Yikes! Only 8 more days until the lights get turned on, and there is still so much more to do! However, spies were able to snap a couple of pictures while part of the house was lit up, but sources tell us this is only half of the total lights.

We braved the chill, rain, sleet and snow to start on the exterior illumination. Using one of these:

makes this MUCH easier (and safer). Thanks to Riggsby Construction for use of the lift.

Of course, after everything was packed up, a strand of lights on the peak (which WAS working) is no longer working, so I need to find a monkey to shimmy up there and replace them.

Speaking of a strand going out, this was a brand new Menards 70 count LED C-9 strand. I bought 6 rolls of them last year after Christmas, and three of them have the same problems. They work on the bench and while putting them up, then all of a sudden half of the strand goes dark. It appears that the sockets are poorly constructed since I had a wire easily pull out of a socket, and if you wiggle the sockets, it may illuminate again, but any movement causes it to go dark again. This is frustrating when you have the whole strand put up (and was working) only to discover it broken afterwards. This happened three times. I guess I have a LOT of extra white LED's now :(

What could it be? Find out in upcoming weeks......

Since I ordered bare-bones D-Light controllers this year, I needed to enclose them in something. The perfect waterproof (and cheap!) enclosure I could come up with was a mailbox. So, to fit everything in, I had to be a little creative: