Lights!

One of my favorite things about Christmas are the lights.  I could drive around for hours and just look at the lights everywhere.  Of course going along with that I love to make fun of tacky lit up houses.  I am very critical when it comes to lights.   You must use all the same color lights.  I hate when houses have all red here and then colored ones there, and then white over the other side.  No matter how tastefully done you try to do it, more than one color ruins it automatically.  I also love the ones that just put up trim on half of their house; like they had one strand and they really wanted to use it no matter how tacky their house looks.  Also, people, what is with the blow up decorations?  Those can't be any more tacky.  I despise them.  Other things on the no no list:  plastic candy canes, plastic anything for that matter, those projectors that show one image on the house - corny, so many lights like Chevy Chase, I could go on forever.  I am so evil, I know but there is something about lights makes me tingle inside - especially when they are done right.

Yesterday, Jared said to me that he really wanted to decorate the outside of our house with lights. I was overjoyed because I would never volunteer to do it.  Stringing lights is stressful and requires a lot of planning. Plus we live at the end of a cul-de-sac and our house is not visible unless you go all the way around the cul-de-sac.  Don't get me wrong, doing lights on the house for the benefit of just us and the handful of people that come over is totally worth it but I was never willing to invest time and money on it.  I liked to focus more on the inside. But when Jared said that he really wanted to do it I was all for it.  We went to the store and bought lights, extension cords, etc (and no, no blow up decorations; I have a beebee gun and I'm not afraid to use it...).  I was very excited for this endeavor but told Jared he was in charge. He and our friend went to town and after a few hours, looking outside, I saw lights on two small trees flanking our door.  That's it, I thought?  This morning, Jared was focused on getting the lights finished.  We had to go to the store again and pick up a few more things. Then we came home and both started at it again.  Things were going swell and then we realized we had didn't have enough to finish what we wanted to do.  We got in the car again and got the last few things.  By the time we got home it was dark and we had to string a few more lights, connect a few more cords, and voila, a beautiful sight we saw.

After we were done, I totally understood why there were so many tacky decorated houses out there.  Doing lights is hard, stressful, and requires a lot of thought!  If I was not so anal about symmetry, classiness, etc, then I'd have given up after the first attempt and would have been happy.  But no, we had to finish.

Now I am totally satisfied with our efforts. The house is not overdone but just simple with white lights.  Now once Jared figures out the timer, I'll get some photos to post.  Next up, decorating the house!