My mom's recent time-consuming project was making curtains for my daughters' room. They have been begging for some room-darkening curtains. I don't understand this because the loudest pleading came from the child that is up at the crack of dawn (CANNOT sleep in) and the reason there was a problem anyway is because they tore up the blinds in their room.
But, I digress. Mom has been meaning to make them curtains for a while and set about doing it for a Christmas gift. She had some denim fabric that was leftover from some I bought years ago to make an outfit that we never ended up making. She thought she'd start with that, as it would definitely be dark, and then add pieces of jeans and such, with a backing of pink and purple flat sheets to match the colors of their room. She also embroidered various things on the pieces to make it unique and personal. The girls' room is decorated in cowgirl theme, so there are plenty of horses and horseshoes adorning the curtains. Mom worked feverishly to get the curtains done, but I threw a wrench in her plan by moving up our Christmas get-together and requesting her help with a project. She revealed the curtains to the girls at Christmas and they loved them, but she took them home with her to finish them. We got them back a couple of weeks ago, finished and ready to hang, along with some heavy-duty curtain rods, as you can imagine that they are very heavy.
This is where things got hairy. The girls desperately needed to clean and organize their room before we could get in there and put up curtains. So, they worked hard and cleaned it up and I helped them organize. Then we began to debate how to put up these rods. My husband was worried about the sheetrock not being about to hold these heavy curtains, so we went to Ace Hardware to buy some toggles. They didn't have the ones he wanted (ones that hold so much weight, I could repel with the curtains), so he sent me in to Lowe's to get some. Only we hadn't looked at the hardware and didn't know what size to get. The ones I got would never fit, so I went back to Lowe's. I was not feeling well, but I was stubborn and determined to get the curtains up that night! Even with the other size, the bolts were too big, so my husband decided to drill out the holes of the hardware so the bolts would fit. So he says, "here, hold this" as he is coming toward me and the hardware with a drill! And, being a dummy, I did it! He managed to drill my finger a bit before we decided to use clamps. Then we bent the hardware and I had to bend them back. After all that, we went to their room. We had to haul in the huge heavy ladder and my husband gets up there and drills a hole. He puts the toggler in and it doesn't catch. That's when I say, "maybe you should have used a stud finder first." Yep, drilled right in the stud. Then the stud finder didn't work properly, but we were able to figure it out and get the first rod hung. Second rod goes over my daughter's bed, which is difficult since her bed is a little fragile for standing on. I got up there and drilled the holes and hung the rod. Then, since my mom wanted to see their faces when they saw the curtains hung, I kicked them out, hung the curtains and then let them in and took pictures of them hamming it up for grandma. The girls are loving them and how much light they block. Mom put a lot of personal touches on them with something representing each member of our family, such as the kids' initials:
Representing my husband, the paramedic:
And representing me:
THIS one needs some 'splaining...
If you've ever seen the movie Courageous, the scene about the "Snake Kings" is our favorite part (if you haven't, click here to watch the scene--it is hilarious). My oldest daughter likes to play the big sister and scared a poor boy that liked her sister by doing the Snake Kings sign (fangs in the neck, tongue out) at him. It's a big joke around here, so grandma incorporated that into the curtains as a forever reminder of that.
All in all, it is a very, very special, personal gift. It's almost like a quilt on the window.
No comments:
Post a Comment