Family Room Windows

Well, I'd better get a move on if I have any hope of crossing June goal # 15 off my list: Cover the family room windows.

Unfortunately I forgot to snag a shot this morning of what it currently looks like (and with a working camera--boo yah!), so here are a couple of past examples to remind what windows I mean: and the adjoining kitchen complete with 2" white faux wood blinds:

So the reason for the delay, aside from chronic indecisiveness and chronic not enough funds, hubs and I just couldn't agree on what we wanted.

He likes the simplicity and clean lines of using the same wooden blinds on those windows. I like that too, I just think it would be nice for some texture there to warm it up a bit. I don't want it to be so clinical-we don't like clutter to begin with so a huge room of all hard, clean, empty and solid surfaces might be a bit much.

But...I didn't know what it would look like with blinds. I'm a visual person, you see, so I couldn't imagine what the finished product would look like (def my biggest decorating dilemma-not being able to visualize the end).

So my options were:

Drapes only, but that doesn't give many options for open & close-ability

Blinds only, but kinda sparse and clinical looking

Both but where do I have the drapes and would it look weird with the bare spot above the window?

TYH inspired bamboo outside-mount blinds with drapes (like this)

As always, leave it up to the youngsters to help me out. Sherry posted a design dilemma where she was suggesting the inside-mount blind + drapes combo. I loved the board (as usual) so commented as such, but also threw in a question about that very suggestion. Hey-I'm not above selfish compliments when it comes to stuff I don't know about.

Sherry quickly got back to me that it would be fine as long as the drapes aren't too high so there's still a relationship between the blinds and the drapes. Seems common sense, but I still gotta hear it from someone who knows what they're talking about.

Armed with the educated info that it wasn't a total faux-pas, I google image searched. (What, I ask you, WHAT did people ever do before the internet?????)

Here are some examples I found, complete with a nifty little drawing to remind me that anything & everything's online:

And I'll be honest-I tried and I tried to make some sort of mock up in both paint and photoshop, but I just cn't do it. It was the piece de resistance for my post and for my own peace of mind, but I can't do it.

So I think I'm quite settled that for now we'll get the faux wood blinds and once we save up a bit more we'll pick up some drapes as well. I just won't hang them too high, and I won't hang them too low. They'll be the mama bear of Goldilocks' drapes.

Any tips? Opinions? Ideas? Other lame nursery lame simile's?