Shed a Little Light on the Subject

When we moved, we left our dining room chairs behind, and have plans on buying a table, chairs, a buffet, light fixture, and a piano.  Currently the dining room holds our old table (which is a piece of crap), one folding chair, a stool, and a side table with all our frogs on it.  We've been searching for all of these things since we've moved, and haven't hit upon anything that's a complete slam dunk.  It's tricky, because I don't want everything to be all matchy-matchy, John and I have very different tastes, and those things all add up to a decent chunk of change.

When we looked at the house, I immediately knew the dining room light fixture had to change.  I don't have a picture, but it's a generic boob light, you know the kind of flush-mount fixture that looks like a boob and is in every rental ever.  I want some kind of chandelier or pendant, but haven't really narrowed it down much yet, that is, until I looked on Craigslist today and found an amazing light fixture:

My awesome paint rendition of what it would look like in the dining room.

It's a little out of our price range, but it's just so unique and the art-deco-ness of it would fit really well with our house I think.  Now I just have to convince John that he likes it too, which may be a bit of a challenge.  What do you think, is it amazing, or just too much?

Where were you a year ago?

Speaking of catalog browsing, I got a Pottery Barn catalog in the mail last week, and was surprised to come across this picture:

A little back story on the subject - A little over a year ago I ran across this bowl on the internet:

I remembered a pendant lampshade that I had once seen like that, and I immediately started searching for it. I couldn't find it myself, so I turned to Apartment Therapy, but even they couldn't find exactly what I wanted. I eventually ended up making it myself:

Oh well, I still like mine better, and it was a fraction of the cost.