There’s a lot of unintentional alliteration in my title right there. Uncrowded periods at Ikea are just about as elusive and valuable as at Disney World. Last year I hit upon the idea of giving Superbowl evening a try and met with great, uncrowded success. So this year we decided to go ahead and call it an annual tradition. Now we just have to be very careful not to start watching football. That picture up there explains why we do this: it’s an actual, unretouched photo of Ikea with no people in the shot. I don’t know about your Ikea, but that just doesn’t happen at ours. But then you know what they were showing on all the TVs? Last year we took a picture of all the kids on this crazy sofa: I wanted to get another picture on the same couch (and then one EVERY YEAR!)….but they don’t have it anymore :(. I can’t imagine why. Anyway, this orange couch was the most obnoxious one we could find to use as a substitute: Everyone’s hair sure did get long since last year.

Oh, hey, look what Ikea sells for $20, including the bedding: That one looks a little….straighter than Abe’s. Also, they sell giant fish pillows: The primary reason for our visit, though, was to buy Sanela curtains for our sunroom. I had checked the website earlier in the day to make sure they were in stock and had been delighted to discover that they were on sale for $39.99/pair (marked down from $49.99). I had already scoured the whole internet for gray velvet curtains and determined that the Ikea ones were the best deal even at $50/pair, so this was EXTRA exciting. Then we got to what has been, historically, the curtain section and saw this: They’re completely rearranging the downstairs part of Ikea, and there are signs everywhere telling you to ask an associate for help if you can’t find something. Dave immediately headed off to find someone to ask, while I ventured a little farther and located the curtains right around the corner. Turns out when you ask an associate to help you, they tell you that what you’re looking for is probably around somewhere and you should just keep looking.

So, umm, I guess I already knew what to do. I could work at Ikea with no additional training required! And so, we returned home with our haul of discounted velvet curtains (and one other major purchase that’s going in Abe’s new room, but that’s a surprise).black and white juvi curtain panel Our sunroom has lots of giant windows, which makes it almost always either too cold, too hot, or, if we’re lucky, merely too glare-y and bright.allders curtains When we first moved in, we ran out and bought a bunch of drop clothes and curtain rods, hung them up haphazardly, and forgot about them for months. krishti curtainsThey looked like this:unshrink curtains

Our sunroom was so pretty back then! Then, when we painted, we took them down, intending to do things like hem them and maybe stencil them or something in order to make them more presentable. But we never did. threshold shower curtain aquamarineWe left the windows bare for months and months instead.home classics blackout curtain panel wisteria As the rest of the sunroom came together, the style of the drop cloth curtains started to seem like less of a good fit. Also, they really didn’t do anything other than keep people from seeing into our windows. Like those people at the church behind our house: They didn’t make it any warmer in winter or any cooler in summer, so we kept also thinking about buying some kind of fabric to line the back of them with….and the whole thing started to sound like an awful lot of trouble for not even the curtains we really wanted anyway.

Heavy, should block all the light plus some of the heat and cold. A better fit for the direction the room’s taken lately, with the leather sofa and brass accents and Fancy Lady and all that. Gray picks up the color of the grout in the tile nicely and doesn’t compete with the other, brighter colors we have going on in there. I’d actually noticed the Sanela curtains last time I was at Ikea and was impressed with their velvety softness. But I looked all over to make sure I couldn’t find a better deal before I committed to them. Ebaying curtains was right out, since we needed so many of them all the same. Target had some that were pretty close to the non-sale price of the Sanelas, but they weren’t quite as wide (and since we pretty much just have a wall of window instead of individual panes that each get a pair of curtains, the width counted). So Ikea won out, even before the sale. If I remember right, there also weren’t enough of the Target ones in stock on the website or at any store nearby.

Because I’m a big dummy, I did the measuring all wrong, and we wound up with nine pairs of these when we only needed five. I’m thinking of using two of the other pairs in the dining room. I’m also thinking of returning all of them and having more money. Anyway, here is the sunroom with the new curtains! All closed up (which is how we keep them at night, and then we play around with them during the day depending on the weather and if the sun is shining in our eyes and whatnot): I’m really happy with them. They add another layer of texture to the room without being all obtrusive or in your face about it. They ALMOST don’t need hemming, too. The line between pooling fashionably and dragging messily is such a fine one.(Image credit: Alexis Buryk) Being awoken by the sun is actually good for you, but there are times when darkening a room aids in sleep especially for napping children, shift workers or others with non traditional sleep schedules and for blocking artificial night time light such as from a streetlamp.

Blackout curtains also are energy saving (keeping heat from escaping in the winter and the hot sun from heating up your room in the summer) and help block or muffle outdoor noise. Traditional blackout curtains have a liner behind them to block light. You can find blackout curtains in all kinds of colors and patterns, even light-hued ones. Search online for "blackout" or "thermal" curtains. (Image credit: Pottery Barn Kids) If you already have curtains you love, but want to transform them into blackout curtains you can buy liners à la carte and add them to existing curtains with clips, hooks or by using a double curtain hanger (like this). If you're shopping online search for "blackout liner" or "blackout lining". Here are a few to get you started: (Image credit: West Elm) If it works with your decor, you can buy heavy and/or dark curtains to give the effect of blackout curtains, but without an additional liner. Velvet, wool or tightly woven cotton, polyester or canvas in dark colors are your best bet.