Decorating impaired

Decorating our home seriously stresses me out. One of my worst nightmares is moving into a new house and staging all the empty rooms. It's pretty severe. Like I need serious affirmation that any decisions made on my own look decent. Given the high likelihood that my personal finished layout will NOT look decent, I need constructive criticism and examples on what WOULD look good in a nicely decorated space.

Up to this point I have copied. My college roommate was seriously amazing at making our apartment look like it was out of a magazine. I have tried to imitate her style in each residence I've inhabited since, but am still lacking when it comes to interior design.

The root of all this recent stress lies in the fact that I bought curtains this weekend at Linens N Things. This happened to be at one of the stores that's going out of business, meaning ALL SALES FINAL. I planned to hang said curtains in our living room, but failed to take into consideration the window in the dining room. Having 2 adjacent windows with only one dressed would look rather unbalanced.

A while back we decided to stop decorating our house knowing of our intentions to move / rebuild in the near future. K reminded me of this, further adding to my stress in the form of not knowing whether or not my recently purchased curtains would work in our new home. I knew this in the back of my mind when I bought them, but was feeling nesty and had the urge to make things in our current living environment feel more homey...

We decided to go back to Linens N Things to see if they had 2 more panels to hang in the dining room, with the assumption that we'd likely have at least ONE room in our speculative new house with 2 windows that we could hang the panels in. Linens N Things had 2 panels indeed - and ONLY 2 panels - left at the store; however, just my luck that one was 84" long, and the other was 95".

The first 2 I had purchased were 95". I will say that the idea of hemming 3 to 84" crossed my mind, but the thought of having to learn how to sew was overwhelming to me and would involve way more time than I was willing to contribute for a pair of curtains.

Long story short, we will likely end up hanging the curtains in our study instead. Oh how I wish I weren't so paranoid when it came to stuff like this. I have much better things to do with my time than to worry about house decorations. LIKE:

Celebrating with Elizabeth and Andrew at their wedding!!!!!!! Elizabeth is my Meals on Wheels partner and one of my last remaining Bank One friends who has not yet left the company. My mom used to call me, Elizabeth, and Stan the 3 Musketeers given our frequent lunch outings together throughout the week. How precious both their friendships are to me, and how grateful I am for the fun and joy that they've brought into my life as we navigate through the politics and bureaucracy of corporate America together....