This week, instead of sharing my usual Wise Apple Weekly roundup of small changes and updates, I'm sharing one slightly larger update - one that has made a HUGE difference on the overall vibe of our living room. When we moved into our home just over two years ago, the former owner was kind enough to leave all of the curtains behind. Though most of them were pretty far from being curtains we would've chosen ourselves, it meant there was one less thing to worry about in those first few weeks when we were just trying to navigate through a maze of boxes and were glad the neighbors couldn't watch us through naked windows. We swapped out most of the curtains within the first couple of weeks, but actually grew kind of attached to the oh-so-retro yellow curtains in our living room. They weren't in great shape, but we were into the cheery yellow hue, so we went with it for a while. When we started looking into buying new curtains, we quickly realized the size of our windows meant we were going to have to shell out some major $$$ to get the amount of coverage we'd need. We decided to live with them a little longer and started hunting for fabric to make our own...
Then, last January, I fell in love with some Nate Berkus fabric at JoAnn's - and friends, I fell hard. As you can see in the first image, the fabric had the perfect color scheme to tie our space together a bit (seriously, we have more colors in our living room than a full-size box of crayons), the leaf pattern was really speaking to my Crazy Plant Lady tendencies, and the nubby, barkcloth-like texture added a mid century feel that we loved. Surprisingly, Mr. Apples went for it without too much arm-twisting, so we hurried out and bought up a bunch of it. I'd sewed curtains for our home before, so I figured I'd whip up a pair for the living room in no time. We envisioned these beauties being the perfect way to ring in the summer. 
... and then a few weeks later I actually started trying to sew these giant, unwieldy things. And quickly realized that I'd never sewed curtains with a pattern before. Suddenly I had visions of slightly tilted leaves and weirdly-matched seams - it was time to call in a professional. We worried and fretted about handing all of this gorgeous fabric over to a tailor, but eventually just went for it. We measured about a zillion times, and then waited. By the time they were finished, we'd had time to buy some lovely brass hardware to match our recent brassy update - it was all finally coming together! Though summer had already come and gone, we finally (nervously) hung our new curtains. And we loved them. From the first moment they were up. I really feel like the whole room just makes SO much more sense now. And of course, now that we have our new curtains, I'm already scheming up about a zillion new projects to take on in the near future. (Does that happen to you all? You finally finish one project, revel in it for all of two minutes, and then immediately start thinking about all of the other things you want to do, like, yesterday.) Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this long, drawn-out story, is because I just want you all to know how looooong it took us to commit to and then actually implement our big change. There's a reason we usually stick to small projects! But gosh, this one's definitely inspiring me to take on a few more bigger projects very soon! But enough talk! Time to share a gazillion pictures of our new, jungle-icious living room! I hope you love the new look as much as we do!
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