It has been a crazy week here in Florida.  We have had hurricane force winds through our area in the middle of January, which is a bit unnerving, but it has been nice to see a few cold fronts come through.  We lit a fire in our fireplace and just sat and watched the fire for two hours. Not the most productive evening of all time, but it was a welcome break.  One thing that struck me while we were sitting there is just how much I love our curtains.  We bought our curtains from IKEA a fairly long time ago and they have help up incredibly well.  What I love about them is that they were inexpensive, yet they look really nice and they are machine washable.  If you are a pet owner, this is a must for any curtains that you buy.  Our cats leave an immense amount of fur on our curtains and as much as I have tried to vacuum them, it simply does not work.  One day I called the dry cleaners to see how much it would cost to launder our curtains and they told me it would be $30 per panel.  That is PER PANEL.  I purchased these for $30 for the pair (we got them for $27 with the IKEA family membership), so I would have been better off buying new ones!

What I love about curtains in general is that they do so much for your interiors.  You can use curtains to make your ceilings look higher or lower.  They can hide less-than-stellar windows or bring a little pop of color into your rooms.  Curtains can be long or short, wide or narrow, plain or colorful.  We prefer colorful walls and white curtains in our house, but I love white walls and patterned curtains as well.  The only problem with curtains is expense.  Dollar for dollar, curtains are one of the best bangs for your buck.  But they get really expensive really fast, so I always recommend IKEA curtains to anyone who is looking to save some money.  IKEA sells their curtain panels in pairs (most curtains are sold as a single panel, so double the cost if you plan to have two per window), and they have a nice selection with a range of materials, colors, patterns, and styles.  Our favorite curtains are the white (which is actually more of an off-white as of late) grommet cotton curtains named Merete.  We have 8-foot ceilings and we try to make the ceilings look as tall as possible, so we went with 95-inch long panels and hung them about 6-inches from the ceiling.  Hanging the curtains that close to the ceiling gave the illusion of height, and we have found that most people think our ceiling is higher than it really is.  Hanging it 6-inches down gave us the ability to add crown moulding in the future without having to move the curtain rods.  The grommet style gave our curtains the appearance of a little more height above the rod as well, and we saved money by not purchasing curtain rings.

While these are our favorites, we look forward to sharing other curtain styles and ideas in the future to help you pick the best curtains for you.

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