At Last - Chrismas

One of the very few down sides of being an artist crafts-person is that things get pretty busy before Christmas.  Thus, my lack of blogging.  It's now too late to ship so I've closed the shop for a week and I've been able to work on non shop related Christmas for family.  Since some of the recipients read this blog I'll have to wait to post pictures of some cute items but I can show you some Christmas preparations.

 
 What do you do when when your beautiful 9 year old pre-lit Christmas tree quits lighting?  Last year there was one little string that wouldn't light but this year there were only a few bits that did light.  I love this tree.  It's fat and fluffy, new ones are tall and slim, and it's still in good shape - except for the lights, so. . . I decided to take the non working lights off and just string new lights on like we did in the good old days before pre-lit trees.  I ended up with piles and piles of stripped off lights.  It took me a couple of evenings watching TV and clipping the lights off the branches to get it finished.

Then on to putting the lights up.  I think there can't be too many lights on a tree but don't know how to figure out how many I need.  After shopping 3 stores I found all the white lights sold out.  Plan B, I got 10 strings of 100 lights, plus I knew I had some colored strings in the Christmas boxes.  Not nearly enough.  I bought 10 more boxes, then had to go back and get 3 more.  I've got 2300 mini lights on the tree.  BLHubby thinks it's too much but I feel I was a bit restrained. 

Now to put the ornaments on.