***Originally posted on cregarstyle on December 9, 2014***
I am a bit late with the update on our Christmas Décor since it went up the last weekend in November. However, it seems like our holiday spirit is overflowing and each day we add something new! Today we are going to talk about the outdoor Christmas decorations and then a follow up post will share the indoor Christmas decorations later this week. If you ever want to test your marriage, or see if you should marry someone, I highly recommend putting up Christmas lights with your partner. If you can survive that, you can survive anything! Its a good thing my husband is so handsome, because we certainly had more than a couple disagreements! Love you, honey!
Last year was the first year with the house so we were ready to go all out on lights and other fun things. We picked up a bunch of new large bulb multi-colored Christmas lights that look like the ones Aaron and I remember from our childhood. In our eyes there is nothing better than Christmas circa 1995! In addition to the lights that my wonderful husband bravely put on the roof and gutters, we had several strands of smaller bulb lights in multi-colored, white, blue, green, and red. The smaller lights went in the flower beds and were draped over shrubs and other plants. We had also picked up a marquee looking set of lights that spelled "NOEL" and we hung it in the window. The Cregar house, 2013 version, was topped off with some strategically placed rope lighting around the edge of our front window and along our walkway to the front door.
This year hubby wants to go even bigger! After being inspired by our Halloween decorations (which I wish I had a picture of to show y'all), we decided to get icicle lights to hang above the walkway to the front door. I realize icicles cannot hang from midair, but it gives off a nice twinkling feeling when you walk underneath them, so who cares if its realistic! Call it Christmas magic :) So after we installed the same large bulb lights from last year on the roof and gutters we hung the icicle lights and then decided to add in our leftover large bulb lights to do the edges of the garage and house, and around the front window. At this point we had gone back and forth several times on which lights should go where. I had even made him a diagram (he is a visual person and needs to physically see it rather than imagine it), which only vaguely resembles the final product.
Now we finally had our house lights on and the front lights up. We decided to put our rope lighting along the walkway (like last year) and along the driveway since we weren't lining the window with it again this year. Simple enough, and no major disagreements here (Yay!).
Last year Aaron and I began a silly tradition of changing the color of our front walkway light and porch light for different holidays. We have a black light and an orange light for Halloween, a red light and green light for Christmas, a pink light and red light for Valentine's Day, and a green light for St. Patrick's Day. It is such a subtle change that is so easy to make, but I think it really kicks our house up a notch, BAM!
Our down the street neighbor actually inspired me for the next part which is our tree in the front yard. Now a little background on our tree is probably beneficial. Last year I was convinced I had killed our tree in the hot Texas summer of 2013, so much so that we put cobwebs in it for Halloween because it was so dead. However, my dad (remember MacGyver from the Laundry Room Storage?) is also incredibly knowledgable about plants. I guess that happens when you are retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and have done more than your fair share of gardening over the years. Anyway, he had given me some advice over facetime and said that I should cut back all the limbs of my tree until it was a stump and water it regularly until he could come see it in person. When he came to Texas for the wedding in April he said it wasn't really as dead as I had thought. In the spring, due to my watering and mild temperatures, my tree had begun to send up stalks from the roots. I did as MacGyver Dad told me to and trimmed them back to one, fertilized and watered my tree. We now have a small, Charlie Brown tree in our front yard. Since it already looks somewhat pathetic, I decided to play on the Charlie Brown look and decorate it with ornaments and lights like our neighbors down the street had done with their much larger and healthy tree. I personally think ours looks better. It definitely has more personality, and that's what really matters, right?
The next step was to put our candle lights in the window by the front door. I LOVE this little light. I know a lot of people probably are familiar with these. My mom had one for every single window in my childhood home so I don't care how dated it might be, I will never give up having at least one set of candles in the window.
Last but not least is the front door. A few years back I picked up a fake wreath on an after Christmas sale and had tied two red bows on it to give it some pizzazz. This year I decided it needed some more excitement and I picked up some small pinecones and these white "berry" looking things to add to my wreath. Around the time I was putting my wreath together, I noticed the hook in the door (that came that way from the previous owners) was loose and fell out. After Aaron tried to glue it back in a few times, we decided just to take it out and get an over the door wreath hook. My mom suggested I put felt on the back so it wouldn't scratch up the paint on the door. She is one smart cookie! I thought our door looked pretty good, but then I saw another neighbor's door. They did not have a wreath, but had wrapped their entire front door in wrapping paper like a present and had added a big bow. Now I love my wreath so the bow would have been overkill, but the idea of wrapping our front door seemed too good to pass up. I began the process of cutting out enough to fit the door and taping it. It was more difficult than I had anticipated, but not impossible. After cutting out a hole for the lock and door knob I wrapped the edges of the door like a present and taped the paper to the back of the door to hold it. Then I started on cutting out the spaces for the hinges and the dead bolt. After not too long it looked like this!
I am so happy that our neighborhood has been the ones to inspire us, and I hope we are inspiring others. So much Christmas cheer is flowing through our neighborhood, it is infectious!
Stay tuned for part 2 where I show off our indoor decorations! Until then...
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