Prelit Tree Questions

[kayeandjim00]

Thanks so much everyone for the ideas. Some of the ones I had seen I thought were unbelievably expensive and I was worried about them staying lit more than a year. We have horrible luck with lights every year I didn't even think of Sears - I think that might be the one place I haven't been to yet. Will check them out today. Thanks everyone for the information - it's very helpful! Looks like a prelit may be in my future

 

[pooh4evr]

We got a tree the other day from Michaels (craft store) it is 7.5 feet with multi colored lights (800) it was $150. We are pretty pleased with it -yes it is already up- I usually wait until Friday after Thanksgiving but we'll be out of town so we did it early!

 

[Poohnatic]

Thanks so much everyone for the ideas. Some of the ones I had seen I thought were unbelievably expensive and I was worried about them staying lit more than a year. We have horrible luck with lights every year I didn't even think of Sears - I think that might be the one place I haven't been to yet. Will check them out today. Thanks everyone for the information - it's very helpful! Looks like a prelit may be in my future

I just got home from work a little while ago. Tonight, my DH put the tree up that I got at Sears yesterday (7.5, just cut natural spruce 219.99). He 'fluffed' it and it is very hard to tell it's not our usual live tree. It's in a GE box, but it's by Santa's best craft. My internet research showed Santa's best as being priced exactly like the GE's-guess it's because they have the GE stay lit lights.

It has a 5 year warranty, woohoo! The best part is that I won't get the
rash I get from pine sap. I'm allergic to pine trees, but sucked it up to have a nice, live tree. This year, I think we're spending Thanksgiving decorating. The vacuum will get a rest!


Suzanne

 

[marybet]

I think we paid about $300 for our pre-lit tree. It is 7.5 ft., 900 lights. It plays music and the lights flash in time to the tune, or it can just have the lights flashing or "on". It is pretty cool. The lights are all white and they are really bright so we have to put lots of ornaments to offset the lights. One thing to be aware of is that you can't plug anything into the light strings. I have some Hallmark ornaments that plug into the socket from the light string (you remove the bulb and plug the ornament in). Can't do that with the pre-lit. You can always add a string of regular lights and plug the ornaments into that string.

This will be our third year with it - hopefully it will still work! It is sort of a chore to wrestle it back into the box but we have very limited storage space so it is necessary to put it back each year. The worst part of setting it up is separating the little branches, spreading them out to make them look "natural". The tree has lots of little "fingers" and they all have to be sort of fanned out before we can put ornaments on them. That's my least favorite part!

I put my Hallmark ornaments on my pre-lit. I used the extra lights that were in the box, there are directions in the ornaments that tell you how to change the plug to match the light string. You just have to be careful not to plug more than 3 ornaments into one string, and you can tell when you remove a light because the string will go out.