I HATE Mini-Blinds

Yes, "hate" is a strong word, and therefore it is perfectly fitting for my feelings toward min-blinds. If you have blinds in your home and love them to pieces, then rock on with your bad blinds self. I, however, do not have the patience for blinds. In our new home, every window...and I repeat EVERY window, has blinds. At first I was going to embrace them. I even cleaned (like removed them from the window and hand scrubbed) 7 sets of them. And I still have 11 more (did I mention EVERY window? Yeah.). To clean 7 sets of blinds, in varying lengths and widths, with at least 20 years of grime (at least, from the looks of it!) it took almost 5 hours. Making dirty things clean usually brings great joy to me, and so I thought once they were hung I would revel in how wonderful they now were, all bright and sparkly clean. Not so much. Why? Because those stupid things still bang on the window whenever the wind blows, never make a straight line when pulled up (and rarely stay up when pulled), and never drop down correctly without being man-handled.

With a new house, I'm trying to be frugal. I know that I can't run out and by 18 new window treatments and be able to come home to a husband who won't be holding divorce papers. And I like my privacy, so I can't just take them down either. But I HATE them!

And that's where Google becomes my friend. I found the Little Green Notebook, a blog with a tutorial that shows you how to turn mini-blinds into a roman shade. Now, I'm not sure I'll like the roman shade since it's based on the mechanics of the mini-blinds, but it's worth a try, right? (please work...please work).

Jenny's Little Green Notebook version. Very sweet.

If I want to try this out, it will require dismantling a pair of blinds. If it works, yipee--success! If it doesn't, well, I'm out not only the mini-blinds (which I could care less except for that money and divorce issue I mentioned) but also fabric. And I can't really use fabric I don't like since I kind of only have one shot. With that said, the only room with one window where this will work is the upstairs bathroom. At some point we're going to be remodeling that room (new tub, new floor, new everything). In the meantime, I guess spending $10-15 on fabric to make it livable would be worth a try. And it could mean the end of the mini-blinds throughout the house as we know it. Ah....to dream.

Here are some fabrics I'm thinking about for said bathroom. There are so many great fabrics out there though, that I have FAR too many options. My choices will probably change by tomorrow.

I was thinking of painting the ugly vanity we currently have red and this fabric would be a perfect complement. (Dear Shane, if you're reading this, remember paint is not a bad thing...and red paint is pretty.)

I was thinking of using some combintion of these with one being the front, and one being the back...so that you just get a little glimpse of it when pulled up.

And here's one that I may choose if Shane vetos my red vanity idea. Maybe that said vanity could become yellow. (Love you, hubby.)