I put up my Xmas lights last weekend just in time because it started to rain as I finished up. It takes me about 4 hours to put them up, sometimes longer if I have to trim any branches like I did this year. I usually spend a few hours beforehand checking for dead bulbs. If a whole section is out it means a connection is broken and I have to remove each bulb and replace it with a good one, see if it lights up, if it doesn’t, then remove it again and put the original back in and repeat with the next one and on all the way down the line, one at a time.
Even with all that due diligence, once I’m done, I fire them up and sometimes get this:
I haven’t had a chance to fix it and it’s going to bug me until I do. Hopefully the rain will pause for an hour or so this weekend and I can rectify the situation. Once everything is done, my house should look like this:
If I had more time, I’d put more up. I have a lot of things from Xmases past in various states of repair up in my attic. These lights are blue LED icicles. I replaced the blue ones at the tip of each long icicle with ones of different colors and really like the way it looks. These particular ones have parabolic housings that make them tiny spotlights that add color to the house.
I prefer LEDs since they use less power, are easier to work with and have way more color saturation, especially in the blue. I like my colors bright. I have used incandescent white in the past, and they can look pretty good, but I like colors better. Here’s a previous setup.
I’m usually the only one on my side of the street that does this, which is too bad. It’s fun when the neighbors join in.
I don’t do any decorating in the house but I do like to make the outside festive for the long winter nights. Show us what you have, if anything.