Light Fixtures

This weekend has been pretty busy for Jacob and I.  We decided we needed to bite the bullet and take a trip to Bismarck for house stuff.  For our house, the builder gives us an allowance for our lighting, and we buy the lights, then submit the receipts to him to get reimbursed.  If we're under, we get money back (that's our goal), and if you're over, you pay the difference.  I spent several hours Friday night writing down each light I might possibly be interested in from either Home Depot or Lowe's.  When we got into Bismarck, it was amazing.  Similar to my Target experience in OKC a couple weeks ago, it was like the heavens opened up and were smiling on all the stores in front of me.  In one shopping center there was Lowe's, Kohl's, Old Navy, PetsMart, Best Buy, and a bunch of restaurants.  Sounds pathetic, but it is so amazing to see big stores.  Sorry, Herbergers, but you just don't measure up.  Anyways, we had to work fast because it's an hour and a half drive (2 ways, so 3 hours in the car), and we didn't want to be away from the dogs for too long.  Since we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, we were pretty quick in Lowe's.  Unfortunately they didn't have some of the lights we were interested in, so the only thing they had that we wanted were these flush mount ceiling lights.  We scrapped our original idea for the entryway light and bought this one below as kind of an impulse buy, but I'm glad, because the more I see it, the more I like it. 

Light fixture for entryway

Ceiling light for the hallways and the bedrooms that don't have fans:

Fan for the upstairs living room and our bedroom:

There will be three of these pendant lights in the kitchen over the island:

Chandelier for the breakfast area (there is no such thing as dining rooms here).  It's basically right off the kitchen:

And here was the hardest decision, my white whale, if you will.  I spent like six hours trying to decide on light fixutres for the bathrooms, but all the ones I found were either overpriced or the glass was too dark, and wouldn't have given off bright enough light for the bathroom.  I went against the opinion of my very opinionated brother-in-law, which as a rule, I don't do.  I might regret it.  Hopefully not.  These are defintely the most boring lights, but after several hours and some bad cramps, I figured they'd work.

The one with four lights will go in the master bathroom and the bathroom downstairs.  The one with three lights goes in the guest bathroom upstairs.

So now we're all done with our lighting, except we need to find fluorescent lights to go in the closets.  Our realtor and builder were very specific about what kind of lights they needed to be, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what they were.  Hopefully our realtor can just send me a link with a picture so I can buy them.  But I think the hard part is over with.  At least for the lighting....

The pastor at the church we've been going to is doing a sermon series on Genesis 1, Creation.  So far it's been interesting, but not necessarily what I was hoping it would be.  I think Jacob and I were both hoping it would incorporate science a bit more, because I think that's really important to give credit to your faith.  You can so easily use science to your benefit, it you explain it correctly.  Based on what i've heard so far, I think a lot of atheists would dismiss everything this pastor has said.  Not necessarily because he's wrong, but because to prove his beliefs, he goes to other Bible verses and other biblical commentaries.  That's great for Christians, but you're not going to bring anyone to the faith and have them dismiss their beliefs based on that.  Anyways, one of the things he said today in church got me super irritated.  He was talking about how God created everything and what the timeline was, and how He created the earth, and then filled it with respective forms.  He talked about how God created the sea and sky, and then three days later filled it.  I think he said something like "He filled the skies with birds.  Hunter's you'll appreciate that!"  HANG ON.  Are you kidding?  You're talking about the perfection and majesty of God's creation, and then addressing that to people who enjoy killing those creatures for SPORT?!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!  Okay, clearly I'm not a fan of hunting.  I mean, I can sorrrrrrrt of understand people who hunt deer, because at least a lot of them use the meat for food.  It just blows my mind that I see a deer and am awed by how graceful and beautiful it is, and someone else would be thinking "I want to shoot that in the head and keep it's antlers as a trophy."  It's just weird to me.  Weird and gross. And hunting other animals just really blows my mind.  Pheasant?  DUCKS?!  Ducks are so adorable.  Why would you want to kill them?!   I just don't get it.  Of course, I'm writing this as I'm eating a turkey sandwich, but killing animals for sustenance and killing animals for entertainment are completely different for me.  I know a lot of people would disagree with me about that.  I was just completely befuddled that the pastor would in one breath talk about how perfect God's creation, and thus, creatures, were, and then be like "isn't it fun to kill them?"  Okay....Stepping off my soapbox....

I got my period yesterday, and it's been a doozy, so I've been a miserable, grumpy, irritable hag for the last 24 hours (see hunting tirade).   I know, I know.  Jacob's super lucky to have me.  Anyhoo, it's had me thinking about some of my really memorably awful periods.  More on that later........