Outside Christmas Lights

After checking the weather forecast for the next 10 days, we decided that today would be the best day to be outside putting up our outside Christmas lights.  

We started by trimming a couple of trees around the house.  Some of the branches were touching our roof after our last snowfall a few days ago so these needed to be cut back.  On the positive side, these branches were now available to be used to make a big wreath for our front door.  We make a large wreath every year out of the branches that need to be trimmed off the trees.  So, the first thing we did today was to cut some branches and make a wreath.  This is the most back-breaking work so I wanted to start with this and get it out of the way first.  My spinal injuries have been screaming since moving some snow the other day.  It's been keeping me up at night and I cannot get comfortable.  Well...  not even close to comfortable...  at rest, the pain is around a seven on the 10 point pain scale.  

We don't use the front door once the snow falls so we make a wreath that is actually larger than the width of the door.  Plus, we put our Christmas tree just inside the front door so we can't open that door even if we wanted to.  Well, if there was an emergency, we'd still able to just fling Christmas decorations out of our way in order to quickly egress the house.  

After hanging this large wreath on our front door and wrapping it with 200 lights, we then started putting up the rest of the Christmas lights.  We don't do much outdoors anymore so this was pretty easy.  

We still need to purchase seven wreaths to put on windows, the playhouse and our trash shed but that is easy to do.  We just need to wrap each wreath with a single string of 50 lights and then hang it in its appropriate place.  Each spot is already wired for power.  I think these wreaths are now for sale at Shaw's but we didn't feel like heading down to Shaw's today.  I think we'll deal with that on Monday.  I think Tuesday should be a decent day to be outside again so that timing will work out fine.  

So, the playhouse (top photo) will be getting two wreaths...  one on the front next to the door and one on the side facing our house.  The trash shed (second photo) will get two wreaths on the front (that big dark area)...  one on each door.  I'll shoot more photos after we hang the wreaths.  

On Wednesday, I guess I will start preparing our Thanksgiving dinner.  I believe Sheila and I will be eating alone but Liza and Whitney will probably be here after dinner.  Thanksgiving is my absolute least favorite holiday so I don't want to be putting too much effort into dinner.  I don't like turkey either nor should I be eating poultry anyway which does not add any positives to a day I sort of despise anyway.  (Okay...  yes...  I actually despise Thanksgiving...  don't ask me to do something asinine like saying a prayer nor asking me to state something for which I should be thankful.  Both are very personal things which I do not feel are appropriate for the dinner table.)

So, we've been focusing on Christmas and, we are one step closer to being ready for Christmas after putting up our outside Christmas lights!