Christmas Lights Aerial View

Thanks to one of my neighbors that has a drone I now know what my house looks like from above.

Christmas Lights II

This past weekend I finished putting up lights on the house. While I had grander plans for expanding the display this year I didn’t quite get there. The 22 foot telescoping ladder I bought earlier in the year feels a little flimsy when fully extended so I wasn’t able to reach the roofline of the house like I had originally planned. I did however add lights to the top of the garage (thanks to the wife for crawling out the window to do this), to the tree in the middle of the front yard, and in and around the bushes.

(For comparison to last year’s display see this entry from November 2014.)

Christmas Lights

When I was a kid I always wanted to put lights on our house at Christmas but my parents would never do it. They put a tree up and such but it was pretty much only inside. I always swore when I owned a house I would put up lights. When Jenny and I bought our first house in 2006 I started out small, with a few strings of lights along the front edge of the roof and around the front porch.

Our old house in 2006.

Every year I added to it and by our last Christmas there I had a more elaborate display with far more lights and a few inflatables and a lighted deer in the yard as well. It was never enough to qualify for the local Tacky Lights Tour but it was more than anyone else in our neighborhood put up.

Even while our new house was under construction I could already envision it's potential. From the time we moved in I looked forward to putting lights for Christmas. I started a few weeks ago and made more than a few "one more trip" visits to Walmart, Target, etc to pick up additional lights. Part of the problem was everything I had for both lights and extension cords was based around the measurements of our old house and I had to adapt everything to much different dimensions of the new one. Below is what I've come up with. It's no where near full on Clark Griswold but it's the biggest display in the neighborhood. And I'm already thinking about next year including buying a new extension ladder so I can reach the top of the house.

It really needs to be seen in person as the photo doesn't really do it justice. But I'm really happy with how it turned out. I may be adding a few more in the coming weeks as well especially if I can catch a decent sale.