October 5th, 2011 
Jessica Our kids have not been sleeping as well since we moved, and one of the main reasons is their bedroom! At my parents’ house, they slept in a dark, cool, windowless bedroom in the basement. In our new place, they are on the main floor with two big windows and no window coverings. During the day the sunlight shines in, and during the night the neighbors’ porch lights shine in.
So we wanted some blackout-type blinds or curtains to help the kids sleep. But have you seen the prices on window coverings? PHEW! After a lot of shopping around, I decided on roller-shades for the rooms most in need of privacy and darkness throughout the house. JCPenney’s had cut-to-size textured roller shades in various colors on Clearance.
The final price was about $13 per shade. I also had $50 in JCPenney’s gift cards, which made the deal even better! In the meantime, I’ve been checking out The Nesting Place on a tip from The Prudent Homemaker. She has lots of creative solutions for how to cover your windows inexpensively. So now I’m thinking about what kind of inexpensive curtains I might use in addition to the blinds. But for now, the kids are sleeping better and we have privacy where we need it most!
Have you found any great deals on window treatments? Or do you have any creative solutions for my windows?
Posted in 
Factory Direct Drapes. They always have a 50% off coupon code on their website, and they will custom make your insulated blackout drapes in any colour or fabric you want. Still about a hundred dollars a window, but good quality for the product. We just ordered some for Faith’s room!
I’m sure Faith will love her new blackout drapes! Does she sleep better in the dark too?
My husband likes to sleep in a completely dark room, whereas I prefer some light. Early on in our marriage though, I decided to compromise in that area and get used to sleeping in the dark. I looked into blackout curtains, but as you know they are so expensive, especially since the bedroom window in our old apartment was an odd size. That’s about when I got into sewing. So I went to Joann’s and bought blackout material and a pretty inexpensive green fabric, and put them together and voila – cheap blackout curtains! It’s actually really easy to make curtains and I didn’t even have a sewing machine then. So my recommendation is to make your own!
I’m not very good at sewing either, but I think I’d like to give it a try for the curtains around our home. They might be a simple enough task for a beginner like me. 🙂
Sheets! You can find inexpensive twin size sheets on clearance almost anywhere. Two will cover each of your windows. They even have a built-in rod pocket and hem! For curtain rods, you can buy wooden dowels cut to size or even PVC pipe cut to size and paint. Then all you need to get would be finials. If you don’t want to use the hems as rod pockets you can also get some clip-on curtain rods.
Thanks for the suggestions! These are exactly the kinds of things I have been looking at on Nesting Place and Pinterest. There are so many to choose from!
Ive used sheets for a window treatment. Two of my childrens’ rooms have sheets made into a window treatment. I didn’t even do any sewing. I just threaded the curtain rod through the large hem at the top(I think I had to rip out some threads so the sides would be open). If you need them shorter and don’t sew, you could use stitch witchery to make a no sew hem.
Is stitch wizardry some kind of tape? I saw it mentioned on a couple of diy sewing projects online.
[…] and then our big move, I had procrastinated. It was time to commit. If you looked at our kids’ room photos from last week, you probably noticed that 2-year-old Naomi was in her crib, and 9-month-old Oliver was in his […]