I actually made that wreath a couple years ago, but I don't think I've ever photographed it for the blog before. Pardon the taken-at-midnight photo...
Being the first year in our new house and all, we were determined to get Christmas lights on the roof. Of course, we made the rookie mistake of waiting until after Thanksgiving to go shopping for lights, and we couldn't find clear C9 bulbs ANYWHERE! Luckily, Jeff mentioned our plight to a coworker who happened to have a few boxes in his car that he was planning on returning, so Jeff bought them from him and brought them home!
Jeff strung little lights around the trunks of our two big trees, and then he started clipping the lights on the roof. Remember when we bought a ladder to change the light bulbs in the living room ceiling fan, and I said we bought one big enough to use for hanging Christmas lights? Yeah... that didn't quite work out. Apparently the eaves of the roof are higher than we thought. The top four or five feet of each peak were unreachable even with Jeff stretching as much as he could at the top of the ladder.
I suggested he climb out the craft room window (the second story window that looks out to the front of the house) and onto the roof and hang them from there. He took one look out the window and told me no way, the roof was way too steep. At that point, it seemed like the options were 1) no Christmas lights (after all the work he had already done!), 2) buy an even bigger ladder (not exactly in the budget during the holidays), or 3) take matters into my own hands.
You can probably guess which one I chose. I was a gymnast for many, many years (I actually used to train with Nastia Liuken in her pre-Olympics days!), so I'm pretty good at balance and heights and all that. So I climbed out the window with a bag of light clips, and I hung up the rest of the lights! It was a little scary, but I was very careful... and the Christmas lights are UP!
Jeff took this photo of me on the roof... he was leaning out the window all "Do you want me to photograph this for the blog? Should I go get your camera?" and I was all "No! Don't you dare leave the window! I want you to be here in case I slip or something!" To which he replied that he couldn't do much from inside the house anyway, and I replied that he could just take a photo with his phone and that would be plenty good enough and he should just stay put!
Why is it so hard to get a good photo of Christmas lights on a house? I tried a bunch of different settings on my camera, but these are the best I could do:
Anyway, the house is all festive-like, and we're pretty proud of ourselves. It was definitely a team effort to get them all up and working. We're already making bigger and better plans for next year... more lights in the tree branches, maybe some more clear lights on the roof around the craft room window... oh, the possibilities!
Looks great!
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