The Halls are Decked...Finally

The adventure in decorating began this past Wednesday when I decided I'd put the greenery up around the archways and shelves. That was fairly easy.

I then had the bright idea that I'd put the lights up on the archway between the living and dining area. I got out the big set of lights and checked them. They worked so everything was a go. I unplugged the lights and went to work. When I was half done I decided I'd plug in the lights to see how they worked. Nothing. No pretty red and green and blue lights at all. I checked bulbs and must have hit a loose one because the lights came on. Yay!

I celebrated too soon. I quickly discovered only half of the set of 100 was lit. I checked bulbs but to no avail. So off came the set of lights from the greenery.

The next day, Thursday, hubby and I went out and bought another set of lights. I worked on the same greenery while he put lights on the rest. It was beautiful when it was done.

On Friday morning while hubby was at work I decided to put together our sad little artificial tree we've used the past few years. We love real trees, always had one until a few years back when our apartment building changed owners and they disallowed it. But that's another story. Back to our little tree. I was putting it together when I broke the stand.

Not to be disheartened, I reached for the masking tape (no duct tape on hand) and taped that sucker. I thought it was pretty good. Hubby came home from work and put the lights on while I strung popcorn. We decided not to put the ornaments on as we were going out Friday night to a local production of Scrooge, which was quite wonderful.

Saturday afternoon came and the tree was listing slightly. So I added more tape and figured I'd give it another day to see if it would hold.

Sunday morning hubby called out to me and said he had some concerns. I could see the problem immediately. Our little tree resembled the leaning tower of Pisa. We laughed because, really, it did look funny. There was nothing else to be done but make a trek to Wal-Mart and buy a new tree. We found one a bit bigger, bought a few more sets of lights and came home. After lunch, I assembled the new tree while hubby disassembled the old one. I popped more popcorn and strung more lines of the white stuff while hubby tranfered light sets and added more.

Finally, after several days of waiting, I broke out the ornaments and we went to work. Finally, as the sun was fading, the tree was done.

It's been an adventure for sure. Hopefully over the next few days I'll have a photo or two to share.

Hope your holiday decorating is going well. :)