Decorating outside, the dilemma

[AlleyKat]

Nothing is prettier than the outside of a well decorated house at Christmas time!

I had every intention of decorating the outside of our house but I'm still on the fence!

As much as I love the look of lights, garland/pine branches and well placed sleighs, etc., I can't stand the thought of having to remove frozen strands of lights and "pretties" when Mother Nature decides "it's time"!

Before Halloween, I jokingly told a few family members that I was going to put Christmas lights on the bushes. Next year, I just may do that!

What I'd like to know is; how early/late do you decorate the outside of your house for the holiday season and when do you dismantle it all?

 

[Rora]

We decorate the day after Thanksgiving and take down our decorations usually by the first of the year! I hate to see it all go.

 

[Darsa]

Depends for us; if there's a whole lot of snow out there, it stays 'til spring or the next significant melting. We only do lights on the roof-edge and on some of the shrubs, so it's not a big deal to leave them until we won't get frostbite taking them down

 

[puffkin]

We put ours out the first warm weekend in November and take them down the first warm weekend in January. If snow is predicted we try to get them down before that occurs. It doesn't take long at all to get the stuff down. WE just pull it down then drag it into the much warmer garage to organize and pack away.

Even though ours go up early and potentially stay up late, we only light the lights Thanksgiving-New Years.

 

[HM]

Weekend after Thanksgiving. Usually take down second week in January.
We use lights around the front porch railing and "candy cane" lights down part of the sidewalk. In our old house we had a "christmas tree" at the corner of the house and we strung lights on it too.

We have nieghbors that decorate their bushes....looks nice.

 

[elgerber]

I live in MN so warm weekends in January rarely occur LOL. Ours are on the roof the weekend before Thanksgiving, the porch and trees, the weekend of Thanksgiving, and they usually stay there until March when we get a slightly warmer weekend. They go off the weekend of New Years though.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I try and get them up before Thanksgiving. They come down after Jan 1st whenever we can get to it.

Here in MO, you usually have some decent days to get to them.

 

[momrek06]

This is why I love living in Southern California!!! This will be our 2nd Xmas in SoCal after relocating from Boston, MA. I thought coming here the natives might not do allot with Xmas as every day is a beach day.

Well I sure was wrong.

SoCal does it up HUGE here with the decorating. It is absolutely undeniably beautiful. Even all the Malls besides the decorations....their parking lots have Christmas music playing all the time. No need to worry about the elements. It is piped in through the ground. So festive.

Also not to mention you can decorate any day you want and not have to worry about freezing your fingers off as you head outside.