Months ago, I put in an order for outdoor lights at Lighting Showcase in Shrewsbury, MA - the ones I posted about before. They were on backorder until October, they told me. I put in a second order for a different light. Those were discontinued. I put in a 3rd order for yet another light, and although I was told they only had 3 left out of the 4 I needed, the complete order finally came in a few weeks ago. We went with the
Tahoe series from Hinkley. Beautiful fixtures that appear well made.
I was intent on having a light post installed as it is very dark at the top of our driveway, end of our walkway. There is no street lighting nearby and it's heavily wooded directly across the street from us so there's not much indirect light to be had at night.
My husband dug out the trench for the wiring:
He and an electrician put it in yesterday:
Please ignore the front steps, that's another project that my husband is working on since the cement around the front steps had crumbled.
Closeup - this lamp is huge coming out of the box but the proportions are not nearly as bad as I expected it to be - in fact, I love it...
Now we just need to buy some bulbs for it!
I also originally thought I wanted to add 2 lights to either side of the garage doors, but decided against this. Instead I had the 2 ugly spots that were on either side of the backdoor replaced.
I'm not sure why they had spotlights there to begin with!
2 others were added to either side of the front door where we'd taken the old ones down.
You'll just have to use your imagination here, I guess:
So yay! We can cross that off our list.
Next grand purchase I decided to make was new dishwasher and stove. We bought a new Electrolux from the dent aisle of Percy's a while ago and the dishwasher didn't seem to be working up to par (and was full of mildew!), and the stove never worked 100%. And frankly, I wanted stainless. I walked around that store for what seemed like forever trying to convince myself that it was OK to NOT have matching appliances. But apparently I'm not very good at convincing myself of anything because I bought the matching Electrolux appliances. Oh, and you can't forget the stainless range hood either. Wow, that added up fast. Let's hope I can get it paid off before my one year zero interest ends (must mark the calendar!). Electrolux was also offering a 10% rebate. Must remember to send that in too.
Aren't they pretty?
So now that we have beautiful new appliances, and a portion of backsplash that is still left exposed behind the sink that we're unable to get a matching piece of granite for, and hideous old laminate all around the rest of it, the next and final expense and install to be had is a tile backsplash. I'll post when we get that done as well.
And finally, just because, an awwwww moment ...
I'd have that converted to a regular fireplace if I could afford to. 
