Thanks for all of the input!!! It sounds like a pendant may not be in my future. I loved the idea of it but as I was looking at it more, I was worried that there might be too much going on there. I was having second thoughts and wanted to get opinions from all of you. Holly-Kay: we are planning on changing out the chandelier above the table to a bronze finish to tie in with the darker wood and fireplace things. But I see how a pendant above the sink might be too much. Snookums2: we removed the dark screens and it looks much better. I can't wait for everything to get started! I thought about tiling to the ceiling but wasn't sure since our cabs don't go to the ceiling. We are going to add a taller crown but nowhere near ceiling height. That may be the subject of another post. Nosoccermom: great idea about hanging a balloon. I don't have photoshop but maybe I could cut and paste something there and post again. Thanks for the suggestions!

You might be asking for the impossible after viewing this web site. Your only solution might be to purchase the clear glass shade after-the-fact. ;o) Here is a link that might be useful: lights...

For the uplight, you could go a few routes, especially with respect to dimming functionality. And some fixtures don't support dimming, so you need to figure that out. To that end, I suggest you think through the use cases. For example, the use case that I think I'd appreciate most is late evening, after you've retired to another room of the house, at which time a mellow indirect glow from the skylight cutout would be particularly pleasant. You might also want the more light from this source on occasion, in which case you'd want brighter lights on a dimmer. That being said, here's some options. I'm thinking two, centered on the skylights, mounted near the bottom rim of the cutout (just above the beam probably). Regarding the pendant, I know that selecting pendants is hard enough without more to think about, but one downside of a single pendant vs multiple pendants is thhat single sources create worse shadows. And the clear glass pendants above exacerbate this harsh shadow problem by being point sources, whereas the Fillsta, for example, mitigates this problem because it's effectively a uniform 31" sphere of light. This large diffuser also makes it possible to use a brighter source. For example, you could put a 300W equivalent CFL in the Fillsta, but such a bright light would be unacceptably harsh in a point source like the clear glass pendants above.

I have the same pendants as @mihelene. I have NO issues with glare although plenty of folks on this site warned about that and said it would be a problem ----- it has not been. I will second, though, that they do have to be cleaned regularly and that is another task to keep up on; although I often wonder if I had something not clear, surely it would be getting just as dirty and need cleaning.....? Maybe I should just feel grateful that my lights make me keep a cleaner house. ;) Also, it seems to me that the height of your ceiling isn't such an issue as the height the pendants are recommended to be hung is 30-36" above your counter top regardless of what height your ceiling is. I have 9' ceilings and my globes are about 15.5" long. I don't think an 8' ceiling would be a problem. (My sister in law has 8' ceilings and she just installed fixtures similar to your posted picture. They seem bigger than mine (perhaps just in width) and they look good.)