Last week, my husband and I rearranged our bedroom furniture. The fresh look of the room was great, but the new arrangement left about 12 inches on my side of the bed. Ultimately, this was a good thing, since my bedside table is really just a depository for stuff that gets cleared off and organized once every six months or so, but the lack of space for a table proved challenging when I got into bed that night and had no light for my wind-down magazine perusal. So I went hunting in the house for something that might serve as a good stand-in.
Using an extra child’s dining chair that we had on hand, a pretty stack of hardcovers (most of which are works-in-progress since I never read one book at a time) and the perfect little lamp from my original side table, I had a functional resting place that adds visual interest to the room – all without spending a dime.
I believe that window treatments are like mascara for rooms – you don’t have to have them, but when you do the room looks finished. I’ve had a long, sordid history with window treatments – not really loving most inexpensive pre-made ones and having limited ability to make more unique ones because of sub-par sewing skills and (cue the standard motherhood excuse) a lack of time. However, my latest affair with window treatments ended beautifully, both for the wallet and the creative ego. The key? A shower curtain. The cotton beauty came from eBay (for under $20 including shipping), and with a pen, a pair of scissors, some fusable webbing (it’s like permanent tape for fabric), an iron/ironing board, straight pins, drapery clip rings and a rod, I had new curtain panels in under two hours. Shower curtains make it easy because they already have finished hems and you don’t need to go through the process of pre-washing the fabric because it’s already done. Here’s how I made mine: