Happily Ever After (or how the ficus met the lampshade)

Once upon a time, there was a ficus.

 

It was a rather unremarkable ficus, the kind that you find in the dentist's reception room.  For some reason, I thought that it would be PERFECT in my living room.  And there it sat, in a corner, for about a year.  Did I mention that at one point I thought it needed lights, so I wrapped a string of Christmas twinkle lights attached to fake pine needles around the trunk?  No?  Okay, good.  Cause that would have been embarrassing.

Also once upon a time, there was a lampshade.

 

He was a very sad lampshade, because he lived at Target on the clearance shelf all by himself.  He had been marked down to $4.99 but still, nobody wanted him.  That is, of course, until I spied him in all his navy blue wonderfulness and snagged him.  Did I have a lamp that was within a foot of having the right scale for this beauty?  Nope.  But I didn't care.  

And so, after many squints and some tilted heads, it dawned on me:  the ficus and the lampshade were meant to be together.  I unwound the Christmas lights from the trunk, I sawed one of its three trunks down to the ground (did you know those things are made of real wood?  I sure didn't!), and I ran a couple of coats of leftover white paint across the pot to dress up the bride.  

Then it was time for the wedding.

First, I used heavy duty adhesive glue to attach the cord to the back of one of the trunks.  I ran the adhesive all the way down the back, then used twist ties to hold it in place while the glue set up. 

(Truth be told, I should have used a brown cord but Menards was out of 8' brown lamp cords and it was my 15th trip there in about 3 days and I was BURNED OUT.  I just wanted to get home and like, glue something.)

Next step was to create a platform for the lamp socket, and to hold the trunks in place.  Dan helped out with that one.  We took a scrap piece left over from some bed slats and drilled holes in it to hold the trunks.  A little assistance from the hammer and the rubber mallet and the trunks were definitely solid.  We drilled a hole for the cord and wired up the socket. 

(Need a quick wiring tutorial?  WikiHow explains how to create a lamp out of anything.)

And that was it!  Here's how it turned out:

 

 Right?!  It's certainly better than when it was a fake tree. 

My favorite part, though, has to be the pullchain.  The bird was leftover from the lantern I turned into the light fixture in the living room.  He just looks right, hangin' out in the not-tree.

So there you have it.  Ficus and lampshade:  a match made in heaven.  Isn't it bizarre and great?