My Primitive Pick

My Primitive Pick this is week is…

Curtains!

There are so many types of curtains out there – in different styles and fabrics – it makes it easy to find something that works for your house.  A lot of people aren’t big on curtains, but I am.  (Why else would I include this as a primitive pick?) 

It all goes back to the tiny, basement apartment my husband and I first lived in when we got married.  I was excited, but mostly overwhelmed at decorating the place, even though there wasn’t much room to decorate and we didn’t have much to decorate with!  My mom actually came a couple weeks after we’d moved in and helped me hang some things on the wall and mentioned curtains for the few (5) windows we had in the apartment.  We had one mostly normal-sized window and 4 tiny typical basement windows.  I hadn’t really thought about curtains at all.  My mom volunteered to make the ones for the living room and it was up to us to get something up for the rest of the windows. 

In starting to shop around for curtains I quickly realized that they can get really expensive.  I decided that curtains weren’t really that important and put it off for the time being.  About 8 months later, we decided to paint our kitchen since neither of us cared for the color and it didn’t go with any of our kitchen stuff.  After that, I decided I should probably get some curtains and did.  I couldn’t believe how much of a difference it made in the hominess of our little kitchen!  A few months later I found a valance in a pile of clearance items in Wal-Mart that was perfect for our bedroom window and, once again, was blown away at the difference a valance could make!  My mom got busy and the time to make our living room curtains just wasn’t there for a while, but after living in our apartment for about a year and half she surprised me with the curtains, and they were perfect!  Oh, and once again made a huge difference in our apartment.  Basement windows are not at all attractive!

So, you can believe when we moved into our current home one of the first things on my docket (after unpacking all most of our belongings) was to measure and start shopping for curtains.  Shop online or in stores that are local to you.  Also, don’t forget about ebay.  There are ebay stores that have great prices on curtains.  For many of my curtains, I found the cheapest place that I could buy from was an online store called Jake’s Country Trading Post.  Seems random, but I had a good experience and would buy from them again.  (Below are a couple of pictures of curtains from the Jake's web site.)  

My only regret is that didn’t make at least some of my curtains.  In the last year I’ve learned how to sew and now realized how simple many curtain styles are!  (So why are they so expensive?) 

So, whether you are buying or making them, curtains are a great investment for your home.  Even if you aren’t now motivated to work at getting some curtains up in a particular room in your home or apartment, I’m at least hoping I’ve motivated myself to get some up in our bedroom which I’ve unfortunately neglected in this area!  Here’s hoping! 

~ Carrie ~