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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