Christmas Yard Decorations

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:

1. 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 illuminated by and exterior light after dark.    Many homeowners combine these non electric Xmas decorations with the electrical ones to make their front yard stand out in the daytime as well as at night.
2. There are many new solar-powered Christmas lighting options available today as well…These come in handy to light up random trees and shrubs all over your yard.
3. 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 holiday decorating options are almost limitless.  If this is your first outdoor Christmas 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.

More choices await you: White lights?  Colored lights?  Traditional or contemporary?  Do you want to keep this Christmas 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 manufactured 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 and safe Holiday Season, and a very prosperous New Year to all.

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