Nothing was wrong with the Waterford crystal lamps I had in our room, except they really belonged in the bedroom with the Victorian-era spool bed and spool bedside tables. I have known it for some time, but never quite found the right lighting replacements to warrant a switch.
I needed something up-to-date, with some character, and fabricated out of materials appropriate to my furniture. As I perused the sale inventory, there they were: a pair of bone Theodore Alexander lamps.
Instantly, I knew they would be perfect on the shagreen boxes my husband got me for my birthday a couple of years ago. (I had an Amish craftsman make Federal bases for them.)
The mellow lamp bases complement the vignette, don't you agree?
I got a kick out of finding the lamps and moving the crystal lamps to a more appropriate spot. What's more, I found a creative way to finance the new purchases.
When visiting friends, they mentioned their difficulty in finding chairs to match their home's decor. Afterward it occurred to me that I had a pair of chairs that would be perfect. I called my friend, offering to sell her my chairs while emphasizing that they were under no obligation and could return the chairs, if they didn't work in their home.
Fortunately, my friend said, "I couldn't have found a more perfect fabric, if I had searched the world."
What's more, my friend passed on her other chairs to a Haitian family in their church. I was thrilled at the win-win-win!
As this lighting project was "going-down" in my house, my daughter sent me pictures of a lamp she was working on for her office. She purchased the lamp at Target, but wasn't thrilled with the shade. So, she fabricated her own by purchasing grey fabric and some black leather trim with silver grommets. With an iron, scissors, and spray adhesive, Anna made her own shade.
We both got a charge out of our decor- improvement projects.
Furthermore, our complementary projects reminded me of two passages of Scripture applicable to all women. An entrepreneurial woman, who buys and sells and works with her hands, is complimented in Proverbs 31 as the ideal prototype for all women. A corollary passage in the New Testament (Titus 2:3-5) reminds older women to encourage younger women to be workers at home.
Truth-be-told singling out entrepreneurism or home improvement diminishes the rich picture these two passages paint. The portrait of an ideal woman is a layered canvas idealizing a woman who, besides buy and selling and undertaking home-improvement projects, opens her mouth in wisdom and speaks kindly, is self-controlled, sensible, pure, hard-working, concerned about the poor, and is God-fearing.
Bottom line: If I want to measure up to the ideal woman, I must do a lot more than decorate!
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But decorating is so much fun. I have a lamp makeover this summer too, and though I had found lamps at Marshalls that I really liked, there was a satisfactions in scouting out matching lamps and spray painting them when I realized how much money that saved me. I think it's neat the God gives us the Proverbs 31 model and plants within us such satisfaction when we are frugal and wise with our resources.
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