I’m still enamored by the vintage lamp , so the story continues. While leaving the shop, I noticed the shade wobbling and it was missing it’s finial to secure the shade in place. The man working there took an old metal cap from another lamp and placed in on mine.

It was kind of him, but I wanted more than a tarnished metal cap for this lamp. The finial is the crowing touch and can enhance character, so I searched for finial’s online and found way too many choices. I wanted something vintage such as the lamp and found one on eBay that made me smile, but it didn’t make sense to buy it. The finial is a charming, little elephant in a sitting position, so pretty outweighs practical once again!

The lamp is 31 inches tall and sits atop the credenza pictured here, so the finial is at eye level whenever I walk by. The first time I saw the lamp it was priced at $45, but by the time I went back, the price had dropped to $25, so I didn’t want the finial to cost more than the lamp. The charming 3-D Elephant finial was $25, so that felt in alignment with the lamp and both definitely go on the list of ‘best purchases made this year.’

It reminded me of a story I read in  Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. She wrote about her family vacationing years ago at a beach resort and one afternoon there was a surprise activity for the children: a ride on an elephant around the hotel parking lot. Her daughter was a child at the time and delirious with excitement over this surprise offering. That night as Sarah tucked her daughter in bed, she said, “Some mornings you wake up not knowing what will happen during the day and you get to ride an elephant!”

I stepped away from typing this to go stand at the coffee bar and decided to pour a Chemex. Once it had brewed I poured a cup and returned to the studio, trying to choose an ending for this post. I sat with the warm cup between my hands and lifted it up to my nose to inhale the coffee’s aroma. I watched a 3-wick candle burn that’s sitting atop the rusted cart and gazed out the window at the cloud covered sky.

On the way in here, I walked by the lamp, looked at the finial and smiled. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to be happy where we are and with what we have. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of adding a crowning touch to what I fondly refer to as, life’s little details.