Blogtrek

Putting up the Holiday Lights

Well today I put up our holiday decorations and lights. It took several hours and a few hitches to do it. The biggest is that we are having our house painted this month. Therefore, nothing can go on the exterior walls of the house that would be painted. That eliminates the lights above the porch, so I have to redesign the display. I put lights on our deck instead of around the back door. I put a lot of lights in the bushes. But still it makes for a monotone display. So maybe I should get something like a deer to put on the lawn.

Except that our decorations take up a lot of space, 27 boxes of it (I counted such things as the Xmas tree base as a box). I put up the lights first and some broke, so I had to go to the loco Wal-Mart to get another string of 100 white lights. Then some other lights would not work, so I had some time trying to find a set of lights that would work, but I did. I next put up the candelabras. We put a three-candle electric candelabra in each window except in the kitchen. That is 13 three-candelabras. Our neighborhood has the habit of putting up a single white candle in each window, but it is our tradition to put up three red ones instead; I think it looks better. Putting these up is somewhat of a match-it game. I use these X-10 modules like from Radio Shack, so that I can turn on and off all 13 of them with the press of a button. I need to figure out how to deploy all of our candelabras, cords and modules so that when I put them together I don't get stuck because I have a three-pronged plug that wants to go into a two-pronged outlet.

The tree comes next. We use an artificial tree, and we put the tree together in seven layers with branches that are color-coded: yellow, red, black, pink, brown, green and white. Then we put a top on the tree. We also put a toy train set around the tree. The idea here, long ago was to prevent our cats from playing with the ornaments, by scaring them away with a noisy train. However, the train did not work this year; I suppose too many connector bars are missing. So this year it is merely decorative.

Tonight I got out the remote and hit "on". Instantly the lights came on, and I could see that some of the white lights were not working. So I will need to go to the store again. But the holiday lights are up, giving us cheer this Yuletide season until New Year's Day 2003, when we take them down.