Curtains... and the coop.

The Coopacabana is now official...... my husband hung up the block letters spelling out COOPACABABA in the chicken coop. He put all the letters in an imperfect line, so the letters look like they're dancing across the back wall of the coop. They're hung up over the roosting bar, and later on when all the chickens are settled for the evening, he'll try and get a photo of them underneath the happy-looking COOPACABANA letters.

The temperature has gotten warmer again, but with the December and January winter breezes in mind, I was determined to see if I could block some of the wind from coming into the west side of the coop. I bought a plastic shower curtain in WalMart, and with my thrift-shop shower hooks, I hung up that curtain right on the chicken-wired west wall of the coop. The chickens can't see through it if they're on the roosting bar, but when they're on that bar, they're intent on sleeping so I don't think that the lack of visibility matters all that much.

What does matter is the breeze, and I'm hoping that the plastic curtain will eliminate most of it when they're up on their roosting bar. If not, I'll just get one or two more liners and just keep adding more layers. I had extra hooks, so the bottom of the plastic is secured to the fence also. They should be quite happy now, both with their new COOPACABANA letters and the plastic curtain so their feathers don't get ruffled up. Our neighbor D is going to think I'm out of my mind with that curtain. His coop is fenced on all sides, and when I asked him what he does when it gets cold outside for the chickens, he told me that he just puts on a jacket. (Everyone's a comedian.)

While we were out doing errands yesterday, I found pretty curtains for the dressing room and our bedroom. The walls in all the upstairs rooms are white, and those two rooms had white curtains on all the windows. I don't much like white walls, but everything had been freshly painted, so we just let them be. The white-on-white curtains, however, were getting on my nerves.

For the dressing room, I found beige curtains with tiny pink roses embroidered on them in sort of a trellis pattern. Very Victorian-looking, and the ruffled valance and tie-backs are trimmed with beads. Perfect for that room. I ironed them this morning and put them up.... the whole room looks different. I may go back and get pink sheers to put underneath those embroidered curtains.

The bedroom also had white-on-white curtains..... no imagination to those curtains whatsoever. The ones I bought are a caramel-colored satin with a sheer embroidered overlay of the same color. Three windows on the wall where the bed is, and now that the new curtains are up, the bed looks framed within the caramel curtains. The embroidery on the curtains is nearly an exact match to the pattern on the beige comforter, so that was a nice surprise. The walls don't look hospital-white anymore, and with the same caramel curtain on the smaller side window in that room, the entire bedroom now has a soft glow to it. Amazing what new curtains can do.

I intend to donate all those white-on-white curtains to the thrift shop. I know I won't be using them.... they're just too white, too plain, too everything except what I need them to be. When we first saw this house, we loved all the curtains and were happy that the seller was going to leave them all. Since we've been here, all the curtains in the four upstairs rooms have been changed, and I've put new valances in all the bathrooms. Those curtains looked beautiful with the seller's wrought iron and wicker furniture that was up here, but once we got our heavier Victorian pieces in, the curtains definitely needed to be changed.

It surely took long enough to find what I wanted, but there are fewer stores here than in Clear Lake, so I had to just wait till new stock came in each month. I miss the shopping in Clear Lake, but I don't miss the traffic. And I've heard from friends there that the ShoeCents store has closed in Clear Lake. What?! That was the best place to buy great shoes! Had we not moved before, we would have had to move now. What would have been the point of staying there without ShoeCents?! (Although, we don't have a ShoeCents here, and heaven only knows where I'll be having to shop for shoes when I need them.)