Pretty little lights

I've been busy investigating LED technology and I've learned a few things like many cheap LED bulbs don't work well in a table lamp. I've also learned about bulb type and shapes, color temperature, color rendering index (CRI), that LEDs fade over time and LED WAF. I've found a few bulbs that work (so far, let's see how long these things last). I am worried about cheap bulbs and bulb life. If I understand things correctly, my LED bulbs will slowly fade over time, cheap bulbs more so as they push the components past design recommendations. I've already seen CFL bulbs die a smokey and smelly death. I'm hoping that won't happen with LED bulbs.
Since LEDs are small, it might be time to rethink the light fixtures. I've seen a number of interesting lamp/light designs. So with that thought I picked up a Adafruit NeoPixel RGB LED Strip. I plan on using them on the Dollhouse. It should be interesting to see how they get used an what I can do with them. I intend to control them with the chipKit Pi from Pytomation on the Raspberry Pi. If I understand the interface correctly I'll need to setup the ChipKit board to have 8MHz SPI setup. More on that later.