Shine A Light

Despite the lack of window in my bedroom, I must say that I do love my apartment.  The ceilings are high, the windows that we do have are big, and we've never had any vermin issues.  For New York, this is a HUGE deal.  I should know.  In a prior apartment I had roaches, mice and bedbugs.  And this was before the New York Times started running all of those stories about the resurgence of the bedbug...I felt so very ahead of the curve.

But my one gripe with my current apartment (other than the aforementioned cave-like bedroom) has to do with the lighting.  When we moved in there was a terrible hanging fluorescent fixture in the kitchen, which we promptly replaced with a more attractive option that lies close to the ceiling.  The only drawback is that is doesn't throw off nearly as much light as its ugly predecessor, and thus the living area next to the kitchen ends up resembling the dark side of the moon.

We have a fairly satisfactory Ikea lamp next to our large sofa which sort of ameliorates the problem, but if I want to sit on the love seat and read anything other than Braille, I'm pretty much out of luck.  So I've had my eye out for a good looking floor lamp for quite some time.

And one day a few weeks back, I found one.

The photography floor lamp from CB2...cute, no?  And at $99 I really could find no fault with it.  So I tucked it into the back folds of my brain and vowed to pick one up when I had the cash on hand.  You see, I'm doing a little experiment with budgeting in honor of our tanking economy.  I take out a fixed amount of cash every Thursday and do not allow myself to spend anything above that amount.  Hence, if I go to an expensive dinner out on Friday, unless I feel like living on rice and beans for the rest of the week, I can't buy the lamp unless I've been saving up, which I usually forget to do. 

Which is why I held off buying the lamp long enough to come across this little beauty:

I found it while standing in McNally Jackson's magazine section the other day flipping through Elle Decor.  The publication had a page of floor lamps, and among the $2,000 pieces this $349 one jumped out at me.  And it was from Pottery Barn?  Considering how boring I generally find their merchandise I was pretty shocked at how much I liked it.  Sort of a 1930s euro vibe I think.  And frankly, although it will be many weeks before I can eke out $350 from my self imposed weekly allowance, I think the price is not unfair.  So maybe one day, far in the future, I will be able to read at night on my favorite love seat.  If I haven't fallen in love with another, yet more expensive lamp, in the meantime.