Saturday, November 27
Weather:
Partly Cloudy and Milder
Temperatures: Morning low in the upper
20's, Afternoon high in the low 40's
First thing
Saturday morning (8:30am, not exactly early, but we were a little
tired after working long hours the past 4 weeks), we had
to drive into Camden (40 miles round trip) to get a trailer load
of decorations so we had enough decorations to work with on Sunday.
This was the only day for the weekend that was forcast
to be dry enough to bring home an open trailer load of boxed decorations.
When
we returned about 11am, the first thing I did was get the decorations
up on the one story roof. I had to replace all the lights
in the inflatable sleigh, what a pain in the butt. This
was the earliest we have ever gotten the roof decorated.
This year I decided to do it before the roof was covered with snow!!
After completing the roof decorations, Marianne
and I finished up the majority of the decorations on
the front porch. Marianne and Karen put up the porch
tree on Friday, and now we added the shutter wreaths, the snowflake
lights, the wreath and the bow on the light. Then we brought
out the large Santa, which gave us a little more working room
in the garage. We still have to put lights on the two topiary
trees, but the lights are still at work in Camden, and the other small
Santa is also still in Camden. I also can't find the
small spotlight I use to illuminate the large Santa.
When the porch was completed, Marianne and I decorated the
end of the house with the wire frame stockings, snowflakes and the
big wreath. I wanted to finish up all the high work so I could return the big
ladder to our neighbor.
The next task
to be worked on was the shrubs in front of the house. I decided
to use all new lights on the shrubs this year. After
Christmas last year, I picked up 84 packages of new lights from
Wal*Mart when they went to 75% off ($0.44 per box, 100 light strings).
I may have gone a little overboard with the lights, but
looking at records from the past couple years, I don't see anything
too drastically different, only an increase of about 30% from
previous years. This year there are 2,800 lights on the
front shrubs.
However,
while I was working on the front shrubs, Marianne was checking the
old lights to see which ones worked without needing bulbs replaced.
This gave me 8 strings of used lights to put on the shrubs by the
road. I also had some extra solid blue and solid red
strings to use, so I put a string of blue on each of the cedars and
a string of red on the yew just to give a different look to those
shrubs from previous years. This makes 1,100 lights on those
shrubs, and I haven't put out the big globe lights yet....
Maybe I will have to put them somewhere else this year.
Well, II think that is verything we got
done today. Now we have to start working on the lawn
decorations and the maple tree!! unfortunatly, tomorrow
is supposedto be miserable weather, rain & windy, but hopefully
we will be able to get something done in the afternoon when conditions
are supposed to improve.
Total lights to date: 9,253
Lance
& Marianne Williams
7999 Brookside Drive
Rome, New York 13440
