Christmas Vacation - Day One

The day started out early, as usual, with two small bodies cramming into our bed, or should I more specifically state, my side of the bed.  It must look a sight - Aven on his side of the king size bed with all the room in the world and then me and the two kidlets all shoved together on my side of the bed.  Quite unfairly distributed, I think.  We have the Perfect Serta Sleeper which has this memory foam that basically keeps your body shape indented into the bed, so what happens is a little nest forms which is sooo comfy.  If you're by yourself, that is.  If there's more than one of you what happens is that everyone rolls into the middle of this little nest and only the person in the middle is comfy because everyone else is on a slope.  Excluding Aven of course because he is all alone in his nest on his side of the bed. 

But I digress.

We (that is me and the kids) were up and downstairs by 6:30am and I made pancakes and sausages for breakfast as a little "yay we're on vacation" sort of breakfast. 

Then we washed and dressed and headed out the door to bring Miss H to her favourite Auntie Katie's house where she would be spending the day (and possibly night).  Miss H loves to spend the day with Auntie Katie because they do fun stuff like fishing with marshmallows.  Who wouldn't love that?

Then it was home for the rest of us 'cause I had a mountain - well, truthfully, several mountains of laundry to do and other un-fun things of that nature...

Aven went out to wash his truck and after finishing that decided to stop in at his personal ATM, as he calls it.  Actually I think the real name is the Casino...and with his fabulous luck came home with a wad of cash to spend!  Woot!

So off to Fort Langley we went to see what we could spend it on but all we came home with was a few Christmas Ornaments and some new knobs for Miss H's dresser. 

Now here we are - M's in bed, Aven's watching Monday Night Football and I am chandelier shopping.  We have a chandelier, but Lord is it ugly.  And not just ugly put completely unmemorable.  And it hangs off-center in our dining room.   It's silver with frosted glass shades and has spokes like a wagon wheel.  It's modern in feel and I'm not modern at all.  It suits me not the least little bit.  And sadly, all the lights in our entire house are in the same family as this chandelier.  We've lived here almost five years at this house now with these lights that were the builder's choice.  And while we've disliked them the entire time, it's really hard to just change one light, because then the other won't match.  And not only that it's hard to spend money on something that really we could just live with it.  It's not like their broken and don't work (unfortunately). 
But now that we have this bit of extra money and we're hosting Christmas Dinner this year...maybe it's time to finally give the dining room chandelier and the pendant lights above the kitchen island the heave-ho. 

Hence the chandelier shopping.  This is what I've been doing while Aven alternately cheers and groans to his football game...I think he's cheering for the 49ers but who knows if their winning or not.   And apparently the lights keep going out at the stadium.  Wierd. 

So I've looked at 3461 chandeliers at design lighting and I have found two that I like.  Well, more, but only two that we can afford that I like.  I want something big because we have a big dining table and I want a light that will balance it.  But I don't want a big heavy, fussy thing.  I want some sparkle but not overdone.  I want it to look like it cost $2,000 but I don't really want to pay more than $500.00.  Is this so much to ask?  Apparently.  I really do like this one chandelier from Chintz....

...but Aven's not big on the birds.  You know the birds are the reason I love this chandelier, right? 

And I love the antique-y look of this one...

But it's missing the bling factor for me.

I love the unexpectedness of this one...but maybe it's a little dark for me.  We don't have a big house so I need to keep it open and bright.

What do you think?  Do any of these chandeliers grab you?  I actually found a chandelier at Design Lighting that I quite like, but for some reason the site doesn't allow me to download pictures.  So here's the link...
http://designlightingca.xolights.com/Lighting_Fixtures?itemNumVal=6Y1U&accordionPane=0

I think we'll try to go look at a few of these in person tomorrow.  If and when we do purchase and install one, I'll be sure to take photos to get your opinions!