I could hardly believe it when the call came in on Monday evening. Our new windows were being delivered to the window installer on Tuesday morning, and they wanted to set up an appointment to deliver them to us and get started with the installation in the afternoon. Oh yes, there is a God!

The current windows are paper thin, drafty and many of them are cracked…and while I love the idea of keeping as many things in our house as we can original, our old windows are just not energy efficient in any way. When you walk by them, you feel the cold bearing down on you from the window. So they’re just going to have to go.

The fun part of this story was that when we first started ordering the windows, we were told it would take about 3 weeks to deliver them. Then once the order was placed, we were told they might arrive in 5-6 weeks, the day before we’re leaving for Florida. Um, not so cool. So Stefan sweet-talked the guy a bit and he put some pressure on the window manufacturer, and low and behold, here they are one week early! I honestly wasn’t going to believe it until I saw them…it’s just too good to be true.

Now with our lovely new windows, it’s time to pull out the sewing machine and finally hem the rest of our curtains that we bought around 3 years ago. Seriously, how sad is that? In our defense, for about a year we were talking about just leaving them all bunched on the floor looking fancy…but in our house with dogs, cats and kids coming and going, that look just doesn’t stay nice looking long.

We bought drapes at IKEA (called ALVINE SLINGA — don’t you just love those names?) and they were pre-cut in 1-meter wide panels (before bunching). The length of each panel is well over 2 meters long so that you can use them in many different sized windows, which is how we end up with a bundle of extra fabric at the bottom.

The curtains actually come with hemming tape so that you can iron the fabric together with the webbed tape and make a hem. But really, that stuff is laughable. Perhaps it would work on thin fabric if your drapes never, ever move — but with this thick, embroidered fabric they hold for a few days and then you’re back to square one.

Last year, Stefan pulled out the sewing machine and we pinned the drapes from the living room so he could hem them. It’s just a very simple hem, where we folded over about 1/2-inch of fabric, then folded it again with about an inch of play. Then a simple stitch on the sewing machine straight across to keep the hem in place. Don’t forget to watch out for the pins when you are sewing this, so you don’t run over one and break your needle.

That’s right, there are no gender roles in our house. And as it turns out, I’m not even allowed to touch sewing machines because there is a great fear that I will break them. I got the “bull in the china shop” syndrome from my dad when it comes to electronics — and by now I am just terrified to touch something that delicate and wonky.

But that also means I have to make sure to gather any other sewing projects we might have so we can get it all done at once. Because, you see, we have yet to find ourselves a permanent home for our lovely sewing machine and the other sewing goodies we have. So it sits on the floor next to a bookcase, gets pulled out once a year and that’s about it. That’s no way for a sewing machine to live, is it?

One day I hope that we will manage to have a nice place for all our sewing madness and a storage place for fabrics we’ve collected that doesn’t include piling it on a shelf and letting it slowly cascade down the front of it. But for now, I’m off to observe the window replacement chaos and make sure that the process goes as quickly, smoothly and cleanly as possible!

And don’t our drapes look lovely? We planned it so that we’d have about an inch extra once the drapes were hemmed, so they bunch up a bit on the floor. Simple, elegant and effective.