Boob Lights and Parcheesi

I'm obsessed with lighting lately, and I'm assuming I have the cloudy, chilly days to thank for that.  There's just something about soft, yellow lighting that calms me, and I swear it makes the room warmer, too.  Bright overhead lights have rather the opposite effect, so when Stefan and I moved into our current apartment, the dome light fixture in the dining room had to go.  I paid an electrician $15 to remove the dome and replace it with a vintage light fixture (a gift from my aunts Mary and Sue).  So worth the money!  This is what the original looked like:

Let's face it: it looks like a boob, right?  And, you know, once the thought strikes you, it's hard to see that light as anything else.  So we switched it out for this:

This fixture delights me.  It reminds me of this, which, admittedly, is a tad weird.  Bear with me as I explain: During the summers as a kid, I would go "down the lake" to my grandparents' summer cottage in the tiny Massachusetts town of -- wait for it -- Lakeville.  The women in my family would descend on the cottage for Sisters' Week, which consisted of lounging on the sun-soaked deck, sipping daiquiris (virgin ones for the young'uns, clearly), and staying up late to play more games than even we kids could handle.  When the Parcheesi board came out, we knew it was time for bed.  Yikes, was that thing ever intimidating.  Parcheesi has ever remained in my mind a mysterious, obscure game characterized by frenetic clacking and the raucous laughter of wine-loving women.

So back to this light fixture.  A few years ago, my aunt Mary and her partner, my aunt Sue, bought a house in Houston which had been built in the early 60s and had had the same owner since it was built.  You know what that means: nearly everything in that house was original [swoon], and although my aunts were not a fan of the gaudy awesome décor, I couldn't stop oohing and ahhing over everything down to the lucite hardware on the bathroom vanity [double swoon].  A few weeks after my visit, a hefty box arrived from Texas and inside was the fabulous chandelier.  One (wo)man's junk, after all...

xoxox

Fancy