Fake tree #1 is up; #2 goes up tomorrow night. Hubby got the outdoor lights up and the receptacle isn't working. GFI gone I assume, won't re-set. Guess that'll need to be replaced.
We don't do real. We've had our stuff up for a couple weeks already. Neighbors put their light up yesterday. We don't do outdoor lights; we do the candles in the windows and on the mantle. You going for a free-range organic heritage tree?
We flipped to the Nordmann fir last year and will do so again. Readily available at your friendly neighborhood and decidedly low-brow Home Depot!
Put my lights up on Thanksgiving. I usually wait til the day after but my wife talked me into putting them up early. We decided to save the earth this year and went out and bought 200 C9 size LED lights to replace the 6 strings of regular red bulbs we normally put up. Put the 2 strands up and turned them on knowing that since they were brand new that checking them was just a formality. wrong. 25 lights on the second string decided they didn't want to work. Grrrr. of course that's the pain in the ass to put up and take down string. So 30 minutes later I had them down, found the receipt and decided I would swap them at Lowes the following day. Went to Lowes the following day. They were out. Went to Lowes 2 towns over, they were out. damn. Logged onto Lowes.com this morning to see if any were in stock, anywhere. nope. So ordered a string and they should be at my doorstep in 7 to 10 business days. With the LED lights are about 6 strings of icicle lights and of course 3 of the 6 strings of regular red lights. No tree yet but the wife decorated everything else on the inside of the house.
I need to get my tree up.... oh wait I don't have one and haven't put one up in like 8 years, I don't like xmas.
I never have X-Mas decorations at my place, which is why I never host family dinners at my place either. I'd rather be the guy bringing presents and buying dinner (or another meal) than hosting an event and having to clean up afterwards lol
I was in japan at the beginning of November. Christmas was in full bloom, all the lights and santas were already up and they were playing xmas music everywhere. Universal Studios Osaka had a big xmas tree and santa. While the lights looked neat I wasn't ready for xmas yet, esp when election day, veterans day and thanksgiving didn't even pass yet. But then I'm still not into the xmas spirit yet, starting to hear it on the radio and see it all around. This year the holidays are coming up fast but then it's another year less that I have to wait for retirement (in 4 or 5 years hopefully).
I know where my tree is stored, but that's as far as I've gotten on my decorating agenda. My daughter and I have briefly discussed decorating (like one sentence, actually: "we need to put the tree up early and not wait til last minute." or something like that, back in October.) And nothing makes my hubby and son disappear faster than getting decorations out. As far as outdoors, our neighbors across the street go into overload, seriously four acres of lights and decorations that would shame Clark Grisswold. To the point there is a steady stream of traffic slowly creeping back and forth, up and down the street from dusk to midnight. Except for the traffic, it's really super cool. So any lights we put up would be unnoticed. We thought about just putting up a sign with a big arrow pointing to their house and "Ditto" written on it.
I'm still replacing bulbs and testing lights. It's not cold enough yet for the ground to be frozen, and that means the tree will be covered with mud by the time I drag it to the truck. I'm still raking friggin' leaves! BAH, HUMBUG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
we got our stuff up last weekend. real tree... out door lights on the shrubs and 5 white wire deer... been shopping the flea markets, goodwill,etc the past year to get the ones with the 3/16 or 1/4 wire frames. they hold up better during the winter here. had to do as Tim the Tool Man would say "I re-wired it". pretty easy and if you can fix it, lights sets are cheap and just replace them.