i was going to build the suspense with our light fixture and show you our inspiration, and then a tutorial of how we made it, followed by the big reveal... but i am just too excited to share it with all of you, so you're getting the reveal first! i'll post our diy steps and background information later in the week.

i will tell you that this was my inspiration light, found here.
but i do not have $3700 to spend on a light. i do not even have $370 to spend on a light.

as i mentioned in my last post, (and over the summer in this post) mike and i have been thinking about/working on our dining room light for awhile now. i had it designed in my head, and we actually starting buying parts for it over a year ago... and then everything just sat in our basement. our only excuse was that we weren't sure how to do the electrical portion, and, we were having a hard time finding the last couple of necessary pieces. but friday night we were able to find everything we needed, and we decided to just jump in and see what happened. by the end of sunday night, we had this:













i love how it turned out. love it. and hopefully i can use it as motivation to continue to work on the dining room - we still need to get new blinds (going to ikea in march, can't wait!) and i'd like to get some kind of buffet or other storage furniture for the room. right now the room only has the table, chairs, and large mirror. i also need to get some more art on the walls but i'm having a hard time finding something that does not compete with the painting. oh, and the floors... someday.