The Internets Like to Trick You with Swatches

I've been planning out the nursery in my head ever since we found out that we were having a girl.  We've finally gotten underway with implementing this plan.  The only thing that I just cannot picture are the window treatments.  I was originally thinking that some basic beige curtains on sale at JcPenney would be easy, cheap, and done...WRONG.  First of all when I went to the store to look at swatches, they didn't have any of the beige samples from online, but they had every floral piece of crap on the planet...ugh.  So I had to guess...I guessed wrong.  I painted 3 walls of the nursery light beige and 1 wall (behind the crib) dark purple.  The JcPenney curtains looked good on the purple wall but too mustardy on the beige wall (we have a window on each color of wall...clearly I wasn't thinking this one through).  So those curtains are going back.

Then I was looking and looking around online.  I couldn't picture anything in the room and doubted every color I was seeing online...the internets like to trick you with swatches...it is a fact.  I went to Target and looked at their selection in store.  There were a few that looked nice, but how would I know if they looked good in the room??  So I left with nothing.

A few days later, I remembered a blog post that I read about throw pillows.  She bought a crap ton of throw pillows from various stores, tried out many combinations, and returned the rest.

http://www.allthingsgd.com/2008/04/64-thow-pillows-only-1-living-room.html

This was the kind of crazy I needed to figure out what to do with the damn windows.  Back to Target I went!!  Here is the pile that I obtained (this doesn't include the curtains from JcPenney)...

That's 5 different colors/styles of panel curtains with two different rods.  Each color/style will be tried out on each window (because each window has a different color behind it).  I didn't put each color/style on each rod...because THAT would have been crazy.  So for those of you stats students out there...we have 5 curtains on 2 different walls for a total of 10 different combinations.  I also took pictures of each set closed and open...so that makes it 20 combinations.  (Bonus points if you can figure out how many combinations of curtains could be on the wall at any given time with 2 different windows, 2 different rods, and 5 different curtains allowing for mismatched curtains.)

First I would need a drill.  Luckily there were already anchors in the wall from previous window treatments that aligned perfectly with the hardware...score.  Check me out with power tools at 31 weeks 5 days...

sexy

Here are our two different rod options...

The crib has more square features, and the dresser has more round features.  The square rod felt more heavy duty, but it would bother me if it wasn't parallel to the floor (I know...I am insane).

First up for curtains, we have the purple and brown embroidered.  I liked these because they were polyester on the outside and had a cotton lining...so there weren't a lot of wrinkles.  They weren't blackout, but I could add an additional lining...though I'm not sure if it would be needed.  One thing that was nifty about these was that you could thread the curtain onto the rod in two different ways: through the individual loops to give it a clean, finished look or through the one, big opening for a messy look...guess which one I chose.

Here are the purple and brown embroidered...

(Forgot the flash on the last one...new camera...oops.)

Next up were grey curtains.  They had grommets which I thought I would like.  They were also 100% cotton and had a lot of wrinkles...that's what I want to be doing when the baby is born...ironing her curtains.

The last two are black out curtains, which would be a nice feature.  They are cream and purple with a bit of texture that the camera didn't quite pick up.  They were both the consistency of a plastic table cloth, and were very wrinkly.  The big tag that came with them said that the wrinkles would come out by putting them in the dryer on low for 20 minutes...so maybe no ironing?

So clearly I have lost my damn mind...but this shouldn't really be news to anyone.  Al and I are preferring the embroidered ones, but aren't sure about purple or brown.  There is a lot more brown furniture to add to the room...so I'm not sure if brown curtains will be too much.  What do you think??