I understand that big open spaces are desirable in your home. There’s a lot to love about it, but there’s also a lot that’s kind of annoying. My living room and dining room are the same room, and my kitchen is mostly open to the dining room. That means everything needs to go together to some degree. I don’t do matchy-matchy, even in the same room (I loathe sets of furniture) but I’m also not going to paint the kitchen a color that completely clashes with the living/dining rooms. It also makes furniture placement a bit tricky, because you have less wall space, and my room isn’t quite big enough to just float the furniture. I digress. I’m here to talk about curtains.

I chose basic white curtains when it came time to put something up on the living/dining room windows because simplicity seemed key. I have four big windows and a pattern seemed bound to overwhelm the space. Not to mention the fact that curtains are expensive and my white curtains from Target were fairly inexpensive. It also seemed that, no matter how I might change the room in the future, white curtains can always be re-used.

Alas, I got bored with the curtains. My initial reasoning behind the purchase was still sound, but I also wanted a change–without spending much money. I decided to get crafty.

I wanted the curtains to still “go” with each other while being different enough to make the rooms distinct. Luckily, I had made a big oops early on and bought two different sizes. It wasn’t a big deal because I could hide the short curtains behind the couch, and hang them on the wall with the baseboard heat. But when I decided to get crafty, I also raised the curtains all the way to the ceiling. The difference became much more apparent.

So I hung the shorter curtains in the dining room, where the bottoms are visible, and I attached burlap to the bottom. This could not have been more simple. All I needed was a couple of yards of burlap, and some of that no-sew hem stuff. I’m a little worried about what will happen if I ever want to wash the curtains, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

I wanted to keep whatever changes I made to the curtains as simple as the curtains themselves. This whole William Morris project has got me thinking about painting the living/dining room. I’ve never loved the color, and I think it might be time to change it up. That will have to wait for later this spring, so I can open the windows while painting. But because I still haven’t settled on a color I wanted to make sure both sets of curtains would still go with the new walls.

In the living room, I wanted to concentrate on the top of the curtains. So I headed to a craft store and bought a stencil. It may be hard to tell here but it’s a Moroccan trellis pattern that ties into the pattern on my dog’s bed (which is, of course, very important). I chose black because I figured it would go with anything, but I’m not 100% happy with that decision. I think something a bit lighter would have been better — maybe gray or some other neutral. However, I think that whatever color I choose for the walls is going to definitely be darker than the blue that’s up there now, and so the contrast may not be so glaring.

This project was a bit more time-consuming. It took a few hours to do each window. I set up the ironing board in front of the TV and binge-watched The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt while stenciling.

I have a few more changes I could add to the project list. There’s the paint on the wall, but I think I’d like to change out the art over the couch for a mirror. For now, though, I’m going to leave those off the official list.

• Finally make a couch decision
• Paint the $30 Goodwill kitchen island
• Touch-up the paint on my blue dresser
• Paint the bookshelf/TV stand
• Fix the wall in the back room
• Find an organization solution for the back room
• Declutter the office
• Get rid of stuff in the guest closet–then put in shelves
• Doctor the curtains