One down, thirteen to go.

Our house came with blinds. I was pretty excited to discover that, because with the packing and the moving and the changing of addresses etc., trying to figure out what is going to cover your windows is just one more hassle. So the 14 blinds covering our 14 windows were a very welcome thing.

That said, I actually hate blinds. They get all dusty and are hard to clean and they don't keep out as much light as curtains. So I'm on a mission to replace all our blinds with curtains or drapes of some sort. This task will be complete sometime in the next decade, if I'm lucky and if I get my sewing machine fixed.

However, the window in the bathroom was driving me crazy. There it is, below. When it came time to shower, one would have to follow these steps to get the window open and closed:

• pull up shade
• undo hook side right
• undo hook side left
• crank the crank to open the window
• pull down shade
• post shower, pull up shade
• shade gets caught on left hook, unhook
• pull shade the rest of the way up
• crank window closed
• window won't close because left hook is partially engaged due to shade getting caught
  
• unengage hook
• crank the rest of the way in
• hook the hooks
• put down the shade

I'm not really a fan of repetitive movements (for instance, factory work would have me barking mad) and so getting rid of this shade became a bit of a priority.

I had a gift card from Fred Meyer and used it to buy a faux stained glass thing from Artscape. I chose Wisteria. Behind it is the pattern I made to make sure I cut the piece to the right size. It turned out to be more problematic than helpful, as the pattern kept moving all around in the window as I was trying to trace the window size, and it turned out that the width of the Artscape thing was the same width as the window, so I really only had to concentrate on the length.
Having figured that out, I picked where I wanted the upper right hand corner to be, measured the how far it was from the top, made marks all across and then drew a cutting line on the back with a ruler. I cut, measured the 24 inches down from the new top, made the same marks across, and then held up the Artscape to the window to make sure my measurements were spot-on. They were and I cut with confidence.
After that, I just followed the simple instructions. Wet down the window (I had washed it previously) peel the backing off of the Artscape, (Matt helped with this) place it on the window, adjust and then use a credit card to push out all the bubbles. Voila! Done!
It came out really well and I am so happy to avoid the raising and lowering of the shades. Yay Artscape!