Hi All -

This is my first post, so apologies if I'm duplicating questions/etc. found elsewhere. I'm remodeling a kitchen (a new house we haven't moved into yet), and have some general design questions I'd love to get opinions on:

First, the basics:

1) The cabinets will be Omega Embassy Monterey, in Alder wood, Mandarin stain. The knobs/pulls will be Michael Aram Arc Studio Collection.

2) The floors are oak, and we'll probably refinish in natural or a very light stain - so yellowish wood floors.

3) The appliances are all stainless steel (GE Profile double wall oven; Sharp microwave drawer; Bosch 36" cooktop; Siemens 36" range hood; GE Profile Arctica fridge).

4) the house is mid-century plain California ranch house. We are contemporizing it a bit, but still want it to be warm and homey (for example, this translates to: shaker cabinets instead of slab cabinets).

Second, the questions:

1) What color Caesarstone counters should we use? We were thinking Mocha, but I'm worried it's too brown to contrast enough with the Mandarin stained Alder cabinets. Would Lagos Blue be better? Mocha and Lagos blue are so close in color. I like concrete myself, but my partner hates it.

One wrinkle: we need 2.5 slabs for the whole kitchen, so will use the remainder for 2 bathrooms' vanities (a small half-bath, and our master bath). So we want something that works in that application as well. If it helps, the master bath will have the same alder mandarin-stained cabinets, with Ann Sacks LUxor Gray floor tile, Ann Sacks Avalon white field tile, and possibly an accent strip of Erin Adams quilt (if I can manage to choke down the price... there's just nothing like it - mod and elegant yet warm and playful - that's less expensive).

2) What color backsplash? We are thinking of using Ann Sacks' Angela Adams Manfred tile. Probably white or a very pale off-white. And should we go with matte or gloss?

3) the hardest question of all: picking light fixtures - help! We need some relatively inexpensive pendants (say, $150 or less). Tiella has some nice mini-pendants. But because of Title 24 (we're in California), these pendants MUST be able to hold a fluorescent bulb. So no halogen bi-pin pendants will work. 2 of the pendants will hang ove rthe sink, in front of the manfred backsplash, so we probably need something pretty plain to match. Iw as thinking a very plain design that was a splash of warm color - maybe a cranberry red or something). The closest thing I can find is the Romano pendant on lumenslightandliving.com, but I'm just not sure... I also LOVE the Justice Design limoges pendants at formplusfunction.com, but am worried the patterns will clash with Manfred tile. The best match I could find was waterfall. Any thoughts?

thanks in advance for any suggestions or thoughts! I've been lurking on Gardenweb for a while and I am just astounded by how much all of you know and learn from each other!

Priya