Interior Decorating Failure No. 1

Monday morning after Jon left for his first day of work, I took a moment to decide how to spend my day. Ordinarily, I try to tackle the most obvious, most unsightly home management problems (such as overflowing laundry and rampant stacks of dirty dishes) and then move on to the less noticeable areas of concern (i.e., our bedroom, where no wise creature would ever choose to invade). After brief consideration, however, I chose to follow a reverse pattern. Jon is accustomed to stepping over clean laundry that has tumbled onto the dirty laundry room floor, so he probably wouldn't care if he had to do it yet again. On the other hand, our poor bedroom has received such neglect over the past two years - it was our place to dump everything that did not have a permanent home - that I felt it deserved to be ignored no longer.

This decision made, the kids and I dragged out bags of Mommy's crochet yarn, hung up laundry that had been carelessly tossed onto the antique rocker, vacuumed, changed sheets, dusted, rearranged furniture, and vacuumed some more. The end result was amazing and inspiring. I suddenly had a bedroom that looked half appreciated, somewhat decorated (as long as you can tolerate the fact that the bedspread and curtains, both given to us for free, are very different shades of burgundy), and quite refreshing in its now-simplified layout.

So far, so good.

As one good deed deserves another, I decided to tackle the adjacent bathroom next. As mentioned above, I had been given some lovely curtains at no cost. They arrived in mis-matched fashion inside an opaque plastic bag. I had already hung the pair of burgundy curtains for the bedroom, and to my excitement there appeared to be another matching set in the bottom of the bag underneath several sets of tan curtains that are now residing in my living room. I wrestled out my $3 curtain rod from Walmart and, with electric drill in hand, managed to get the rod hung in a somewhat strait line. After I pulled out one of the remaining burgundy curtains and positioned it on the rod, I went back for the last curtain.

Only, there WAS no last curtain.

Instead, there was a nifty little burgundy curtain tie.

Oops.

I stood back to admire the half-curtain hanging down the right side of the window and started laughing. The best I could do was to use the tie on the single curtain and place some matching candles on the opposite side of the tub to try to balance out the color. It looks ridiculous!!

I've decided to leave it as it is, though, because it does make me laugh, and at least it adds a little color to an otherwise-uninspiring bathroom. Maybe some day I'll find a mate for my lonely curtain, or maybe in all my cleaning I'll eventually find the decorative burgundy grapes that my sister-in-law gave me years ago and hang them on the exposed part of the curtain-less rod.

All that to say, if you ever need a unique decorating style, I'm your (wo)man for the job. Trust me, it takes talent to accomplish such feats!