Ready.....Row: Decorating for the Season

I never know whether to hate or to love holiday decorating. I usually love when it's all finished, but just thinking about it drives me to despair. It just seems like a task that will take forever. At some point though you just have to bite the bullet and get it done. First to go up are our outside lights. Putting up the outside lights has gotten considerably easier over the years with the introduction of the net lights. Much quicker then trying to put up individual strings of lights and they look better too. I do have a problem with my particular house though. Except for the major appliances like the hot water heater and the furnace, I swear the rest of the house is all wired on one circuit. And this one circuit seems to be a bit of a princess and will trip the circuit breaker fairly easily. Over the years I've been able to figure out what I can do and can't do, but it can be touchy. Another complaint with my house is there are no outside outlets on the front of the house. Bad planning there. This means I have to run extension cords from the back of the house or from the garage. It takes me about 2 hours to complete and in the end it looks like this:

Next up is to tackle the tree. We always opt for a real tree. In my mind no artificial tree can measure up. We buy our tree at a local nursery. Very different from my youth when I use to trudge into the woods and cut down a tree for our family. Over the years we've had a variety of trees from Scotch pines, to Douglas firs to our current Frazier fir. We've had that these last two years and we've been quite happy with them. Decorating the tree use to be a big family event. I would put on the lights and the kids would put on the bulbs and other decorations. Each child was designated a certain section for their ornaments. You know like the ones they make is school with their picture on it. We still have them and hang them up every year. Since the kids are grown now, its hard getting any help at all. This year I got the lights out to put on the tree only to find out that two of the strings were burned out. Not exactly the kind of start to get one motivated. As it happened it was the day we were having our first snowfall so out into the snow I went. I was considering switching to LED lights this year since they are cheaper to run and last forever, or so they say. My burned out lights gave me the push to do it or would have if they had had any more in stock. Oh well maybe next year. I did manage to get 450 new regular lights for $12 so all wasn't lost. I finally got the lights on the tree and called it a day so I could go watch some college football. A man has to have his priorities. The following day the tree was completed. Ann helped a bit in the morning and the The Son and I finished it off. So there was a bit of help. The Son decorating the tree:

Here I am trying to detangle something or other. It's not Christmas if you don't have to detangle lights or snowflakes or whatever.

The final touch is putting up some garland consisting of popcorn and cranberries. I'd like to tell you they were real, but such is not the case. We're not that crafty or crazy.