I’ve always been a girl who likes to get exactly what she wants.  What can I say?  I’m an eldest child.  I have opinions, darn it, opinions about everything.  Of course, I’m also a Libra, which makes me very indecisive.  But once I get over the hemming and hawing and actually make up my mind, I’m pretty solidly entrenched.  Of course, I’m no “I want it NOW” Veruca Salt type.  I am willing to wait until I get what I want.  There’s no better proof of that than the house I waited six months to close on.

Of course, this knowing-what-I-want thing sometimes causes me to build up unreasonable expectations and then dig in my heels and refuse to compromise.  Sometimes I end up giving in and settling, but sometimes I surprise myself and get exactly what it is that I irrationally insisted upon.  Take, for example, lamps.  Now that hubby and I have a grown up family room with real furniture and everything (!!!) we needed a table lamp for our end table.  The table lamp was especially important to me, since I love to curl up and read on the couch.  Of course, I wanted the perfect lamp, and I came up with a list of seemingly impossible criteria that I simply couldn’t do without:

1) Large-ish footprint so my big end table doesn’t dwarf the lamp;

2) Jug shape;

3) Clear, seeded or greenish-tinted glass;

4) Fillable body; and

5) Cord running through the base and out the bottom, not hanging down off the neck.

And, despite the fact that most nice lamps seem to cost $150 or more, I decided that I will absolutely refuse to pay more than $60 for this lamp of my dreams.  Yeah, you can say I’m unreasonable.  Go ahead, it’s true.

For awhile, it looked like my ridiculously low price ceiling was going to be an academic issue, because try as I might, I just could not find a clear glass lamp with the cord running through the base.  Everywhere I looked, there were glass lamps taunting me left and right with cords running down from their necks.  And I just couldn’t compromise on that point.  My sofa is a sectional and both it and the end table float in the middle of the room.  I needed a nice, discreet cord that I could tuck under the sofa, not a cord flopping out from under the lampshade and cascading down the body of the lamp.  That’s just not cute.  I dragged hubby to anyplace I could think of that might have a lamp in my self-imposed-for-no-good-reason price range.  We went to Home Goods, Target, WalMart, Bed Bath & Beyond, and the local lighting supply.  Struck out everywhere.  I started to question whether such a lamp even existed outside my imagination.  To confirm my dawning belief that lamps don’t exist the way I imagine them, I visited Crate&Barrel, Pottery Barn, West Elm and ZGallerie – nada.  I started to reconcile myself to the fact that the lamp of my dreams might not exist… until I remembered…

IKEA!  (Cue angels singing.)  Why it took me so long to think of the miraculous Swedish superstore, I don’t know.  And this coming from a girl who plastered the Swedish flag all over her website project for freshman Art History in college.  (No, I’m not Swedish.  Why do you ask?)  As soon as I remembered the Swedish home mecca I rushed to the nearest computer and discovered that they had MY LAMP for the low low price of $39.99 (plus $10 for the shade, but who’s counting?  Oh, that’s right, me).

Handsome Jonsbro Orud hit all of my criteria: the right size and shape, greenish-tinted clear glass, cord discretely running through the base and out the bottom, and a fillable base that I can stuff with silver ornaments come Christmas.  I was so excited, I waited a whole month to do anything!  (I’m not only stubborn, I’m also slow.  And I don’t trust things that seem too good to be true.)  Finally I got tired of hiding in my house sucking down artificially cool air during the heat wave last weekend, so I grabbed the car keys and headed out to IKEA.  (I also discovered that it’s 12 miles from my house and pretty much a straight shot.  Danger, Will Robinson, danger.)

So here he is!  What do you think?  He looked lonely sitting on the end table all by himself, so I gave him some company – a silver and green glass tealight holder that was a wedding present from my childhood friend Adam.  I love how the opaque greenish glass of the tealight holder complements the greenish tint of the lamp without looking matchy-matchy.  I’m not done with this tablescape – I still want to add some elements, like maybe a framed picture to personalize it and one more decorative element to stop the table looking so sterile.  But right now I’m just glad to have a lighting source!  And I’ll keep you posted as I bring in more elements to soften up and personalize the whole family room.

While at IKEA I also picked up another lamp for the bedroom, but I’m keeping this one a secret from you guys for now, until I’ve tracked down a surface to put it on.  Rest assured, it’s also pretty, and it was also under $60.  But to find out more, you’re just going to have to stay tuned…