Face Lift for the Bean Pole, Bean Pod, Bean Pad?

Not sure what to call home sweet home. If we were the pea family, it'd be easy :). At any rate, while MimiBean was here she harped on and on about curtains. Fortunately, she's intelligent enough to get that I am SOOO not that kind of person (you know the kind who cares about curtains) and that she'd have to do it if it was going to get done. So, indeed she took charge.

She had HelperBean bring back some fabric after her vacation home. She went shopping with TetaBean and a friend in Wehdad and bought the rest of the fabric. She got TetaBean to set up the curtain guy to come and take measurements and such. Then she helped me describe what I want to our friendly curtain man. And, let me tell you, I seem to have the same experience each time with craftsmen from here, and it's a fun one...

Each time we have a craftsman come in, I explain what I want (either through an interpreter or not) and get odd looks. You know, the kind that say well, I'll do it but you're nuts. The curtain guy gave me a little of this, but then understood what I wanted and went off to do it. Just to set expectations, I wanted what is apparently called American-style curtains (imagine that!). I wanted a nice decorative curtain rod with sheers and on the rod a nice decorative curtain. Since we have amazing crown moulding with open spaces for curtains, this seemed to be just a bit much... I have to tell you I smile every time.

I had a very similar experience getting the kids' room painted. We had a guy come in and he decided to do one wall blue (for JuniorBean), one wall deep pink, and the remaining light pink. It turned out very well except that he painted the abu jour deep pink too. Somehow, it just overwhelmed me. So, I asked El 3atal to have him paint just the door on the abu jour light pink. That way, the light pink is framed by the dark pink. The guy doing the painting argues with El 3atal for a bit. Finally he put just a tad of paint on there so I could "see what it looks like". I agreed that it was exactly what I wanted. I asked El 3atal what he was saying. Apparently, I had offended his sensibilities with my request and he was sure I am certifiably insane :). It turned out looking great, by the way. In fact, here are a couple of pictures of it (MimiBean made the curtains BTW, but the curtain guys put them up).

We looked forward to welcoming all of our friends and family to the newly-spiffed bean home. And, I hope you enjoy seeing MommaBean's revolutionary taste :)!

Happy Non-conformity!