Christmas on Picardy Drive

It's that time again: the holiday lights come out and make our street sparkle!

Our street has been putting up holiday lights and connecting lights from house to house as a "friendship chain" since the Depression and when we were in escrow over the 2008 holiday season I drove by to see what we'd been getting into and I fell in love. I LOVE all the twinkly lights!

Each year Chris and I have dutifully hung up lights and it always gets me so excited :) I thought I'd go all out this year, but we just didn't have the time and our front yard still looks like poop, so when I was staring longingly at all the fun decoration ideas at stores, Chris assured me, "Next year, we'll get all this stuff next year."

Last weekend we brought out our lights

(see what I mean when I said our front yard looks like poop?)

We had to throw away 3 strands of lights because they were broken...

...AFTER ONLY ONE YEAR OF BEING USED! All this made in China crap is really pissing me off. We might splurge and buy LED lights (hopefully we can snag them on sale) for next year. Our neighbor has them and he really likes them. Does anyone have good, reliable twinkly light suggestions?

Luckily we had enough in our bin to get all the way around our house and so Chris climbed up the ladder and used our trusty tool to help him hang them: a screw on the end of a 2x4 (seriously, it's works amazingly, especially because our house is just a little tall)

And I hung my $9 wreath I made by getting stuff on clearance from Michael's (score!)


Then all the neighbors flipped the switch



And the parade of cars visiting has started

I love that so many people come by our street to check out the lights, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :) Not all the houses are lit up yet, but usually by the week of Christmas about 90% are, which is pretty awesome, and that's when there are lots of visitors. Christmas Eve you could probably walk down the street faster than you can drive it. It's awesome.

My favorite view is the one from our doorway because we're super lucky to have the tree that the city of Oakland lights...

...is right in front

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!