The One with the Lamp Update

With the new arranging of our family room, and my sudden urgent need to have our house actually look like someone lives in it (rather than just being staged) I have decided to add some decor to the rooms. I love lamps! They are so awesome, there are so many options, you can change them up so many ways. They add light. They take up space. Somehow they even make your room look complete. Seriously. Think about it. Can you imagine a nighstand without a lamp on it? I think not.

But I HATE how expensive lights can be. Especilaly since I have this ever evolving style. And too often I buy a lamp (or really any decor) that is crazy specific to a certain decor style. I'm learning that I need to go a little more neutral with stuff. We started decorating our house when we first bought it SUPER MODERN. Straight lines, lots of stainless steel, sparsely deocated, the works. There is something I love about those clean lines and lack of clutter. But let's be real here, we have three kids, there is no way NOT to have clutter. And our house wasn't built to be a modern house, so our decor probably kind of clashed with the actual architecture of our house. Time to change that up.

Back to the lamps. I have recently become very obsessed with decorating in white. Or off-white. Or very light shades of gray or yellow or blue that are so light they are basically white. I guess I have come to realize that it makes the space seem light and airy. In looking for lamps for our newly arranged living room though, I wasn't having much luck. Not that I didn't find anything, I totally did. But even Target was trying to sell their awesome more substantial lamps for $50+ and then I needed to swap out the shade anyways. Sad day. I'm not wanting to pay that much to redo the rooms in our house. If I am smart about this, I can redo every room for the price I could redo ONE for.


Enter Deseret Industries. The one by our house we send stuff to ALL the time, but we only have been in it once to see what the prices of their new mattresses were. And I was scared to go in there. It's in downtown Nampa. 'Nuff said, right? Not to mention I feel awkward in most of those places anyways. People look at us funny. It's like they don't think it's fair for us to be in there to save money instead of shopping in there because we have to. But this time we sucked it up and ran in and ran back out REAL fast. And we found this beauty.

Actually I found a lamp that was probably three feet tall (but was a table lamp) that I tried to convince Eric to let me buy, and when he said no I had to improvise. . . . I dug a little deeper and then I found this beauty. It didn't come with a lampshade, and I would never in a million years put that color of bronze in any room in my house. But the overall shape and design of it I knew woudl be great after it was painted.

 

Lamp:    $9
Paint:     $3
Shade: $14

TOTAL: $26

I'm in love with it. At least right now I am. In another couple of months when my style changes again I may want to change it. But here's the good part. I feel a lot less guilty changing out this $26 lamp than I would changing out some holy dang expensive one I bought at Target.