Adam Nguyen's Blog: Vintage Orchids of Hawaii pendant lights

I’m back on the Mahalo Lounge wagon, trying to finish. It’s slow going, I’ll tell you, because it’s all about the itty bitty details — and there are A LOT of them. Mostly, at this point, I’m focused on: the ceiling. The biggest news: I made a decision on where to install the second of two vintage Orchids of Hawaii lights, which came out of my local Luau Hale, a longtime vintage extant tiki bar and restaurant. I put the light, swag style, dead center on the third of the five beamed sections that comprise my 30′ long living room-dining room.

The first one, as you can see and may recall from previous stories, is at the far end above the peacock chair vignette. I belabored the decision — as I belabor so many big decisions — on where to put the second one, knowing that it was a huge statement piece, literally and figuratively.

I have only two, and even numbers are hard to work with. In this room, I am aiming for balanced asymmetry. For the longest time, I was thinking I’d put #2 at the far end of the room. It finally hit me: Dead center of the main seating area — but at a different height, about six inches higher, closer to the ceiling. This isn’t very clear in the photo angle I’ve shown). Importantly, the higher position of the this second, centered pendant light enables your eyes to flow past to take in the rest of the room, including the big matching light beyond. And functionally important, the higher position means we can see the TV from the sofa.

So: The centered light reads more like a ceiling fixture, while the one in the peacock chair reads like a pendant. Once I had it up, I knew it worked!

Then, Dear Husband (DH) came home and Loved It. He is really good with spacial and visual decision like this, so that was the best possible praise.

I picked up these other vintage Orchids of Hawaii products — volcano bowls! — on ebay recently. Weebit is coming home this weekend, and I asked her to pick up a bottle of Lemon Hart 151 to pour into the volcano and light up. DH and I tried regular rum, but it would not light. So we are gonna try it with the higher proof. I guess I’ll google it first, that stuff is not cheap.

Oh, but then we had to drink it. This is one HUGE tiki mug!

On a Sunday, I got crafty and painted and wallpapered and fabricked a couple of shadow box thingies for some smaller tiki items. Crafting makes me so happy, even if I have a pretty slack amount of patience and often have less-than-perfect results.