Catching Up

This is the first year we put lights up outside our house.  I've done the candles in the windows thing before, but with three floors, we have a lot of windows.  And the cats knock them over, etc. so usually we just hang a wreath on the door and call it a day.  Then we go all out and decorate the inside as much as possible.  Last year shopping the Target after Christmas sale, I bought some outdoor lights.  I was bound and determined I was going to light up the outside of the house.  Not like Clark Griswald, but something nice and festive.

Little did I know the lights I bought last year were only 20 lights long and don't stretch very far.  So I went to Target and got a $30 wheel of lights and I climbed up on the 5 foot ladder and the lights were on the ground by the next morning.  Like I said, I'm new to this stuff, and Randy hasn't ever put up Christmas lights either.  I used duct tape - didn't work.  So my co-worker Kevin, the bathroom fan expert, tells be about the light clips you can buy at Target for like a buck.  Duh.  So I get out there the next night with the 8 foot ladder and we had this:

I also got a $5 wreath at Produce Junction and add my own dollar store bow and plastic berries.  It looks pretty good if I do say so myself, and you can't even see the bite marks where the cats were chewing on the bow.

Sorry we don't have any during pictures, but Randy was too busy worrying I might fall to snap any pictures.  He's a good husband.

Then we came back in to this, which is where Camille has spent her days every day since.

Our tree is a faker that we got on sale at Michaels a few years ago.  It's pre-lit and even has fake pinecones and baby pine needles on the edges of the branches.  I like to hang chandelier crystals (you can get them in bulk from chandelier supply stores.  I got mine from a company in the back of Country Living) all throughout the tree from the middle of the tree out.  They reflect and bounce the light around and make the tree look more full and bright.  Then we put the ornaments on.  See our blue stripe of ornaments from the top right of the tree going diagonally down to the left?  That's our Hanukkah stripe.

We got a spotlight too, but we haven't figured out how to hook that one up yet.  There's always next year!  And if you haven't gone yet, Target is having their 50% off sale and we went today and snagged all of our wrapping paper and Christmas and Hanukkah cards for next year!  It was a little crazy, but what else are you going to do on a crazy rainy day like this?