Biting off more than you can screw! Punn intended.

I purchased this shade at Ikea for our playroom.

Its bright red complimented the primary color scheme. I do want to have red accents in the downstairs great room / kitchen but a bright red velvet lamp shade just doesn't seem right above an eating area. I got the urge to change the boring pendant fixture the builder installed on a Monday afternoon.

I was going through my fabric stash . .trying to widdle it down when I stumbled across some fun and quirky fabric. So the plan was to cover the shade and swap out getting rid of glass shade. I hot glued the fabric to the shade. If you are going to venture doing this it is much easier to get the fabric on a shade when doing so on the bias. Also be careful what setting your hot glue gun is on as I burned my thumb doing so, should have been my first warning.

This project should have been simple just unscrew the glass coupling that holds it and put the Ikea shade in its place. Well yeah sure if whoever installed the light fixture did that correctly. But alas no they screwed it on crooked and the glass shade wouldn't come off.

So plan "B", get an inexpensive pendant kit from Home Depot ($14) and change it. Easy enough, done this before. Hmmm well would have been easy if whoever installed the fixture hadn't stripped the screws. So there I was on a ladder trying desperately to unscrew the pendent from the light box, crying by now and cursing the person who installed it. While I am perched on the top of the ladder, screwdriver in hand (yes the electricity turned off) the kids come screaming downstairs because they hear a siren. Of course being the responsible mother I am, I yelled at them, sent them back upstairs saying it was just a police siren.
More cursing and crying on my part then in the back of my head a small voice saying "hmm Vickie the Doppler effect is not working on that siren. You might want to notice the hail that is now falling outside."
I climb down the ladder pull out my phone and notice all the Weather Channel warnings and then it clicked. Crap there is a tornado coming! :-) So downstairs to the basement we go, some puppet shadows later and thankfully no tornado! Oh yeah and there is nothing like a tornado with two kids to make you really feel like an adult. You realize quickly instead of being the one coming unraveled you need to keep it together.

My wonderful husband managed to get the remaining stripped screw off and I was able to get my project gone bad done. Of course my hubby did manage to say he thought I bit off more than I could chew! He was right but only because someone couldn't screw right! :-)

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

What do you think? Better? So now I have to figure out what fabric to do for curtains to coordinate? I don't have enough fabric to make curtains for the kitchen. Do you think a cord cover would be over doing it? Would love some feedback!

I am hoping to keep the momentum going on the crafting so stay tuned.