Transformers

I'm talking about curtains.  Curtains can make a room that is so bare all of a sudden seem so lush.  I'll show you what I'm talking about...

Here is a picture of our bedroom the first night in the house, back in July. Isn't that air mattress so awesome?  It has a headboard and everything.  Some of our friends let us borrow it since we were in the house a few days before our furniture got here. 

Now here's our room a few days later with furniture in place.  See how bare the walls and windows look?  

In an effort to get window panels up as quickly as possible, especially on that side window which looks over into the neighbor's backyard, I picked some up one day while at Target.  

Matt got them up and they were definitely not what I had in mind.  The fabric looked like a cheap 90's prom dress and also had a terrible sheen to it.  The packaging said they were lined but they let in a ton of light and cast this weird glow over the room.  

I took them back (without ever taking a picture of them) and proceeded to explore other options.

Window treatments are the kind of thing where you can drop a lot of money.  Like a lot. That's not at all what I was after but realized I needed to spend more than $25 a panel. We ended up deciding on West Elm's velvet pole pocket curtains in dove gray, 96" long.

Sidenote: At first we tried West Elm's platinum velvet curtains because that's what our local OKC store had in stock.  While they were pretty, they were waaaay too shiny. We found the dove gray online and they're much more subtle. 

Here they are going up, Shep monitoring of course, and looking very official in her Razorback jersey.

We actually found the curtain rods and rings down in the basement so that was a nice surprise.  They're a pretty deep gold color and fit the windows perfectly.  Not sure where the previous owner's had them hung because there weren't any holes above either of these windows. 

So much better!  Doesn't the room just look more grown-up? It feels deep and thick now where as before it was just kind of jarring.  

The curtains on the side window unfortunately stay closed most of the time since the neighbor's can see directly into that window.  I don't love the look of closed curtains but function over form in this case, otherwise things might get awkward. 

See?  That's their house. 

The panels on the back window though are pretty much just for looks since we love waking up to the view of the backyard. At first I actually only ordered 2 panels for the side window since these aren't really necessary but within a few days of getting those up I ordered 2 more.  This window just looked so naked in comparison.  

On another note, this is one of the only rooms in the house that doesn't have crown molding.  Kind of strange.  We'll probably add it at some point. 

I wanted to leave with a photo showing that Shep's bed is below a portrait of herself. We're nothing if not crazy dog people.