No, it is not. The dining room is in the space covered by the small appliance circuits. If you remodel the space such that it is no longer a dining room (or pantry or breakfast nook), then you can't have outlets of any sort there connected to your small appliance circuits. Of course, you can remodel the room and leave it a dining room technically. I know of a lot of people who never have meals in their dining room.

Even if you still call the room the dining room, you can not put lighting sconces on the small appliance circuits. The small appliance circuits are only allowed to serve receptacles in the kitchen (and dining/breakfast/pantry areas).

Thanks for that info. I had figured the sconce idea was not going to fly being on that circuit. I will continue to call the room a dining room :-) and there will not be any permanent changes that would make it not a dining room, just standalone furniture for the games to sit on and the proposed changes to the wiring. Would my switched receptacle idea and adding the others up high for the plug-in lights be allowed? Otherwise I could pick up power from the lighting circuit in the room but I haven't checked into that idea very much yet. But if I were to go that route then I would be adding receptacles to the "dining room" that are not on the small appliance circuit.

You need to create "small appliance" circuits for those receptacles (or add them to the existing ones)... i.e., they must be 20A and not serve anything other than kitchen/dining/pantry area receptacles. You'll need a separate circuit for lighting (could be shared with other areas).