the master…

(via JCPenney)

We have what I thought was a similar one of these in our kitchen and we’ve been happy with it. But when we hung the shade in the nursery, it folded up like this…

We’re not newbies to roman shades since we have them throughout our entire downstairs. Something about this was not bunching right. All of the Allen + Roth shades we have downstairs fold completely flat.

Exhibit A: Living Room

Exhibit B: Family Room

Exhibit C: Nursery?

The only thing we could think of is that it needed to be steamed. It is a different shade than the others and has many more folds because the windows upstairs are shorter. We would have went with our trusted Allen + Roth roman shades from Lowe’s if this window was 72″, but it’s 64″ and Lowe’s doesn’t sell those particular shades in shorter sizes. So I decided to attack it with the iron.

I couldn’t get all of those wrinkles out (and I was worried about the plastic loops melting or something if I took it down and ironed it), but it does look better than the picture above.

Since I got completely sidetracked after I ironed it and immediately started to hang the chevron curtains, the after picture was taken with my iPhone and… has the curtains in it. The Photoshopped curtains that is. Don’t try to find any hint of color in this picture, I Photoshopped it at a million times the size and I can promise you there is not a hint of pink or blue in this picture. Any color variation left is because of shadows. Mike was my quality control checker 🙂

I’ll share more detailed shots of the curtains, rod and clips when I post about the entire curtain process, but for now, the roman shade is looking better. I’ve been keeping it up and just closing the curtains, so it’s more functional to block out additional light than anything else. The curtains make up for the ugly shade 🙂

Confession: I love chevron. Many people think is a trend or played out, but I have yet to put it anywhere in our house and I’ve been itching to. What better choice than the nursery?

I started this weekend, with one of these green and white chevron storage bins from Target…

(via I Heart Organizing, because it’s not available on the Target website and it’s dark out and we have no light in the baby’s room :))

We have some small stuff we’ve received for the baby and I wanted a place to keep it all. I picked up one of the green bins pictured above for now, plus 2 blue ones for our laundry room (which I have yet to load with stuff). I also have 2 of the clear plastic containers from this line holding some non-maternity tank tops and what not I’ve grown out of in our closet. I like the clear ones in the closet because I will eventually need them again and I can easily see what each one is holding. Anyway, back to the chevron talk!

I’m not sure if the green bin will go with what we’ll end up doing in the nursery, but I figure it’s versatile enough to throw in the playroom or another room if it doesn’t work out. For now, it’s perfect to help me feel organized, but I do know I plan on using some sort of chevron in the room… most likely in the form of curtains.

I have long had a love of chevron curtains. I feel like they’re perfect for a baby’s room, as they’re classy and stylish with a hint of fun.

(from Flickr via Pinterest)

(from Castle Creek Designs on Etsy via Pinterest)

(from Remodelholic via Pinterest)

I’m planning on buying some fabric and making my own, either by breaking out the sewing machine or using no sew tape and curtain rings. I want a smaller scale chevron, so painting would be tedious. Plus there are so many great chevron fabrics out there that I can’t really go wrong! Premier prints are some of my favorite patterns…

(via Fabric.com)

(via Fabric.com)

(via Fashion Fabrics Club)

(via Fabric.com)

We decided to forgo making our own cribskirt and instead went with a bedding set, so I feel like I need to add in a good mix of other fabrics to make the room look less matchy matchy. Plus the baby isn’t going to be using the bumper or the comforter, so in reality, if the cribskirt isn’t working for us, it will be easy enough to change out. Therefore, I don’t want to marry the rest of the room to the bedding, since it will be grown out of so quickly and can be so easily changed. As Mike told me, we shouldn’t make the room too “baby” since we want a room the baby will grow into… and they’re only babies for so long ::sniffle::. I figure some bold, yet simple chevron is a good way to make the room last longer!

ps- Mike spent last weekend and half of this week in San Francisco, so we didn’t have any nursery progress to share this week 🙁 But we’re anxious to get back to work this weekend! Aaand I may have already ordered some fabric samples…

I know it’s Wednesday, which is normally What I Ate Wednesday, but Mike and I are being super lazy this week. I’m on spring break from school (yay!) so we’re trying to enjoy my stress free days with lots of catching up on shows and ice cream on the couch. We made shepard’s pie again this week since we loved it so much last week. We’ve been eating the leftovers of that, plus some pizza and bagels we got from a visit to my parents’ this weekend. So we’ve been rather uneventful food-wise… as well as house-wise. We’ll be back to our normal antics this weekend 🙂

One thing I’m hoping to decide on this week is the fabric choices for the office. Here is where we are as of tonight…

These are all from the Ty Pennington collection at fabric.com. Who knew Ty made fabrics? Weird. I was drawn to them because of the mix of greens, grays and white that would perfectly compliment our gray stripes and green carpet. Plus I could have sworn they were around $8/yard compared to the Dwell Studio or Waverly fabrics which were around $16/yard. But of course, after I order samples the prices go up! Or maybe I’m imagining things…

My number one choice from these options is the one I thought I would love and the reason why I chose these fabrics- the white “kaleidoscope” one as Mike calls it…

It’s the blossom pattern in chartreuse.  I love this for a few reasons… 1) it has both shades of gray from our stripes 2) it has a white background to lighten up the room 3) it has a circular pattern to compliment the linear-ness of the stripes. Online Mike thought it was too girly, but after seeing the sample he agrees with me. This pattern will make our curtain panels, plus it will cover half of our Ikea storage boxes.

I want another pattern to add to the mix so it’s a little more interesting in this space. The second fabric will just cover some of the storage boxes so it’s more of an accent, I suppose. I thought this one was a shoe-in, but after seeing it, I don’t think it’s graphic enough or bold enough in the color department to compete with the stripes and blossom…

Then I thought maybe this bright green one would be good since it has such a visually appealing pattern, but I think it’s too much green…

So I was left with this guy, the birdy one…

Online I wasn’t crazy about this, but once I put it next to the blossom pattern? Something happened. And I liked it.

I like that it has a dark gray background, as well as some light gray birds to blend everything together nicely. Besides owls, I’m not a big bird person. The fabric isn’t appealing to me on it’s own, but within this context? I like it.

However, Mike does not. He’s not feeling the birds… or the butterflies. I’ve tried, it ain’t happening. Whaaamp whaamp.

I pick and choose my battles and this just wasn’t worth any sort of battle for 2 little boxes. We try very hard around here to make rooms we both love and enjoy, so if Mike really despises the birds, I’m not going to use them. I’m thinking of ordering one more sample in this pattern…

I know there is no green in this one, but I think that it’s the dark gray of the birdy one that makes me like it. We’re planning a couple of other green things around the room so I’m not sure I necessarily need any more green.

Halfway back to the drawing board I go! Goal: to get the perfectly gender neutral office!

Okay so remember this shot of our family room after we hung our roman shades?

Well it’s a little blah, missing something. My original plan was to keep the family room fun since it’s a room that can be fun.  I didn’t feel the need to make it classy or formal and I wanted to get away from my blue/brown color scheme. So I thought I’d add pops of green in.  I’ve known since we went to Hawaii that I wanted to add some of our amazing pictures above the mantel, so I decided to go for a Hawaii inspired color scheme.  I figured we could incorporate some green from these pictures…

So for a few months, I had some striped throw pillows with various blues and greens on the couch and some green plants around.  But the plants died and I couldn’t think of how else I would like to incorporate green to give it enough of an impact in the room. Then I found this gem in Crate and Barrel…

And my plan switched. That pretty gemstone of a blue? That is my new accent color.

We have no shortage of Hawaii pictures to work with…

Seriously, are those not the most inspiring pictures you have ever seen?? That dolphin is not photoshopped… AT ALL.  And this is just a small sample I pulled out of the over 3,000 pictures I have sitting on my laptop. I couldn’t even find some of my favorites at this very moment. I love that place.

So I had my vase and my pictures for a few months now, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it in elsewhere, when we decided that our white roman shades weren’t enough and we needed panels.  Cue the Merete pretty blue panels from Ikea…

Then I got sick and didn’t get a chance to hang them.  But while we were at Bed, Bath & Beyond last weekend getting some hardware to hang them, I had a throw pillow revelation.  I knew I wanted some texture, but I didn’t want anything too solid against the curtains. Then I found this beauty…

I cautiously walked it over to Mike, half hiding it, because I could have sworn he was going to say “TOO GIRLY! NO WAY!” but he loved it.

I love the texture, shades of blue and how it almost mimics water. We picked up 2 of them to add to my collection of pretty blue accessories…

That picture in the frame is one of my Hawaii favorites that I didn’t stumble upon tonight. It’s in one of the millions of folders!

After finding those pillows, I am so excited to finally accessorize this room. We’re planning on getting a sectional one of these days and If I could only refrain from getting sick and having mass amounts of homework for long enough to hang some curtains, I’d be a happy camper. Almost as happy as I was here…

Not another soul in sight. This is the first time I’ve seen this picture because we have just so many.

I received an email today about using my frequent flier miles and within an hour of that, I received a promotional email from one of the resorts we stayed in for part of our trip. I take it as a sign from god that it’s time to go back. Until then, I’ll be snuggling with my Hawaii blue curtains and pillows…