Linen Curtains

Oye... I'm having flashbacks of my childhood days, trying to write in my diary.  The story would go something like this:

After picking out a new diary from the Disney/Sanrio Store (you know Hello Kitty, right?), I'd get home and write an entry along the lines of "Dear Diary, I am so excited to write in you EVERY day."

The rest of the diary would be completely empty.

I do not want my blog to be my "diary" of my adult years, so I'm checking in with you all!!  Since I last posted about our fabulous new fireplace, I've made so many other updates to our new place - many of which I'll be posting about soon enough, but for today, let's talk about the new curtains have gone up in our dining room.

They are a light grey.

They are linen.

They are perfection.

Here's a close-up of the fabric...

Gorgous right??

You'll never guess where they are from...

I'll just tell you - Ikea.  Yup.  Ikea is amazing.  Two 98" linen curtain panels for $50.  Can you believe it?!

I have my sister to thank for this amazing steal - she found them originally as she's been furnishing their new house.  After doing some Googling, I found that the Aina Curtains (that's the name in case you want to find them online or in-store) have quite the following.  And why wouldn't they?!  They are so cheap for such a luxe looking curtain panel!

My favorite posting about them came from Rosa Beltran Design - she has posted some really amazing photographs of the different rooms she's designed using these curtain panels, but it was this photo that sold me on the grey...

Stunning, right??

I'm still toying with the idea of adding on curtain rings like the above photo, but for now I like them as is.  Plus I'm lazy, so there's that...

It's not that we didn't have curtains in here before - I'd actually hung up the ivory silk panels that had been hanging in our living room at our last place, but with the current paint color, it was looking very yellow.  The rug wasn't helping matters either...

I'm not saying I hated the silk panels that I'd hung initially... I'm just saying that the walls made the curtains seem really yellow, and vice versa.  It sort of cheapened how these curtains felt, and I didn't love them.

Eventually we are going to paint the dining room, but after tackling the massive job of painting the living room (twice), and as I'm gearing up to paint the kitchen and breakfast nook (which will require A LOT of painting), the walls in the dining room are going to stay as is.  We're going to pretend the scuffs I couldn't get off the walls aren't there in the meantime.  And honestly, once we hang up the shelves (you can see them leaning against the wine hutch on the right hand side of the room), artwork, and everything else, the scuffs will sort of fade away. Fingers crossed.

I actually think that with the grey curtains the walls look quite a bit more "tan" than "yellow" - don't you think?

Another close up of the curtains hanging up - they are wrinkled since I photographed this after just taking them out of the package, but I've steamed them since, and they are wrinkly in the way that linen should be... not like they'd been sitting in a hot car for days all crumpled up.

Since taking these pictures, the room has already come a bit further, but we're at a crossroads.

Originally, we'd decided to use this room as an office, and after sitting at the table a few times for "formal" meals, we're kind of liking it as a formal dining room.  

We were at West Elm over the weekend, and Kris was the one who was fawning over one of their dining tables.  It was one of the few times he's rendered me speechless.  I was all, who are you, and what have you done with my fiance?! In his defense, the table was kind of awesome - but it didn't have leaves, so I'm on the fence about it.  It could only ever seat 6... 8 if you squeezed... so it seems sort of limiting.

Anyway, if this does stay as a dining room, it may change my plans for hanging the shelves as an "office" so I've been hesitant to put holes in the walls...

What should we do?

I think the answer is "wait some more" since we just spent a small fortune buying a new sofa.

Yes.

We BOUGHT A NEW SOFA - after talking about it for 2 years.  I forced Kris into making a decision last weekend.  Hooray!  The sofa is being made right now, so it won't be here for another 2 months.... but it's gorgeous.  Trust me.  You'll obviously hear all about it (and see it) once it's here!

Happy Wednesday!
xoxo