so pathetic that i am bumping my own post in hopes of getting some response.

I think it's a good idea to have ceiling lights in an older home. I have a 1914 house and while I put in a lot of cans for task purposes I chose to light the room with fixtures. People expect to see light fixtures in older homes so it won't look out of place or fussy. The schoolhouse pendants you are looking at are great - love the stripe - it keeps it from getting to utilitarian. The opaque should be fine too. I think you'll be surprised at how much light there is.

Have you seen them in person? I'm just asking because of the 12" size. A lot of fixtures today are geared for really big rooms and you might want to do a mock up so you are sure about what size will look best in your space.

I just had a 2 hour meeting with an ALA certified lighting designer who helped me with my 1913 kitchen in which I am also doing a combo of some cans and a couple school house fixtures.

Some questions

Have you already done your electrical rough in or can your recessed & fixture locations still be changed?

How tall are your ceilings?

My understanding is that you want to have several light sources: undercabinet & cans would provide your task lighting and a school house fixture(s) would provide your ambient lighting.

A very basic rule of thumb I was given by the lighting store I've worked with (Schoolhouse Lighting, linked below) is a 10" diameter shade fora 10x10 room.

The fixture you linked looks to me like it would look best above a dining table rather that lighting a kitchen. I think that exact shade but as a semi flush- rather than hanging fixture-in a 10" or 12" shade would look nice.

The school house fixture(s) would be centered in the room, not on the stove. Or if you want to do 2 fixtures, I'd still do semi flush (depending on your ceiling height) and then just select a smaller diameter shade. (still centering the pair on the room, not the stove.)

If you have fixture/fixtures in your kitchen, then you want the recessed cans for task lighting to light your countertop/work space.

Rather than doing a row of 3 cans on each side, my suggestion would be to place recessed cans at the 24" point off the wall above each run of countertop. (This would mean doing 7 cans, which may be excessive especially if you do 2 schoolhouse fixtures and you are also planning undercabinet lighting.)

It was explained to me that ideally, you want cans at the edge of your countertop, above/or just in front of your head: you don't want them behind you or they might cast shadows on what you're doing. But, if you are also doing undercabinet lights, perhaps not as important to have the cans right at the countertop edge (this info per my kitchen designer.)

If you're still liking the idea of hanging pendants, but your husband found them busy, maybe he could get on board with a pendant sized flush/semi flush fixture either centered on your windows or as a substitute for some can lighting in the space? The smallest 2.25 fitter sized fixtures (like the Newbury 2.25, Grace 2.25, Alexandria 3.25 at site linked below) could look nice, too.

I wish I knew how to use software to draw on your plan for you, but I hope that helps gives you some food for thought.
:)

Here is a link that might be useful: Schoolhouse Electric

I would think twice about how low those lights will hang. You might check to see if there's an almost identical fixture that is semi-flushmount, unless your ceilings are really high.

About the Picasa thumbnails.... after you click on the "link to this photo" to the right of your picture, you can change the size with the pulldown menu just under the "embed image" code. Do that before you cut and paste the code.