Only 11 days left until the lights go on!

Eleven days, that is just insane.  All my outside lights have to be set and ready to be turned on Thanksgiving night.  Panic is about to set in.  This year is not going at all like years past. 

Today we accomplished quite a bit outside thanks to Mother Nature.  After rain ALL day yesterday it fortunately dried out and the sun came back out.  Because I lost a day I was worried but the house itself is completely done now.  Did a test run and everything works (always a worry even though I test all lights before they go up). 

In addition to the house we have two of the four trees completed.  Decided on all green lights for our Red Plum Tree and then I bought LED C3's last year after Christmas so those went on the Crape Myrtle.  Still have about 1400 blue lights to get up in the big Elm tree.  This year I also bought 600 Purple LED C5's from Big Lots (other web sites said they had a great price on LED's and good quality so I had to check them out), those will go on one of the smaller trees towards the back of the yard. 

This year I created 7 arches that will go along the front sidewalk on either side of the driveway.  I simply took 1/4" PVC Pipe and wrapped them with mini lights.  I used a hot glue gun to attach both ends to the pipe and also glued down two additional spots to ensure they didn't shift.  I took 12" rebar and placed the PVC Pipe over the rebar to create an arch.  It is a relatively easy project for anyone to do.  Just time consuming to wind all the lights onto the PVC.

Yesterday due to the rain I worked inside getting alot of the decorations set up throughout the house.  I haven't started on decorating the trees yet but I did get a lot of my other items out.  The staircase garland always takes awhile to get set up. 

Now for the bad part, I have to fly to Chicago for work tomorrow and I don't get back until Friday.  I'm loosing a lot of evenings working on Christmas!  Hence the panic setting in.  Normally I would take all my outside figurines and set them up each night so come Saturday and Sunday I just have to take them out, set them and hook the electrical up.  This will really cost me not having all my figurines pre set up for this next weekend. 

Guess I have the next five days to redesign in my head how I want to arrange all the items out on the lawn. 

Remember, only 11 days until Thanksgiving so have you started your Christmas decorating yet?