Eyeballs On The Wall

I’ve been on the hunt for bedside lamps for our bedroom since Haven. Yep, two months! We stopped at the Pottery Barn Outlet (where we ran in to Candace!) and saw gorgeous wall-mounted swing arm lamps. I was close to buying them, but they were wonky and I didn’t want to spend that kind of moolah ($75 each) on something with questionable structural integrity. But that was the moment I knew I wanted swing arm lamps.

Problem: Swing arm lamps are expensive! Well, the ones I liked anyway. Individually, $150 isn’t the worst. But multiplied by two? And I couldn’t get over the thought that I’d only use the lamp for, uh, maybe five minutes a night? No, thank you. The cheapo in me won out.

I check out Amy’s post about industrial lighting for less to get some ideas, and her first lamp pointed me to Urban Outfitters. That’s where I found these eyeball sconce lights.

I popped them in my cart thinking, what’s the worst that could happen? Two lights for $58. If I hated them, I could return them. They’re white and can be spray painted. No biggie. Except when I went to checkout, the price had actually dropped to $19 a pop, making the lights $38!

That discount killed my free shipping though, so the little green guy down there hitched a ride to his new home with the lamps. (Why pay extra for shipping when you can get a rhino planter instead?) (Will I ever grow up?) (No.)

Ryan held the lamp so I could visualize placement. When we picked a spot, I marked the bracket placement and drove a couple of anchors in the wall. I used extra anchors we had in the tool box because the ones that came with it were sad. I made sure the two lights were the same height with our laser level, but simply measuring would work too.

For the record, it absolutely broke my heart to drill into a wall that I had just stenciled. So it goes. If we ever decide to move them (maybe they’ll look too crammed when we get a headboard in there?), I’ll just patch and paint the wall and lay the stencil over it to touch it up.

We fitted them with standard CFL* bulbs (one of my requirements in a lamp: don’t make me buy a weird bulb), plugged them in and switched them on. They work like a charm. And for once in our lives together, we BOTH have lamps! I feel so fancy. And they’re pretty cool looking. (*The CFL is probably a for-now thing. Since the fixtures are metal and CFLs get hot, I’m thinking LEDs will be the best choice for the long-term)

 Any unexpectedly cheap and awesome purchases come your way lately? How about safari animal planters?