This company has a neat story. What started out as a hobby restoring antique barn lights has turned into a million dollar business where he now manufactures rustic lights in addition to restoring them.  The owner is a retired Army Chaplain as well.  Bonus!  His warehouse / office is right on the inter-coastal across from the NASA Launch Facility. Double Bonus! All of his stuff is made right here in America? Triple Bonus!  OK, enough bonuses. They’ve got a sweet gig going on over there. Not only do they provide lights to individuals like you and I, but they also have contracts with several chain restaurants to supply the lighting for each now store that opens. Not a bad gig.

Barn Light Electric is currently hosting a giveaway called the B.L.O.G. (Barn Lights Online Giveaway). We don’t currently own a home, but we have the only offer on a home that is being approved for short sale so hopefully we can get it by Thanksgiving or Christmas at the least. We’ve been inside a couple times, and it’s pretty nice, but there is absolutely no light in the living room. None. Nadda. So this is a perfect opportunity to pick a light that would look great! Unfortunately, the house doesn’t have a barn look, or anything other than “modern”, so that’s what we’ll be linking to today.  Keep in mind, I’m the man of the house so any and all decisions I make today will more than likely be tossed out by the First Lady of the house. Hey, a guy can dream!

First choice for the living room would be this Levon Ceiling Fan. I think it looks awesome and I love how many blades are on it. I know what you’re thinking, “But Chris, there isn’t a light on that ceiling fan!” You’re pretty observant. Fortunately, they having Ceiling Fan Light Kits.

Second choice would be to go with the ceiling fan above without the light kit and instead just place a pair of these Box Table Lamps. Most modern homes include a light switch that controls one of the outlets in the room. If it doesn’t then just rewire it so that it does (duh!). Who says the light has to come from above? I actually prefer the mood that a table lamp offers versus a ceiling light.

Third choice is not for the living room but rather for the kitchen. The kitchen is what we call a “blank slate”. The cabinets are ‘meh’ and we’ll probably end up painting them or something anyway. The appliances are black, so that makes it easy as well. So what we might end up doing is just refacing the kitchen and accenting it with some sweet pendant lighting. We could go with a couple of these nice Ivanhoe Union 14″ porcelain pendants or these Bond Large Pendants that I really like and think would look great in a kitchen, right above the island or dinner table.

If you like what you see and you would also like to enter the contest, visit Barn Light Electric Co. for details and follow the instructions below:

How to Enter:

1. Look around online at Barn Light Electric and pick lights you’d love to own
2. Feature your lighting picks on your personal blog, and link to the lights if you can!
3. Copy/Paste these rules at the bottom of your blog article so others can enter
4. Once your personal article is up, you must email your blog link to: contest@barnlightelectric.com to be qualified to win. The contest ends Wednesday, October 12, 2011
5. Don’t have a blog? Find out how you can enter by reading the Official Rules

I decided to start reading again.  It’s a great practice to keep up, especially when you have children around.  I was inspired by a friend who read 50 books in 2010.  As a father of 2 who works full time and runs a small business, I don’t think I can manage 50 books, so I’m shooting for 25.  My goal is to read a variety of topics, at least 200+ pages. 

My first book was “Eye of the Needle” by Ken Follett.  I came across this author while looking for books online.  His newest book looked good but were all checked out online so I looked up other books and this one stood out.  It was written in the 70s but based in the 40s during WWII.  It is a fictitious story of what may have happened leading up to the Allies invasion of Normandy. 

The main storyline follows a German spy who stumbles across a fake Allied invasion army that he must tell the German officials about as it would be the difference between winning and losing the war.  The English discover that this spy has found this information and is frantically hunting him down.  Intermixed are a couple of love stories, gruesome murders, comical situations, and a good ole classic climax involving a major storm, shotguns and sleeping pills? 

All in all I very much enjoyed this book.  I read half of it in the first 2 days and spent another 4 finishing it off.  If you’re into spy dramas with great action or WWII stories, you might like this book.  It was written by a UK author and based in England, so you get some of their language mixed in. Also, its not for children or even teens I’d think.  It has some pretty salty language and a rather detailed sex scene or 2.  They are short though and you can skip over them without missing any of the story.

Next Up:  I’m actually going to be reading 2 at once. 
- “Don Quixote”, by Cervantes.  I’m going to attempt this as it was suggested by someone who’s opinion I value.  It’s much more of a book than I’m used to which is why I’m going to read it in conjunction with another, to keep me from giving up
- “The Wrong Stuff”, by Truman Smith. 

I’m posting this from my new Droid phone. How awesome is that?

Since there is roughly 6 weeks left until Lilly shows up, I thought I’d start posting a regular update about her.

Michelle went to see her Doctor today for a routine check up. Lilly is estimated at roughly 5lbs! She’s getting so big! That puts her on target to be around 7 – 7.5 lbs when she’s born. The doctor felt around on her and he said that he could tell what was her head and such, which is just soooo cool that he can know that. I just love feeling her when she moves around in there! Michelle measure at about 33 1/3 weeks instead of 34 1/2, so we’ll see how that effects her due date, though we think it’ll still be around the same time if she’s estimated at around 5lbs already.

Her due date is April 4th. We’ve got about 1/2 the room ready so far… Not quite ready for her yet though, hah. A few more key things still to get for her, so we’ll see if we can get them in time.

Ok so back in Feb ’07 when our apartment building caught fire and soot got on everything..  One of the things that was most affected by it was our couch.  It’s an oversized micro fiber suede couch.  Well soot got all over it and it got really messy.  Of course our Stainsafe warranty didn’t cover the damages because it was an ‘incidental’ damage.  In otherwords since the fire was someone else’s fault and we just got some soot on it from their fire, it’s not covered.  BUT if we dropped a match on it and it got burnt then it would be covered…  Right.  So we were upset because we didn’t even have it a year yet and it was a really nice couch.

Well, fast forward to last week.  One of our lovely cats for some unknown reason, decided to pee on the couch.  Great, thanks jerk.  We had just covered it with a blanket and decided to use it that way.  So fast forward to today.  The first method of getting the pee stain and smell out didn’t work so well.  So we rented a Rug Doctor from the grocery store.  In the process of washing off the pee smell, all the soot came out!!  I mean we’re talking 21 month old soot that had just been in there and causing problems came out!!

The cushions you lean your back on are harder to do the wet vaccum thing to so we decided to just take them off and wash them in the washer and sure enough they look great!  So we’re gonna do the same to the seat cushions too!  It took us this long to do something that simple because we didn’t want to void our warranty and we thought we’d mess up the fabric or something.  How amazing that it was so simple and we waited so long to do it…  But I tell ya, God is so good to us.  He’s just been sending little things to us left and right to help us out and lift our spirits!  This is such a blessing!

We’re having a baby!!!  Michelle is pregnant and we’re having a baby!!!

That’s about all for now.  Woo go babies!

Last night as Michelle and I came home, we saw some spiders had built their webs across our front window, next to the door.  They were huge spiders in a huge web and they were catching all the bugs buzzing around the porch light.  This morning they were gone with almost no trace at all.  Some how they built their webs, caught what they needed, and tore them down again and moved on.

On the way out to the car this morning, Michelle noticed 2 webs were built in the corner of the house.  I thought they were so cool.  Despite my irrational fear of spiders, I marvel at the beauty and complexity of a spiders web.  This particular spot has 2 webs built right next to each other on the same angle.  If you look close, you can see another web behind the big one in the picture, towards the top right.

God likes to remind me of his masterful beauty in the strangest ways and usually he does it with the things I like the least.  In something as simple as a spider web I can see the same artist who paints the gorgeous sunsets over the mountain tops.  He will never cease to amaze me with what He can do and I’m ever thankful that my God is the best artist ever!

If a spider web can look that good, just imagine what Heaven will look like!!

Well, when I sent the story I saw on the news to Alex, I did not imagine he would link to my website.  Feel free to look around.  It’s just a personal blog site, nothing fancy.
Thanks for dropping by though!

So we just finished moving Adora in to our house.  I also feel like I broke my finger at my second knuckle.  It doesn’t hurt unless I touch it in the right place.  Its really weird.  We’ll see what happens in the morning.

Have a Happy 4th of July everyone!  Those of you who are planning on celebrating by getting completely smashed, please be safe and make sure you have a SOBER designated driver.  Those of you NOT planning on getting smashed, please be safe and watch out for the drunkerds on the road.

If anyone is doing anything cool let us know.  I think we’re gonna go to Idlewild’s show and maybe come back and watch the shows put on by our neighbors.  Either way give us a ring!