Christmas Tip: Tree Lights

I love Christmas tree lights. I don’t know as that one can ever have enough. In fact, my parents finally set a rule for me when I was growing up that I couldn’t have light strands totaling more than 1,000 lights in my bedroom. I’d take a staple gun & weave them across my ceiling, around the walls, on multiple small trees in my room, etc. Dad called it a fire hazard; I called him Scrooge. Potayto-Potahto.

At any rate, lights can be a royal pain in the butt to get on a tree—and pre-lit trees never have enough for my liking. So, I came up with an alternative to this dilemma a few years back. My solution: icicle lights. Yes, those very same lights you can put outside of your house also make for a quick fix to an under-lit tree. (Make sure you get the ones with the green cords & the same light color as those already on your tree.) While I do love clear Christmas lights, I do make the exception to do solid-colored lights when it matches the tree’s décor. For instance, I have blue lights that I put in the center of the tree (so that it glows on the inside) when I put my blue-themed ornament set on it. Then I put the clear icicle lights on it, so as to not overdo it with the colored kind.

How does this work, you ask? I shall tell you, kind reader. Fret not. First, you can eliminate any visions you may have of these strands of lights just dangling willy-nilly to and fro from the tree. That’s not what we’re going for here. Refer to my Christmas Décor blog entry for a picture of my tree. That should give you a picture of what we’re going for:

http://kadertot.blogspot.com/2010/11/christmas-tip-decor-purchasingdecoratin.html

What you’re going to do is, starting at the bottom, somewhat loosely wind the icicle lights around the tree, using the back of the tree to hide plugs, transitions to other branch rows, etc. Then, you start at the bottom and work the lights into the tree. Slide the cord back in, working the dangling strands into the branches, so that you get more lighting from the inside out. Don’t let them drop down or dangle or anything—just weave the cords into the branches. You may find that, when you get to the top, you have extra length. That’s just fine—work it back down the tree, making sure to stretch it out as much as possible so that it doesn’t look like a huge cluster of lights on one section and not on the other. It’s a super easy solution to adding hundreds of lights to the tree while only using a couple of strands. (If it helps in determining how many you need, I have two strands—not sure of length, but whatever’s standard—for a 7.5’ tree.)

The other part of Christmas lights that can be frustrating is when it comes to storing them. Many end up with globs of lights that are knotted together and just total messes. There’s no need for it when there’s a free solution. Get a cardboard box and cut the lids flaps off of it. (The bigger, the better.) You can cut a small inlet on the edge of it, in which you would slide the end of the cord that has an open plug, giving it an anchor point. If you don’t cut the inlet, no biggie. The cord will stay in place when you get it wrapped around the flap enough. Pull the cord as tight as possible while you’re wrapping it—and wrapping the long-way on the flap works the easiest. Be absolutely sure that you start with the open socket, as you want to end with the actual plug. That way, when you go to use them the next time, you’ll have the end that you need right off the bat, without having to unravel them to get to the other end.

To secure the end of it, take a couple of feet of the cord and wrap it around the flap from side-to-side so that it pulls the wrapped lights that went on end-to-end towards the flap and keeps them more secure. Then, tuck the end into one of the loops. When you go to put the lights on the next time, you simple have to untuck that end, unravel those couple of feet and then you can unravel the rest of the lights as you work your way around the tree. It works the same when you go to take them off—ravel them onto the flap as you undecorate. You are saving yourself a bunch of time and headache by doing so!