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Window treatments add more than decorating touches to your home. You can deploy treatments strategically for energy efficiency, changing to thicker curtains and drapes in the winter months. People with historic homes use period treatments to preserve their theme and value. Tasteful prints, colors and designs can absolutely transform a room. Now forget everything I just wrote and look what these homeowners did:

Is this ugly, or is it me?

Photo by Ugly House Photos

My favorite blog of the disagreeable and dreadful, Ugly House Photos, hosts this monstrosity. Are these truly window accessories, re-purposed shower curtains, or torture aids used by the intelligence service?

Bed, bath, and the great beyond

Photo by Ugly House Photos

I hope I never get to see these window treatments in the flesh. Window replacement costs being what they are, why would you cover your light on the world with coffin liners?

This decorating goes to eleven

Photo by Work Room Intelligence

Certainly rich and ebullient, this monumental valence is a tad busy. I think my sweetheart of the rodeo wore this to Woodstock.

Valence with a vengeance

Photo by You Paid More Than Me

If you’re into the dingle-ball era of home exteriors, this valence may be the right choice to grace your period sitting room. Taken as a whole, I can’t take it at all: there are no curtains or drapes to complete the look. On one hand, it appears that the vampire bat has made it through the window. With its brevity, it lends the overall affect that you’ve been pantsed.

Liberty Valance

Photo by Weird Wild Realm

If your window treatments are terrorizing your home, you need to take them out and shoot them.

It’s the time of year that people all around the world fill their homes with greenery. While the Christmas tree is associated with the Yule holiday, the origins of the ritual date back to the Egyptians, who celebrated the winter solstice and the return of the sun. To honor sun-god Ra, they brought green palm rushes into their homes.

In December, Romans celebrated the solstice for Saturn, the god of agriculture, by decorating their homes with evergreens. Pick your own reasons to celebrate. But no matter your beliefs, please, please do not decorate your home with objects that look like these:

Getting the decorating brush-off

Photo by Apartment Therapy

I really don’t need to know the spiritual connotations behind this holiday tree. I suppose you can fit empty beer bottles over the brushes and clean them for constructing a larger tree.

How refreshing, how green

Photo by Ugly Christmas Trees

See, just stack your freshly washed beer bottles into this glass obelisk to celebrate Bacchus, the god of headaches and projectile vomiting. Check out the more of offensive year-end shrubbery entered into a bad-taste contest at Ugly Christmas Trees.

Ugly or unique: You decide

Photo by Xigre

Let’s put it this way: either this tree was constructed by designers who emptied the green beer bottles into their gullets or by quirky aficionados of the tuba school of home decor. If you like this, Xigre has more to show you.

My tree

Photo by Philadelphia Weekly

You don’t complete seven years in college studying literature without learning how to arrange your bookcase to honor the equinox. The volume at the top, The Collected Novels of Henry Miller, is probably inappropriate.

If you’re going to grandmother’s house, then pac, man

Photo by Xigre

The cultural savvy of how to choose your decoration is passed down through generations. If you were skipped over, Reader’s Digest can tell you how to pick the perfect tree.

One last thing:  No matter your choice, please use safe and non-toxic Christmas tree preservatives this year. If you don’t, yule be sorry!