Are you getting ready to set up your Christmas yard decorations this year?
Welcome to Christmas Yard Decorations, where you’ll find the very latest in outdoor Xmas decor. From Christmas inflatables to LED string lighting, we’ve got you covered.
Are you getting ready to start decorating for the holidays? I know my family is. And especially after a year like this, I’m really looking forward to a little holiday cheer….and it won’t be long now!
Christmas yard decorations have sure come a long way since when we were kids. In fact, this year your display might even include solar powered tree lights, life-sized LED Christmas scenes, and even holographic and 3-D yard art! It’s really never been easier to find a fantastic variety of outdoor Christmas yard decor to fit every style, theme, and budget.
Here’s a look at what’s new this year in outdoor Xmas decor:
HOLIDAY YARD ART: Want to have your neighbors driving by your home just to admire your holiday decorations? Are you looking for the easiest way to make a bold statement in your front yard this Christmas? Are you bored with the “same old display”? Holiday themed yard art is the biggest bang for your buck in the world of outdoor Christmas decorations. So put away that tangled ball of string lighting and have some fun this year with yard art.
INFLATABLE DISPLAY: Tie these down, fire up the motorized fan, and watch your kids’ eyes light up when they see an 8-foot inflatable Santa waving to the neighborhood from your front yard. But this year you’ll find much more than just Santa popping up in youre neighborhood — In fact, you’re likely to find Homer Simpson, Charlie Brown, Spongebob Squarepants, Winnie the Pooh, Elmo…and many of other huge inflatable characters that will put a smile on even the Grinch’s face this season.
LIFESIZE ANIMAL DIPLAYS: Animal displays are perfect for a secular yard diplay. Imagine a beautiful lighted menagerie of life-sized reindeer, horses, penguins, swans, lions, and bears displayed in your front lawn this holiday! Many animal displays today actually feature thousands of energy efficient LED lights, which make these the “greenest” decorations you will find anywhere.
STRING LIGHTS: Today string lighting is available in dozens of colors and hundred of shapes and styles, and you can often the color of the string as well to make it “disappear” when installed on trees, gutters, window frames, etc. Also, consider replacing some of your old halogen string lights with energy efficient LED string lighting this years…you will never again spend 20 minutes trying to figure out which bulb is burnt out. Also, LED lighting is much brighter than standard string lighting, and will pay for itself in energy savings within a couple of seasons.
ICICLE LIGHTS: Pull that ladder out of the garage, because it’s time to hang the icicle lights! String these beauties along a roofline, railing, or front porch, and watch your house “pop”! You will find icicle lights in many differnt colors and styles to match any holiday theme or color scheme, and this year they are even available as LED lights.
NET LIGHTS: Net lights are one of those things that will make you wonder how you ever lived without them before. It may seem like these popular Chiristmas lights have been around forever, but in fact they are a recent addition to the outdoor Christmas decoration arsenal. They are easy to install over bushes and shrubs, and provide instant curb appeal to your home during the holiday season for years to come.
WREATHS AND BOWS: Wreaths are probably the oldest and most traditional of all Christmas decorations, symbolizing new life, strength, and hospitality. These were first made of evergreens and hung with lighted candles to symbolize the idea that life survives even in the coldest of winters. A traditional Christmas wreath hung on your front door will make your home look beautiful and welcoming to all of your holiday guests this season.
At our house the holiday season starts on a Saturday morning in mid-November: you’ll find me in my garage, testing the colorful strings of lights, checking the extension cords, and unpacking a the large boxes of yard decorations. And then it’s installation time: hanging icicle lights from a ladder off the front porch, stringing the trees in the yard with white lights, hanging a wreath on the front door, covering the bushes with colorful net lighting, and setting up the cheerful Santa display on the lawn.
Hundreds of feet of extension cords later, as the sun is setting low in the sky, the moment of truth arrives — Plug it in and fire it up! It’s magic time, and the kids will gather in the front yard to watch as the front lawn is transformed into a Winter Wonderland. Afterwards, head inside for a cup of hot chocolate and look outside to admire your work.
THESE 7 INSTALLATION TIPS WILL SAVE YOU TIME AND MONEY THIS YEAR:
My favorite part of the holiday season is getting the lights and Christmas yard decorations set up in the front yard, and every year I seem to be unpacking these boxes earlier than the year before. It used to be that the day after Thanksgiving was the soonest you would see lights being hung around the neighborhood. Today, it seems as if Christmas decorations are pushing Halloween costumes out of the way in the aisles of your local Mega-Stuff Mart.
If you are looking for some new outdoor Christmas decorations this year, you may be surprised at how may choices are out there to choose from — From LED and solar lighting, to wire-frame reindeer…and from life-size carolers, to an endless selection of Christmas inflatables, today you can find a huge variety of outdoor decorating ideas to fit every style, theme, and budget.
But before you start shopping for you new lawn decorations, take a moment to plan exactly how you want your front yard to look like when your in-laws pull in the driveway on Christmas Day. Here are some tips you can use to make sure that your Christmas yard decorations will be the talk of the neighborhood this year.
First things first: do you have access to electricity in your front yard? If you do, great! You’re off to a great start already! If you don’t, you have a few options:
- Select decorations that do not require electricity, such as large tree ornaments and an unlit nativity scene. It’s a good idea to set these up under a streetlight, or else close to the house where they can be illumiated by and exterior light after dark. Many homeowners combine these non-electrical decorations with the electrical ones to make their front yard stand out in the daytime as well as at night.
- There are many new solar-powered lighting options available today as well…These come in handy to light up random trees and shrubs all over your yard.
- If all else fails, you can do what my neighbor does to light a big evergreen tree in his back yard: Run a couple hundred feet of extension cord out to your location (be sure to use 12-guage wire for this!)
If power is not an issue, then your outdoor decorating options are almost limitless. If this is your first outdoor Chistmas display, start small by lighting up a few trees in the front yard. You’ll also get a lot of bag for your buck by installing net lights over bushes and shrubs close to the house. Icicle lighting looks great hanging from a front porch, While wreaths and bows can really dress up a front door.
However, if you’re ready to make your front yard look like the North Pole this year, then more power to ya! If you’re overwhelmed by the huge variety of Christmas lawn decorations to choose from, it’s often useful to pick a theme first: Santa Clause, the Nativity, holiday characters, toy soldiers, gingerbread cookies, reindeer, candy canes, snowmen, Hanukkah, Kwanza…and the list goes on and on.
More choices await you: White lights? Colored lights? Traditional or contemporary? Will you include airblown inflables this year? Do you want to keep this Chrismas display low-key, or will it be visible from outer space? And there’s one more thing to consider…your spouse may want to have some input as well on what the front lawn looks like three months out of the year.
Here’s a final word on purchasing your new holiday decorations…You get what you pay for. This is a safety issue as much as anything else: today many products are manufacted all over the world to different (and often poor) quality standards. Sometimes they do not even come with a standard UL electrical rating. Therefore, if you find an inflatable snowman being sold at an incredible price from a questionable vendor, you may have reason to be suspicious about the quality — and safety — of this particular snowman.
Enjoy your decorating, and be sure to get up your Christmas lights and your holiday display installed before the snow flies! And here’s wishing you a wonderful 2009 Holiday Season, and a very prosperous New Year to all.
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