I had some errands to run in town yesterday and took the opportunity to scout about a bit at the Salvation Army Store.  I was immediately drawn to this lamp

and was happy to see that it had a smallish price tag on it.  You always take a risk when you buy used stuff in places like thrift shops.  I knew that the lamp might not work.  Of course, if you’re really handy electrically you can rewire old lamps and make them as good as new.  I’m not really handy electrically.  I’m not even mildly handed electrically so I bought this lamp with a plan B in mind in case it didn’t work.

Not too surprisingly, it didn’t light up when I put a bulb in it, plugged it in and tried to turn it on.  No big deal.  I didn’t really know where I was going to put it anyways.  So I put Plan B into action and took the lamp apart.

Do you see what I see?  A lovely support for a candle.

The other two supports were given to me as a Christmas gift.  I’m told that you should always display groupings of objects in threes so my disassembled lamp filled out what was lacking in this ensemble.  Right now it’s on my mantel which has been bare since the Christmas stuff came down.

I hope to balance out the other side of the mantle with a brown-black pot and some pretty white flowers.  I’ve heard that a good decorating trick is the 3 + 1 rule.  Things look balanced apparently when you group three related objects together on one side and then one unrelated object on the other side.  There’s probably room for interpretation on height and scale in the arrangement but I thought I’d give it a try on my mantle.

I’m not sorry I bought that cheapy lamp.  Plan B made it into a trendy “something else” that I really like.