2. Browse the internet looking for ideas for weeks on end. Fall down an etsy-hole into fabric wonderland. Buy enough fabric samples to clothe a small army (of brightly colored flower people).
3. Borrow "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from the library.
4. Fall in love with one of the gajillion fabric samples you bought. During Thanksgiving, enlist aunts and uncles to persuade Z it is her favorite fabric as well.
5. Spend a tense hour calculating hems and seam allowances. Use calculator on the sly. Order necessary fabric.
6. Receive fabric. Lay it over your desk chair rather than putting it away because you will surely be making those curtains ANY DAY NOW.
6. Holidays/Snowmaggedon/Arizona/American Idol/stack of New Yorkers/whohastimetomakecurtainsanyway??
7. Renew "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from the library.
8. During one random "quiet time", sit down at desk/sewing table and stare at fabric. Suddenly remember spending an entire week sewing a "daisy chain" dress in college and winding up with one sleeve two inches longer than the other. Sweat. Walk away.
9. Renew "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from library.
10. Decide that you'd like to make some dress-up clothes for Z for her birthday. Which is suddenly next month (!?@!@#@#*$@!). Realize that the curtains come first.
11. Renew "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from library.
12. Wake up and decide that TODAY IS THE DAY. Nap/quiet time WILL be spent measuring, pressing, cutting, and pinning.
13. (Realize that you might really enjoy sewing if it wasn't really just a whole lot of measuring, pressing, cutting and pinning.)
14. Baby who always naps DOESN'T NAP on the one day where there is motivation for curtain making. Give up all hope curtains will ever be made. Consider making the hanging fabric on your desk chair a permanent "loose slipcover".
15. When you can't get a sitter for a much needed date night, spend your Saturday night measuring, pressing, cutting and pinning.
16. Start sewing a long side seam, feeling fresh and optimistic. Everything is pinned and pressed and lined up as the machine hums happily along and you wonder why you didn't start this sooner IT'S SO EASY AND FUN until suddenly you've moved off your perfect line somehow and the fabric puckers just a bit and then you zag back which is probably the WRONG thing to do but it's too late YOU'VE DONE IT NOW and you just can't seem to sew a straight line or find an easy rhythm TO SAVE YOUR LIFE and then it all seems like yet another metaphor for your life and you want to give up and throw something heavy like oh say THIS SEWING MACHINE but by then your seam is done, for better or worse.
17. Sew a few more seams just like that.
18. Finally! After just a few feverish hours! You have two panels with side seams and a rod pocket (that's what she said)! Look around for someone to chest bump! Briefly consider waking up child to hang the curtain panels and gauge hem length (and possibly chest bump).
19. Wonder if child will wake up during a midnight curtain hanging.
20. Wait 'till the morning, barely.
21. Hang curtains and decide on hem length. Briefly consider leaving them unhemmed because there they are! Hung and almost done!
22. Hem them during video time, with small non-video watching child gnawing on thigh.
23. TA DA!!!
24. Order fabric for E's curtains.
25. Renew "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from the library.
