If you follow me on Instagram, then you already got a sneak peek of the project I was working on over the weekend, Roman Shades. I've been wanting to add a roman shade in my kitchen for quite sometime, but I couldn't find the perfect fabric that I loved and Hasani loved. I finally found the perfect fabric at Tonic Living called Monarch Trellis in turquoise. We both loved the fabric! I snagged the fabric on sale plus saved an additional 10% during a Spring Sale off which helped, since the fabric was pricey for my budget. But since we've been getting so many good deals on things we've been slowly adding to our home, this was my little splurge for my kitchen and just what it needed. Here's a reminder of how my kitchen looks. Super white and bright and in need of a little wow factor in terms of color.

For my kitchen window, I decided to DIY a Roman Shade, just like I did for Avery's bedroom windows, you can see his Roman Shades here. I have awesome friends who also love talking projects and the same friend that helped me last time with Avery's shades, helped me over the weekend with a kitchen shade and a bathroom shade (I'll share the bathroom shade in another post!) Roman Shade for my kitchen turned out amazing!! I'm head over heels in love with it, just like I am with Avery's shades.

Here are my new DIY fully functional new sew Roman Shades! For me its a challenge taking really good shots of windows without them getting to dark or blow out looking from the sun, so I did my best to capture the beauty of the fabric. The Monarch Trellis fabric is heavy and has a slightly taupe cream background, that looks so good with my white cabinets. At first when the fabric arrived, I was afraid the background was too dark, not that shade is made and up, I'm head over heels in love with them!

I plan on having the shades up during the day, and closed at night so here's a shot of them down. The pattern is so pretty and my friend and I took our time to make sure everything lines up perfectly when up and closed.

I originally bought a plain pre-made Roman shade in white from JCP on sale and covered the shade with fabric, turning the basic shade into a custom Roman Shade. The original shade fabric is polyester, so it acts as a lining shade once its been cover with fabric of your choice.

The roman shades from JCP come in the standard length of 64 inches long, which is way too long for my kitchen window, so I shorten the shade! I simply measure my window and decided how far above my window I wanted my shade to hang and then measured the shade. I decided on 46 inches, which meant cutting off the bottom two sections of the shade. Before cutting, I carefully cut the string on the bottom of the shade, then cut two sections off leaving a small flap so I could attach the string. I basically copier how they were previously attached on the shade. I was nervous at first but it was super easy and came out perfect.

If your wanting to make your own customized Roman Shade, please click here for the how to. If you have any questions along the way please feel free to email me at katrina@chiclittlehouse.com and I'll try my best to help! There's a lot of ironing and pinning and unpinning and gluing involved in this project, but the end result is stunning and feels very rewarding!!

What do you think of my new Roman Shade in my kitchen? It totally makes me kitchen feel finished and adds the perfect amount of color.

I'm so excited to share our patio progress, as I mentioned last week we recently bought a outdoor dining room table, two benches and two chairs from West Elm. We loved the clean modern lines of the table along with the dark espresso finish of the table. We also loved the the table can seat up to eight people which makes it the perfect table for us when we entertain. Our goal is for our patio to be an extension of our home giving us extra living space. My plan is for patio & backyard to a be a comfortable spot that my family and I enjoy hanging out, grilling, dining outside and having fun. Before I share progress pictures of our patio with our new furniture, lets take a look at how our patio looked last Summer. Empty, but with so much potential.

Here's our current patio progress. For now we placed the table near the our raised garden bed, so while we're enjoying a meal outside we can look at our garden. I adore this view and love how this part our yard is ties in with the patio. Do you see how large our tomato plants are getting in the garden? They've practically doubled in size in the last week!

Patio Plans

As you can see in the picture below, we have lots of room to add more patio furniture. We'd like to add either a sectional or a sofa and two chairs and a coffee table. I'm picturing a sofa or sectional filled with colorful comfy pillows. I'd also like to add a rug to help define our lounge area on the patio. We're thinking our building an outdoor console table to hold drink dispensers and food. This weekend, I'll be filling up our DIY A Frame Plant stand with pots and plants, I'll share the after next week! We have two outdoor lights, but I'd love to add string lights to hang from the pergola. I plan on repainting the four large neglected terra cotta pots and plant flowers, and mint in them and placing on our patio. most likely we'll upgrade the size of the pot of lime tree currently resides in, I'd like to build something similar to this from Williams-Sonoma. We also have plans to build a cover for our crawl space that's located on our patio, once its built we hope it helps the patio flow appear more seamless.

In addition to adding a cover for our crawl space, we either want to pour a larger concrete step (simular to our step off our french doors, see here) off our laundry room door or build a larger cedar step. Right now the current step just feels so dinky, I want one with more substance and enough room to pots on and fill in the space better. So that's for sure on my list!