Trip to Ikea, and an idea!

Saturday, we went to Ikea to snatch up all of the lovely items we had ear-marked in our 2011 catalog.  Of course, we weren't going to buy every single item on our lists, though it would have been nice if I came home with this, this, and/or this.  But...unfortunately my house is full and I was very good about making sure I had a place and a purpose for everything I bought.  Man, I really wanted to bring this white pleather chair home from the as-is section - it was totally not my style, but it was so comfortable....

What I did come home with was a pair of tan curtains for our laundry room (I took off the bi-fold doors and hung sage curtains, but now they clash with the much-cuter-shade-of-green paint), this awesome pillow for the bed in our guest room/craft room, some thread (boring, right?), a mortar and pestle, and some other little stuff I can't remember right now.  I was also going to buy end tables and wall-mounted lamps for the living room, but they were out of stock of both - the nerve!

I realized on the trip that if I bought new curtains for the laundry room I'd have to make new ones for the other windows in the kitchen - oh, what a problem to have, right?  I have grape fabric valences up now, but they're not really my style anymore.

They've worked since we moved in, but I'm over them.  I want to make something like the roman shade I made for our half bath:

The problem is that roman shades are so expensive!  Not worth it at all, so I'm going to make them with some panel curtains I found on clearance today at WalMart.  They were much cheaper than what I'd pay for the same amount of fabric, and they're almost exactly the same fabric as the Ikea ones I bought.  So I'm going to make curtains out of curtains.  Wow, that sounds dorky.

Perfect match, no?  Well, almost perfect.  I got stainless steel curtain rods to match the room, and I'm all set to makeover my windows! 

Can't wait to get started on them, but first I have work, school, work, homework, bio lab, state fair, homework, work, test, work...ugh.  Next Friday's looking good.