Lights
So one other thing that happened this year is that M started putting up holiday lights. Last year, M did a lot of decorating inside the house, with the lights on our chuppah supplemented by her Christmas Tree and assorted window lights.
This year, M found an outdoor outlet under one of our front windows, which I had somehow completely missed. It even has a switch in the basement for manual control. She also saw a few hooks mounted underneath the eaves of our weird decorative roof pieces. This meant she could move to outdoor decorating.
First, for Halloween she put some orange and purple lights on our front bushes, plus a giant spider on the front door and a spider web going from the railing to the bushes, held down by decorative gourds no less.
Next up was the various winter holidays. Her mother gave M some money for her birthday, which she used to purchase a lot of outdoor lights and some more hooks to mount on the eaves. In quick order we had:
- Three green trees on the inside of one of our front windows using the old chuppah lights.
- Lights hanging from the hooks of that eave across the front of the house. She added a few extra lights too.
- Some festive holiday lights on the bushes.
- A string of lights along our fence line from the house all the way to the gate.
- Our other front window has a festive light display and a big light up star.
On top of that, M and her mother put up M's Christmas Tree the day after Thanksgiving. We slid the baby jail toward the center of the room so we could set up the tree in the closed off space between the jail and the fireplace. Birdie loves to stand at the wall of the jail and look at the tree safely out of reach. The hanukkiah (my parents gave us one of theirs) went in the front window near the tree, again safely away from anywhere Birdie can currently reach under her own power.
That's the extent of M's permanent light installation plans for this year, although we are set up to do luminarias if our neighbors do them again at the end of the month, or even if they don't. All of this was daisy chained off that one outdoor outlet, so we probably still want to get additional outdoor outlets installed around the house at some point in the future. We also probably need a real stepladder instead of just a stepstool.
It should be noted that M comes by her lighting tendencies naturally. When she was little, her father won several neighborhood awards for decorating their house. He provided some troubleshooting assistance when he was up for Thanksgiving. I don't think there are any awards to be won in our neighborhood, but several of our neighbors have commented on them favorably when I've been out walking with the kiddo.
This year, M found an outdoor outlet under one of our front windows, which I had somehow completely missed. It even has a switch in the basement for manual control. She also saw a few hooks mounted underneath the eaves of our weird decorative roof pieces. This meant she could move to outdoor decorating.
First, for Halloween she put some orange and purple lights on our front bushes, plus a giant spider on the front door and a spider web going from the railing to the bushes, held down by decorative gourds no less.
Next up was the various winter holidays. Her mother gave M some money for her birthday, which she used to purchase a lot of outdoor lights and some more hooks to mount on the eaves. In quick order we had:
- Three green trees on the inside of one of our front windows using the old chuppah lights.
- Lights hanging from the hooks of that eave across the front of the house. She added a few extra lights too.
- Some festive holiday lights on the bushes.
- A string of lights along our fence line from the house all the way to the gate.
- Our other front window has a festive light display and a big light up star.
On top of that, M and her mother put up M's Christmas Tree the day after Thanksgiving. We slid the baby jail toward the center of the room so we could set up the tree in the closed off space between the jail and the fireplace. Birdie loves to stand at the wall of the jail and look at the tree safely out of reach. The hanukkiah (my parents gave us one of theirs) went in the front window near the tree, again safely away from anywhere Birdie can currently reach under her own power.
That's the extent of M's permanent light installation plans for this year, although we are set up to do luminarias if our neighbors do them again at the end of the month, or even if they don't. All of this was daisy chained off that one outdoor outlet, so we probably still want to get additional outdoor outlets installed around the house at some point in the future. We also probably need a real stepladder instead of just a stepstool.
It should be noted that M comes by her lighting tendencies naturally. When she was little, her father won several neighborhood awards for decorating their house. He provided some troubleshooting assistance when he was up for Thanksgiving. I don't think there are any awards to be won in our neighborhood, but several of our neighbors have commented on them favorably when I've been out walking with the kiddo.