Home & Garden

I hoped that we would be able to post photos of my beautiful outdoor lighting fixtures before Christmas. Thanks to the contractor building our new house, I got this photo of one of them installed this morning.

We waited until the fixtures arrived at our California house before heading to Arizona to deliver them and get them installed. They arrived on Tuesday 12/21, we delivered them to the new house (after a terrible rainy five-hour drive) yesterday, 12/22. When we drove over to the house this morning, one of the sconces was already installed.

I think it looks beautiful with the turquoise and copper highlights over the terra cotta color of the house. I hope to get a shot at night with light visible through the amber mica translucent filter. Click on the image to enlarge.

We looked for some southwestern outdoor lighting on our last trip to Arizona. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything close to what I thought was a good design. We bought some inexpensive outdoor fixtures to fill in the holes pending finding the style we like. However, when the electrician opened up the boxes, two out of the three fixtures we bought were broken. We boxed them up and returned them to the home improvement warehouse.

So now what to do? We put the fixture installation on hold while we came back to California for some business here. Bob went on line and found an outfit called TheSouthWestStore.com that custom makes sconces in the style we like.

The photo shows two styles – a bear and a road runner – I chose the bear, but the finish will look like the one shown on the road runner – it’s a blue-green patina with copper highlights. The translucent liner shown will be replaced with an amber mica liner that should look really nice at night time (the link to the night time picture shows light coming out of the top of the sconce – in reality, there will be a metal piece blocking upward light for dark sky purposes). Click on the image to enlarge.