Home decorating?

Tom and I moving in together has made me want to start decorating. We have a lot of restrictions. We are renting a house right now...mostly because by the time Tom's roommate moved out and I moved in, we were thinking we had less than 2 years in Florida before we got moved to who-knows-where. So while it's a buyers market right now, we couldn't really consider buying a house with such a short amount of time left and dealing with the stress and then just turning around and selling it so soon after. Way too much. It wasn't even an option. haha Maybe next move we'll look at buying, especially if the housing market is still like it is today.

Anyway, so we rent a lovely 3 bedroom home, which before I had lived there, had had many guys moving in and out and every which way. There was so much furniture just sitting in the back porch, making it unusable. Tom had nailed a towel to a window where a lot of sunlight came through rather than putting up a shade. It was bad. Smelled bad, looked bad...just bad haha

Then I came along and the place looks completely different! We added some pictures, moved the furniture around, cleaned up the video games that were laying around everywhere, got rid of the moldy disgusting furniture just sitting on the back screened in porch. We actually got a table to put out there so we can have people over. I put the drums away, moved the bikes out of the bedroom. You get the point...there was a lot that needed to be done. And there are SO MANY changes I want to make, but when it comes down to it, we're renting, it's not worth putting money into the house when it's not ours and we can't take the changes with us. It's killing me. I want a light and fan on the back porch to brighten it up and get some air moving so it's cooler in the summertime. We bought a few tall lamps that we put out there when we have dinner or something out there, so it helps but still...not what I want. We put up some cheap blinds in the living room to get rid of the towel, but I still want to put up more window treatments. Really badly actually. But I keep telling myself it's not worth the money when we're moving...but really...we can take the poles and curtains with us right? So I'm starting to look at pictures, prices, stores and really considering putting some curtanis up in the living room and our bedroom. I think it would make the whole place look so much "homier"! So when Tom leaves for the longest TDY in eternity (ok just a month or so, but still) my project to keep me entertained while he's gone is going to be windows!

Tom leaves next month so I've been thinking about ideas and looking at pictures and getting excited to have a project and a big surprise when he comes home! (he knows I'm doing this, just I think part of him thinks I won't do it and he doesn't know what I'll pick out so he just has to hope he likes it! haha) So here are 2 pics of the living room. There are 3 windows in here that we put blinds up in but I really want curtains to add somethign more to the room.

The bedroom blind is practically see through and we have a high fence so our neighbors behind us would pretty much have to be right up against the fence looking through the holes to see us changing, but I think it'd make the bedroom look a bit prettier with curtains. There's also a dining room with a big window that has no blinds, absolutely nothing on it. It goes out to the screened in back porch so it doesn't get a lot of light through it, but again, just to add some decoration, I think I want to put something up there too.

 So any ideas? Words of wisdom? We'll probably stick with pretty neutral colors, no dramatic changes, but anyone who has good ideas in dressing up a house please let me know!