Got an Old Yeller lamp a few days ago at Goodwill. It felt a lot like striking gold when I found it, but there was no price on it. I saw a litle piece of a white tag on the base, did a happy dance because it was 50% off White Tag Day, and started telling the employee walking by that there was no tag, er, only a piece of a tag, and could he price it for me. He quickly slapped three tags on the lamp and walked away. And they were BLUE. Humph. The tag said $3.99. I silently mourned the loss of $2.00 and cradled my lamp like a baby. My mom ended up buying it for me at the checkout. I mourned the loss of her $2.00. And then I got over it. Promise. Here's a shot of the beauty with the living room mascots, Berta the pig and Wade the fish. They like it. Erik, since he’s been watching ridiculous amounts of 30 Rock, has since renamed it Liz Lemon. I can get on board with that.
It goes perfectly with our plan to bring pops of yellow into our living room. And $3.99 is our kind of price for a lamp, especially one that's the perfect shade of yellow. See: matching the pillows.
The only problem now is finding a lamp shade that really fits. I recently found and bought this $10 drum shade at Home Goods but it's looking a little short.
Erik confirmed that according to the universtal rules of asthetics (or something), a lamp shade should be 2/3 the height of the lamp base. He told me this while I was falling asleep, and proceeded to ask me how tall the lamp was. I held up my arm and told him the lamp was the length from my elbow to the tip of my middle finger, plus a smidge, or roughly 18 inches.
So how did I know how long my arm was? I uh...measure household objects with my body. All the time. I'm sure you know it's not weird to measure distance by walking it out, heel-toe. I just happen to go a step further (ba-zing!) and use my legs and arms to measure other things as well. I'll just write a post about it some other time. You'll start doing it, I promise. Or maybe you won't. It involves occasionally laying on the floor and embarassing your spouse. Suffice it to say, I knew the lamp was 18" without taking a ruler to it.
At the store, I would scope out a similarly-styled lamp, lean my arm on the shelf, and size it up. Then I would pop shades on it.
This was my plan, anyway. I kept finding lamp/shade combos and very few loose shades, and I found shades at IKEA, but they were all for pendant-hangy lights and didn't have the right mechanisms to attach to Old Yeller Liz Lemon.
So by Erik's rule, the shade should be 12" tall. And I knew the current shade was only 10". Sounds about right. So we're on the hunt for a new shade. And it'll be the length of my pinky to my wrist x 2.
Or I'll just read the label.
SO sad about the shade - I thought for sure it would be perfecto!
ReplyDeleteOkay, true story - I was out and about, and found a new shade, but it looked suspiciously short as well. No measuring tape, but that's okay, I remembered that it should be 12 inches, or the length of my pink to my wrist x2. It was, in fact, too short.
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