Red October

A few weeks ago, we bought lighting fixtures for the new home office, and among those were a few sconces and a chandelier. The coordinating lampshades for those came in black, white, or red.

Well, red is my default color, of course, but black would have been okay, too. We found a dealer in Atlanta who had the fixtures in their showroom with the white shades, but we knew we didn't want white. DH decided to order them online, in red. "Is it a nice red, sweetie? I mean, it's not lipstick red or anything, is it?" "Well," he replied, "it's kind of hard to tell online, but I think it's a darker red, like a crimson. It should be fine."

Did we mention that the shades are covered in velvet?

A few days later, the lighting fixtures arrived. "Oh, my!" I exclaimed as we pulled them out of the box. When friends dropped by later, they had a similar response, except that their eyes got really big, too. I'm not sure why.

Of course, shades are pretty easy to replace, but we think they'll be okay. Really, we do.