(More) Curtains in my Windows

It is very exciting to me that (finally!) after nearly a year and a half in our home, all of our windows have curtains!  Yay!  It is just as exciting that the last set of blinds finally came down!  I absolutely love the fact that I have NO blinds to clean.  Ever.  All of our windows have close-able curtains only, with the exception of the kids' room, where I also added a room-darkening shade.  I will say that I hate shades almost as much as I hate blinds, and this shade is no exception as it is already broken after being in place for about a month.  But...I also place a high value on sleep, which is aided by having a dark room, and their curtains alone weren't cutting it.  I didn't really want heavy drapes in their room, so I went with the shade.  I may do something else at some point, but for now we're making it work.

Anyway, as far as the curtains....the laundry room:

This wasn't really the fabric I had imagined would be in here - I had kind of thought I would get something with blue.  But for some reason this grey/orange fabric grabbed my attention and I couldn't get away from it.  I loved that it was bold without being really bright and flashy - and it just so happens that the trim in the laundry room is a dark grey.  I had always planned on painting it someday, but now I guess I don't need to!  I'm actually kind of glad I didn't go with blue, as I already have lots of blue in the kitchen and dining room, so it's fun to have something different.  For the small window on the door, I found a matching orange and white flower print and added a little of the grey and orange fabric for trim.  I like that the curtains match but aren't the same.  Somewhere on my list of projects is to recover the ironing board - I'm trying to decide if a bright orange print would be too much, or if it would be a good complement to the curtains.

I also made new curtains for the dining room.  I liked the valances I had, but Seth wanted to have something that I could close when he was gone on his recent school trip.  I used one of my favorite fabrics - ticking - in blue, of course.  I had planned to make the curtains entirely out of the ticking, but measurements somehow got off, so they ended up too short.  I thought the ticking was a bit too plain anyway, once I saw it on the windows, so I decided to add a cheerful print to the bottom.  That worked perfectly, and I love the result!