shedding some light

...on the dining room table.
First things, first though. Happy 22nd Birthday to my beautiful little sister (and future UCLA graduate student-wohoo)!

Next, I apologize for my lack of writing yesterday... Nick's boss called him and said "Take the day off! Spend time with your wife- take her out to lunch and buy her something pretty!" I happy to say that Nick  followed his boss's orders to a T and we had a wonderful random Thursday off together!
Nick and I purchased a light for over our dining room table. We had been talking about DIY-ing one or buying one for awhile because we wanted to (a) define the dining area of this large room a bit more and (b) light up the room at night, since it devoid of any overhead lights.

Since we live in a rental and it's extremely old, we knew that we would not be adding anything electrical, more along the lines of a giant lantern or chandelier full of candles.

At Z Gallerie yesterday we found the perfect solution for our light-less table, the Huntington Chandelier:

Thanks to a gift card from my brother-in-law, the light cost us $0!

We stopped at Ace on the way home to get a small screw hook for the ceiling and started to hang it up as we got home (which involved a lot of standing on the dining room table...)

When we hung it up, we were a little disappointed with the height, as we were hoping it would hang a bit lower. So naturally we remedied the situation with a quick fix. First of all, I made Nick take a bunch of pictures of me holding the light at different heights to determine which one looked best.

Once we figured out the perfect height, Nick used pliers to pull apart the chain and remove it from the fixture.

We decided to use rope to hang this fixture (surprise, suprise). So, Nick knotted, twisted, and tied the rope to the desired height. 

Then we hung the light back up (excuse the mess and half finished curtains):

We love how it defines the space and adds a bit more rustic charm to the room... and all for the cost of a screw hook and a candle ($3!)