Despite saying that it's too early for christmas stuff yesterday morning, I helped my dad put up christmas lights yesterday afternoon. His reasoning was that it's warm now, so let's put 'em up! We usually put them up on Thanksgiving, so it isn't all that early.
In the beginning, my dad used to string colored lights across the front of the house forming one horizontal line. (My parents' house is ranch style.) This involved a short ladder and a whole lot of green garden twist-ties. Eventually, I realized that the single line looked majorly half assed. For a couple years, we added lights in the bushes. We also tried adding more to the single line, extending around the south side or along the front of the garage. Then we had the genius idea of putting blue lights around the 3 big windows as well. That idea was a definite keeper. Conveniently, they string right around the shutters and are very easy to put up. A couple years ago my dad started stringing the colored lights down the fence along the driveway. It looks pretty, you can see them when you turn the corner all the way down the hill at 52nd street, and is much much easier to put up. Now I'm working on convincing them to buy LED lights. Dad's been using the same strings of lights for a long time and they're about worn out anyway.
I'd like to put lights on my house, but there doesn't seem to be any good way to do it. I'll make do with my lovely LED lights in the windows. I never took 'em down last year, so next week all I have to do it plug them in. :)
