Christmas lights
Our outdoor Christmas decorations are pretty much all done now. I added a few new lights this year, including wrapping our mailbox in a lighted garland and twin strands of “warm white” and “cool white” LED lights around our tree by the street. These required installing a new outlet on our mailbox post, which is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. I also replaced the photovoltaic sensor on the mailbox post because the old one was faulty and the mailbox lights stayed on all the time.
My favorite new lights this year, though, are the flicker flame bulbs I put in the mailbox post light and on either side of the garage on the carriage light fixtures. They don’t put out much light, and I’ll put back the CFL bulbs I usually use after Christmas, but with all of the other lights out there, I figured we didn’t need any additional light for visibility. I also replaced the white floodlights we always have illuminating our mini-palm trees by the porch with red, green, and blue floods. The normal white lights will also go back after Christmas.
With all of the lights I have out there, Beth has started calling me Clark W. Griswold, but I don’t think I’m anywhere near that level of getting carried away. Besides, when I put out new lights or decorations, I usually retire old ones. Our lighted snowman was falling apart (literally) and was thrown out after last year. I also no longer put out the lighted snowflakes and have been cannibalizing them for spare light bulbs.
I really like the newer LED bulbs that we started using a couple of years ago and have been using more of them. I especially like the combination of the “cool white” of the LEDs in contrast to the warmer white light of the incandescents and the “warm white” LEDs (which are new for us this year).
Here’s a photo I took earlier this evening:
It wasn’t quite dark yet when I took it, but it is very difficult to get a good photo of the lights in full darkness. You can see the difference between the cool white LEDs on the icicles over the garage compared to the warm white incandesecnts on the raindeer on the right. There are also some flickering white lights on a tree on the other side of the garage (next to my car) that are not in this photo.
I took a short video of the flicker flame bulbs which shows them off a bit. It’s very blurry for some reason, but I really like how the orange “flames” look on the mailbox over the lighted garland and with the blue-ish light from the LED icicles. The odd perspective of the video came from me using the camera turned on its side.
Flicker flame bulbs