I'm not sure why, but over the years the whole "spirit of Christmas" has lost a bit of magic for me. It's not that I don't like the holiday, even though I have a playlist called "Christmas songs that don't annoy me", but @mrsbozz and I just don't go all out for the holiday like some people do.
Perhaps it's because we don't have kids of our own. It also could be because we don't really do presents. We decided a long time ago that we weren't going to buy stuff just so we could have something to give each other. Then that stuff would just sit around the house until we got rid of it to make room for new stuff.
It's not uncommon for us to wait until the week before Christmas to even get a tree up in our house. The year that our basement flooded we didn't put a tree up at all. Even when we do decorate the house, we tend to take the simple route with minimal items versus it looking like Christmas threw up in our house.
For those of you who go all out for the holiday season, good for you! I mean no offense, I think you should absolutely what brings you joy, so if you want to be one of those people who has their tree up in October, then go for it!
In my adult years, I've always been a staunch believer that Christmas in general shouldn't even be thought about until after Thanksgiving is over. However this year, as the title states, I guess I am one of those people now.
The time change this year has really done a number on @mrsbozz and I. The constant darkness and relatively drab Fall weather has been a bit of a downer. I decided earlier in November that I was going to take some leftover LED lights I had and string them up on our back deck to cheer my wife up. Of course, I also had to buy a new smart plug to control them. The lights come on at 4:30 each night and go off at 10:00 well after we are in bed (most nights).
Since this is in our fenced back yard, we are the only ones who really see these lights. They are just for us and I am glad I took the time to surprise her with them.
Although the outdoor lights helped a little, @mrsbozz decided that she also wanted to put the tree up. You can imagine my surprise given we still had a week or two until Thanksgiving was here. I wasn't about to say no to my wife though, and a couple of weekends ago we put up our small tree in our house. When our dog Jovi was with us, she used to love to lay on the tree skirt. This is our first Christmas without her in 15 years, so it is a bit bittersweet.
Along with the tree, we have this lighted garland that goes on the railing of our bi-level house. It's about nine feet long in total and I was a bit flummoxed when I installed it this year to find the two incandescent strands of lights were not working. I checked the fuses, the lights, the voltage, everything should have been working, but it wasn't.
I wasn't too mad though, because I had been wanting to switch these lights over to LED anyway. This gave me the perfect opportunity. We reused the existing ribbon and garland, and I twisted the new lights through it.
I also had to buy another new smart plug because we usually put our tree over in the corner by where the rail lights plug in. With them being separate this year, we weren't able to control them on the same plug like we usually do. I have a separate wireless network with a dedicated vLan in my house to keep our IoT traffic separate from that on the regular network. It makes me feel a little better about adding all of these "smart" devices to my home.
We also had some old lanterns and battery operated LED candles that we decided to put down on either side of the TV. I had some left over garland from redoing the railing, so I cut that and put a small piece in each lantern. @mrsbozz didn't like the color of the old lights, so she bought two new ones that you see above which can be turned off and on with an included remote. That makes it much easier to manage them through the night. You can even set them on a timer if you want. It's amazing how technology has evolved!
Finally, the last piece was getting our front yard outdoor lights ready. I made these lighted trees out of tomato cages a while ago, but I was never really happy with how they turned out. Over the years, I thought about how I would do them differently if I had the chance. Well, this year, I had the chance. I stripped off all the old lights and I covered the tomato cages in chicken wire fencing.
Then I started to string three hundred lights across each of the cages using zip ties. If you look in the background you can see the old incandescent lights sitting on top of the trash cans that I pulled off the trees. It's crazy just how many lights I had on these things in the past. I know in previous years my electric bill would go up about $50 in the month of December when we would run these lights. I look forward to seeing if the switch to LEDs makes a significant difference.
Last year I made a set of these trees for @mrsbozz's parents, so I knew that my new method was fairly sound. It's just quite time consuming and the chicken wire can be difficult to work with. I ended up cutting my hands up pretty good and losing a little bit of blood in the process from the fencing. Needless to say for the rest of them I was sure to wear gloves!
In the end, I think they turned out really well. These lights are on a different smart plug, but the same automation schedule as the ones on the back deck.
We also have a small one on the front porch that I retrofitted several years ago with LED lights.
So there you go, it's not even Thanksgiving yet and our house is about 90% "Christmasfied". I hope this helps alleviate some of the blah that the crumby weather and time change has dumped upon us!
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I must confess that the darkness and the weather has also depressed me a bit, I guess we are not the only ones.
I am Venezuelan and my husband is Polish, so to balance a bit of both sides, we have put Christmas in November hahaha, although I almost convinced my husband to put it in October hahaha.
Your Christmas decorations are very nice!
Thanks, I appreciate it! I have a feeling putting them up this early might start to become more of a tradition for us!
🤗🤗🤗
And you say you don't do Christmas!
The decorations are simple and effective and it's a great way to repurpose items to spice up your front garden
Thank you! I think it all turned out very well!
Are decorations are fairly modest. Some lights around the roof of the garage and around the trunks of the two oak trees in our front yard. Normally, I don't decorate until the weekend after Thanksgiving but in recent years we've been starting a week earlier. Mostly to guarantee it actually gets done by Thanksgiving weekend.
The big change for us this year is an artificial tree. We've always had a real one before.
We've always done an artificial tree. My wife and I both have bad allergies, so a real tree isn't really in the cards for us. Normally we would be on the same schedule as you, but my wife needed that little "bump" this year!
Maybe you are getting old! Mrs T and I were like you, last minute before putting a tree up etc.
Now though I have the Christmas spirit and so has she. Maybe because we were out last week and had a Christmas meal at a pub which was turkey, and we know the chain so will be going there for her thanksgiving meal of turkey.
So I don't know what is in the air, but I feel more and more people have got the Christmas spirit this year. Maybe people are just fed up and thinking back to how it was when we were kids.
That might be part of it. I'm sure some will say that we have Trump to thank for the renewed optimism :P. I'm not one of those people. That is cool you have things all scoped out for Thanksgiving. I have four turkey breasts unthawing that I am going to throw on the grill tomorrow for my inlaws.
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Blasphemous!
All the decorations look good. Xmas lights are becoming a thing here now, and people tend to stick them up starting after Halloween. The lights all look nice, so I have no complaints. I'm not big on gift giving (I agree with what you wrote about it above) or on Xmas music, but general decorations look nice and give a bit of cheer, so I'm all for them.
I agree this all of what you wrote as well! That is cool that it is starting to become more of a thing over there. I wonder why just now?
Xmas has been here for awhile. It's just a fun day when Santa comes, more a kid's special day than holiday. But no one really put up any lights until the past few years. The cynical part of me thinks it was probably department stores looking for more money, trying to push people to buy lights. But I don't really know. Maybe there was a celebrity that started putting up lights and everyone wanted to copy.
Ah yeah, that could be the case. Commercialization of holidays has gotten quite out of hand. My wife and I don't even do Valentine's day, and don't get me started on "Sweetest Day".
I enjoyed your Christmas decor post.
Sometimes when I don't feel the spirit early, if I make myself do some decorating anyway, seeing it helps the spirit show up. I'm never disappointed that I did it anyway.
I too normally start decorating the day after Thanksgiving. A few years the indoor part has started a little earlier, but not many. If I do it early, It is usually spurred on by something new I bought and this year was one of those years. I've been slowly, randomly dragging things out for the last couple of weeks. Once a couple of things were out, it didn't seem to matter or be important to wait on everything else for a few more days. I guess the inside is about 90% done and I won't do the outside till Friday. (or that is what I think at this moment ha)
Your trees turned out very cute and I like the name of your Christmas music list.
Thanks, I appreciate it. We still have a few small wall hanging type things that we haven't gotten out yet, but the lights are all done and that is what was most important. Everything else is pretty minimal. We used to go out the day after Christmas and shop the decor sales, but we stopped doing that as we just ended up with so much stuff we never used.
I have a lot of stuff, even though nearly every year when I drag out or put everything away, I try to let go of some of it. I've accumulated through the years and others that know how much I've loved it have gifted me precious things, so they have sentimental value as well. It is much harder to reduce when things have some sentimental value.
Yes, I totally agree with that and the sentimental value. My wife is a bit of a minimalist, so we try to limit that sort of stuff in the first place. She gets all kinds of stuff from her students at school and she usually regifts some of it.
We add a few strands of those little white incandescent lights to our boxwoods and cedars at the front of the house…. For gifts we just agreed we would all buy each other $10 of chocolates. I also send a few Satoshi to their Lightning wallet so they can buy a house some day.
My favourite chocolates are the peanut M and Ms… they are very expensive these days. But a real treat. Then we watch Christmas vacation and have a Turkey and stuffing on Christmas Eve.
I saw they are already playing Christmas Vacation over and over on the cable channels right now. That sounds like a great tradition you have! Yeah, even the small bag of peanut M&M's is over $1 most places now.
My kids thought I was being cheap when I instated the Chocolate Christmas gift rule … until they went shopping for chocolate.
Haha, I bet!
The timing for Christmas or Hanukkah Chocolates on December 25 th is perfect since I am just about out of my Halloween Chocolate.
My Life and Holidays (and Religion) revolves around Chocolate.
I can totally relate to that! Chocolate is one of my vices.
Mine too …
The decorations look really good
Thank you!
First off, the house looks great! I have a preference for splits, they are a pretty good use of space. Do you have issues heating it over the garage/workshop? That’s what I’ve heard. Still want one day though!
I hear you on the Christmas need. It’s a good time of year and has lots of uplifting parts about it and I think that’s why we can flip on the spirit when we need to. Reminds us of being kids in a lot of ways!
We are going to put up our tree this weekend but I did crack out the Christmas tunes at the beginning of the month!
That’s also looking like some fun DIY with those wire cages for trees! I think it looks good with the chicken wire.
I haven't started with the Christmas music yet. I usually try to avoid that most years even if we have the decorations up. The house actually doesn't extend over the garage, so it isn't too bad, but we do have some issues with airflow on the upper level. The biggest issue is space in general. We have two living rooms one upstairs and one downstairs, but neither of them are big enough to entertain a larger number of people. I'd rather have one big space.
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