Christmas Lights

I finally got my Christmas tree up this past Saturday. For me, I was late as we usually get the tree up the week of Thanksgiving or before. Why so early? Because by the time December gets here the calendar has a mind of it's own. Ever feel like the calendar controls your life? haha!

I was working on the house, cleaning, getting ready for all the parties coming up here and was finally ready to tackle the tree - that's when I remembered that I threw away all my lights last year because almost daily, a section of lights would burn out so by the time Christmas was over, I don't believe we had a full strand of working lights on the tree!

I really wasn't in the mood to head out and get more lights. The weather was nasty - snowing, turning into ice on the roads, cold, and I didn't feel like putting my face on to head out - yes, I am one of those that has to put my face on before I head out thanks to acne attacks in my late 20's and still going as I am 29 and gracefully holding. lol!

I finally just decided to grin and bear and headed out after cleaning a good 1/2 inch of snow and ice or more off my car. I headed to Lowe's since my hubby needed salt for the morning. I slipped and slid all the way there and if you can believe it or not, I stayed at Lowe's for probably 2 hours! For starters, they had all their Christmas stuff on clearance 50%. So, knowing me, I had to search every item they had left to see if their were any goodies. Most of it was picked over but I found ONE beautiful ornament. Okay, now remember, I'm there for lights and salt but it probably took me 40 minutes to actually get to the light section! haha!

After I arrived to the light section, well, you guessed it. I had one conversation after another with myself on which lights I wanted. I actually had options because of that sale instead of usually just grabbing the cheapest lights available. So, there went about 30 minutes...I actually had finally made my decision, lights in the cart, walking away when I halted - thought, thought a little more, talked to myself outloud, had people loooking at me strangely, I politely smiled, talked a little more and finally, put those lights away and grabbed the $4.00 lights (the one's I had were $10.00 big lightbulb kind...the kind I'd love to have). Why, you might ask? Because they simply didn't have enough of the big bulbs I wanted - I'm a red girl...I like my tree dancing with red, well, they only had 100 big bulb lights...4 boxes...I could just see my tree starving for color and looking quite anorexic with barely any lights, so I picked up the 'typical' lights I always get and got 500 lights..all that work just to pick what I always get! Go me!

Okay, so I'm done with the Christmas shopping when I decide it's time to get lights for my kitchen - and yes, you can imagine that took probably another 45 minutes, a few conversations with myself, and phone call to my sister in Florida, a couple more changes after I had the lights in my cart, a phone call to my husband, pacing up and down one aisle after another - but I have to admit....I eventually made my decision and hopefully today I'll get to see what those lights look like in my kitchen - well, that is after I get the right kind of lightbulbs as I FORGOT to get them even though they were staring me right in the face that night at Lowe's.

Now, I'm sitting here on my sofa, watching my 500 lights sparkle on my Christmas tree and will get to witness my new lights (2 of them) in my kitchen/dining room later today as I figure out some kind of bribe to get my husband to put them up.

My little world is all lit up and even though it was an awful lot of hard work just picking out lights, it was worth the silly hours I spent picking them out. :)

Tracee, all lit up!
"Shine like the stars in the universe." Phil. 2:15