Kitchen Makeover one paycheck at a time

The kitchen cabinets in our house haven't been updated in over 30 years.  The cabinets themselves are great - light oak, so thank God they don't need to be replaced.  J and I decided we wanted to update the kitchen in some little ways and make it more our own.  We are starting with drawer pulls and window treatments.  We found some great oil-rubbed bronze ones at Lowe's.  They have leaves on both ends and are very simple.  At only $2.97 per pull, it didn't seem like a big deal and it would take less than 30 minutes to do the whole kitchen.  Here comes the problem - we have 26 cabinet doors and drawers to replace so that comes to around $80 for the whole shebang.  We don't have home improvements worked into our monthly budget so we had to figure out another way.  We discussed it and decided that we could do with one less eating out day every 2 weeks and we could use that money to buy pulls.  So, every 2 weeks, we buy 3 drawer pulls and install them.  We are halfway done with it and they look great.

As for the window treatments, we were lucky enough that the previous owners (my loving parents) left all the rods in the kitchens.  Since I'm a fairly decent seamstress - Thanks grandma! - I've decided to sew some country curtains myself.  If you aren't familiar with country curtains, those are the ones that come down about 24" from the top of the window.  Basically, they add some color to the room and block the sun from the top part of the window, but still leave the rest of the window open to the outside.  We live on 5 heavily wooded acres with a locked gate so privacy isn't an issue.  My kitchen is painted a Tuscan yellow with light oak cabinets and red brick floors.  I'm hoping to find something in a lighter yellow, maybe something coffee house or chef themed.  I'll post what I find and come up with.