Thought I would start another thread since the first one is taking a long time to load...

Finally got the tree up today, no ornaments yet but lots-o-lights!!! Here we go....750

Another layer

Another layer ...1650 and growing

1950...still growing

2250 time for another cosmo, pics getting kind of dark, forgot to meeter on a dark spot

2550 and still more to go

Ask The Count

Two Thousand Nine Hundred little white lights Ah, ha, ha haaaaa!

Andrew, that is just beautiful!! It seems the more lights you put on a tree the better it looks, How long did this take you to do?

First, Thanks!

The frist year I put all the lights on the tree, I must have spent at least 10 solid hours working on it. I wound the lights around the branches and out to the tip, then wound back down and out to another tip. I used stings of 150 and each bottom branch got about half a string on them. HH (his Highness, my husband) helped me take it down that year. We labled each branch, he loves his Brother label maker, with the "level" and "branch number". We picked up three 6' rubbermaid coffins, or, huge-ass totes. We take the tree down and carefully place the branches in the tubs. This year, I don't think it even took me an hour to put it together. And, best of all, all the lights worked. One half of one sting was out but I shook it a few times and bingo, it came to life.

Now it needs ornaments, skirt and train. We have a really cool garden train from Germany. Then the rest of the Christmas stuff. We both agreed to try and simplify a little this year and potentially put only a wreath on the front door with a spot on it. Last year I went a little nuts with the outside lights, it was beautiful, but a lot of work. We had a NOTICEABLE increase in our electric bill last year for the time we had the lights on. Since, we have had 4 rate hikes from our electricity supplier and our bills have gone up alot. So in the interest of our wallets, and trying to minimize our carbon footprint, I think we are going to skip outside this year. Although, our neighbor did just put his up today, have to see if I can hold out.

I'll try and get some more pics up as we progress. Also, since I finally figured out how to size-down pics from the 35mm digi cam, I will take some pics of my collection and get them on here.

What is everyone asking Santa for? I'm asking for a Nilfisk/WAP/Attix wet dry!

Andrew,

Beautiful tree. You can never have enough lights. We put up over 17 trees in our house. I put our big tree in our formal living room up the same way, i find it is much easier to get the light on evenly that way. I lost count of how many we put on, I know its over 1000, its a 7ft tree.

Mike

Your tree is beautiful!!! Can't wait to see pics of it decorated.

Morgan

What would Christmas be without a shiny "Hoover" tree?

--Tom

That's a beautiful tree - 2900 lights!! That must be like a space-heater when it's turned on ;-)

family room tree

family room tree

and really aren't doing anything much, other than plugging in the lights outside that were still up from last year.

Some years we really get in the mood and go all out; others it's *yawn* can't be bothered. This is a *yawn* year, so I'll have to recycle the decorations from last year when we really did it all up -- see link. (Let the first page load until the lights on the tree in the first photo start twinkling!)