Lisa: colored contacts for my house

So, a while ago the cellular fabric blinds in our kitchen broke. I don't know when this happened--in fact, they might have been broken when we moved in. Basically, there was just no string coming out of the string hole. You know, the string that is supposed to pull the blinds up? So the blinds could not be pulled up. To add insult to injury, the blinds had been let down too far, so that they hung over the window sill, like so:

Anyway, it had been bugging me for a while, but A) we couldn't afford new blinds, and B) our neighbor's house is really close on that side, so I didn't want to just take the blinds down and have a naked window. Gabrielle suggested these window clings that imitate stained glass, so I picked up a few at Home Depot and went to town with the Exacto knife, a little soapy water, and my Costco card.

Much better, huh?

We had a similar situation in the bathroom. The blinds weren't broken, but they were those fabric shades. Since our bathroom seems to stay really steamy a lot, I was getting kind of freaked out about the possibility of mildew. Anyway, I decided to put the window clings up in there, too!

Here's the bathroom before.

And here's the window halfway done--you can tell the view is super great from this window, too...

Ta DA!

Anyway, I think the window clings are a pretty good temporary solution. You can tell up close that they're not really stained glass, but if you're not looking for it, it's not bothersome. And the light shining through to the inside during the day and to the outside at night is really pretty. Plus, they are totally temporary and easily removable, unlike the window frosting spray I put on the windows in my side door, to mixed results.