rug shopping

Since our wonderful new house has laminate hardwood floors everywhere, we need to invest in rugs. At least one rug anyway, for the living room. I would like to make the rugs that will go in the bedrooms, since they would be less traffic areas, but the living room needs a sturdy rug. I have therefore been looking at lots of rugs online. (Another fabulous way for me to avoid writing my thesis). I have determined that I have two criteria for our living room rug: It must not be the super busy madness that so many area rugs are and It must not be over $150. I have really fallen for a rug that has a few tree branches scattered across the rug, and of course it is $500. Sigh... this is why I want to make the rugs, because the ones I really like are $500.

I'm also thinking that I want to make the curtains for the house too. My mom is giving me one of her many sewing machines, so I think I could make the curtains pretty easily, as long as I can figure out how to use this sewing machine. I want to turn one of the bedrooms into a craft room, with the sewing machine, and a place to store all my yarn and stuff. Hopefully I will have time to do crafty stuff, I really enjoy it, and I haven't done any projects in a few months. With all my struggling to finish my thesis, I'm itching to make something, but I need to finish this gosh darn thesis first!