Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Wrapping Your Holiday In Lights

I LOVE Cathy's tip about decorating your kitchen in little white lights. In fact, I am, what you might call, a little white light addict of sorts. I hang those bright strands all over our century old farmhouse - on the banister; on top of my kitchen cabinets; on the barn beams in the high ceiling kitchen. Everywhere. AT night time from Thanksgiving to New Year's we are like Motel 6 - We'll leave the light on for you...literally. It is never dark here at night.



GLASS BLOCK CHRISTMAS GIFT DECORATION
I shared in my comment on Cathy's post another neat idea, about making a lighted Christmas gift out of a glass block (like a single glass block from a basement window), a strand of lights, and a bow. I purchased one at a craft show, but they are so simple and inexpensive to make.



I wanted to share a picture of this awesome Christmas decoration. And also give you the link with the instructions: www.thriftyfun.com/tf37245405.tip.html







CHRISTMAS TREE THAT GLOWS

And my ultimate favorite, simple Christmas decoration tip is this: If you decorate with an artificial Christmas tree, as you assemble the pole, wrap little white lights tightly around the pole, all the way up, as many as you can fit.

Then put the branches on as normal, and string the lights as normal on the branches. Your tree will have a 3 dimensional look,and will glow with lights. There will be no empty or bare spots, because the pole lights are top to bottom. It almost plays a trick on your eye, and make the tree look more beautiful than you can imagine.

And yes, I know, I need to seek help for my little white light addiction. My husband grew up with those huge colored lights on his childhood tree. So bless his heart, he lets me drape the tree in white lights anyway.

Which leads me to a question. Do you decorate your Christmas tree the same way your mom and dad did? Colored or white lights? Live tree or artificial? We tend to stay in our comfort zone, so I bet most of us do.

And what happens when you like white lights and your sweet hubby likes colored ones? Or he like artificial trees and you like live ones? Who wins???

We have solved that problem in the Berg house by using an artificial tree that we can put up the day after Thanksgiving and I can drape it with white lights. Then we purchase a very small live evergreen a couple of weeks before Christmas and put colored lights on that one. The kids then get to decorate it with homemade decorations, like paper ornaments, popcorn strings, paper chains, etc...

Both are unique, and both are beautiful.

And however we decorate our homes, what is even more important is how we decorate our hearts. Are we kind and loving? Forgiving? That beauty is beyond compare.

Boy, it's only July and I am so ready for Christmas already!!!! I wonder if there are any little white lights I can grab from the attic and......

Oh, no, here I go.....

Enjoy the journey-Trish
www.TrishBerg.com

2 comments:

Cathy Messecar said...

Great idea about the glass blocksand lights. How pretty.

Hey, on our first tree, we had the light "discussion." Big colored lights like Dave's family decorated their tree with or small twinkly ones like my mom and dad used. At the time, I let him win.

Hey, the guy was just back from Vietnam, whole, alive, well. Christmas lights just weren't that important in the context of war.

Don't tell the fire marshall, but we still have our three strands of big colored lights and still use them. We're careful to have them on only when we're at home and awake, and so far, they are not damaged in any way.

And, I've grown to love the big colored lights nearly as much as I love Dave.

Trish Berg said...

Cathy-

Yep, those big colored lights are beautiful. I enjoy them on our kitchen tree.

And, I love giving one tree over to our kids to decorate with 100% homemade ornaments. They enjoy doing that for a few weeks. Those lopsided, crooked decorations make it just perfect.

Blessings-Trish
www.TrishBerg.com