A new idea for the windows

I recently fell a little further down the home improvement rabbit hole with my discovery of Houzz.com.  Dangerously fun.  I was playing around on there looking at kitchens, since that's my most exciting project to daydream about, but I didn't really have anything specific I was looking to do. 

One of the pictures I stumbled on was this one:

http://www.houzz.com/photos/7602812/Sunny-Pennsylvania-Kitchen-Update-transitional-kitchen-philadelphia

The kitchen didn't totally blow me away, but the window shades really caught my attention.  I really liked the natural texture, and I liked how light and airy they felt.  The scale of the kitchen in the photo kind of reminded me of mine, so I started thinking about how it would look in my space.  I have these white shutters on all of the windows in the main living spaces on my first floor:

It's hard to take great pictures of them because they do actually let in a fair amount of sun.  I mostly leave them closed because having them open to let in full sunlight means that they extend out from the window like 7 or 8 inches, so nothing can be too close to the wall.  They've been nice things to have the whole time I've lived here, and I've never really thought about replacing them because I couldn't think of something I liked better - until now.

With the addition of the wooden frames of the Loteria pictures, I'm now thinking it would be nice to add some more of that natural texture with some natural woven shades like the ones in the Houzz.com picture.  It would not only tie in with those, but with the fabric-covered light fixture I have over the dining table.  PLUS, the major benefit would be that the windows could then be completely open every day, letting in more light without having to sacrifice space around the wall.

I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger on it yet, and even if I was, there's approximately 1 million options to choose from, so I took the next best step today.  I ordered some free samples from Smith & Noble, which should be arriving late in the month so I can start playing around with those and see which color or fabric would look the best.