My kitchen curtains--Before and After

One of my little sisters got me interested in Before-and-After furniture refinishing blogs last summer.  And while I still have no big plans to refinish any dressers or curio cabinets any time in the near future (and forgot to take a before picture of grandma's bench that we're slowly working on sprucing up)...I DID take before and after pictures of my kitchen curtains.

After we got married, I moved in with my husband.  The curtains that were in the kitchen weren't quite my cup of tea, so I headed on down to Walmart and spent $7 on these little babies.  I was soooo worried that my after all my efforts, my curtain choice wouldn't be ok with my new husband (after all, the curtains I took down belonged to his mother).  Ha! I shouldn't have worried.  He didn't even notice I'd changed them until I pointed it out. 

  Before.  Sorry for the angle, here.  But before pictures are supposed to look bad, right? ;)  Note how the curtains aren't even long enough for the window.

After a good, long life of almost 7 years, I decided the Walmart curtains were ready to move out into the garage.  To be replaced by...Blue and white stripes! (That way, they would still coordinate with all the red stuff I have for my kitchen).  Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, there was nothing even remotely striped in the premade curtain section of any store I checked, so I decided to just make them myself. I had a heck of a time finding material (I was looking in January so there were lots of pinks and reds and hearts for Valentine's but very little in the way of blue and white stripes).  I eventually did find this fabric (which I do not know the name or designer of because that's just one more thing to have to remember and think about and it's not really that important to me...something about a lakehouse maybe?) at Pine Needles in Gardner Village.  I only mention that because Gardner Village has a pond with ducks.  And little kids who are being dragged from fabric store to fabric store in search of the elusive blue and white stripe in the middle of January really really like watching ducks.

 After:  my new blue and white stripey curtains!  Love them to bits!

Incidentally, if my kitchen actually looked this good all the time, it would be truly amazing.  Of course, that would probably also mean that we never use it...or that I had a maid.  Hmmm...a maid might be nice.  More time to quilt. :)