Loving Our New Woven Blinds......

Hey, ya'll!  Labor Day weekend is winding down.....hope yours has been great!!!

Mine was actually pretty busy.  Since Eddie Dale had to work all three days, I decided I would work, too - only I stuck around the house to do my work! 

I decided to go ahead and give the woven bamboo blinds I found at Home Depot a shot.  I've been eyeballing them online for weeks because the cost was only $16.97 each.  I simply hate the plastic 1-inch mini-blinds throughout our house - they are not cottage-y - at all!  

So, I ran out to the local store (their handy dandy website indicated they had thirteen 27"x72" shades in stock) and picked up enough to do the living room.  I really like the roman shade style and the way these filter the light, creating a nice soft ambiance in the room.  Although they are not completely private, they are fine in the living area.  Oh, and did I mention they are only $16.97 a window?!?!?  So reasonable, yet they give me the "look" I've been "Pinning" for months!

 They were super simple to hang!  Having used some of these inexpensive shades at our place in Pampa several years ago, I knew that I would need different hardware than what comes with them.  So, I picked up some teeny, tiny little cup hooks for an inside mount.  

It took about an hour, with dogs underfoot, to hang all five shades in the living room.  All I needed was the drill (pilot holes for the cup hooks), power screwdriver (for removing the mini-blind hardware), a pencil to mark where I wanted to hang, and a small step ladder.  And let's not forget, I needed scissors to open the packaging and a trash bag for clean-up as I worked. 

I am loving how this turned out!  In fact, I loved it so much that I went back yesterday and got enough to install in the kitchen......

 And the master bedroom.  Since we will have the need for a little more privacy sometimes in the bedroom, I am going to switch out the curtain panels for something a little heavier than what we currently have.  We can simply pull these closed when we want to shut out the light and the world. 

The most time consuming part of the entire process was CLEANING THE WINDOWS, inside and out!  We have a water well for outside watering and there was quite a bit of hazy build-up on the exterior windows from calcium and minerals in the water we run through the sprinklers. If you have this problem where you live, Eddie found a great way to clean up with the least amount of effort!  We used CLR, applied with a scrubber-style sponge.  After giving the windows a good scrubbing, I polished up with Windex and paper towels.  I did end up having to get a razor blade scraper and full-strength CLR in some really tough areas, but the extra effort was definitely worth it.  My windows are sparkling, inside and out!  

All in all, it was a pretty productive 3-day weekend!  

Hope you'll leave me a comment below and let me know how you spent your holiday weekend!!!

Linking up with -

Robin @ All Things Heart and Home for Monday Funday
Alderberry Hill's Make the Scene Monday 
Love of Family and Home's "Inspire Me Please" Weekend Blog Hop

Hugs to ya!