...to think that having Christmas lights in your garden...

[Fraidylady]

...is like making a bonfire with £10 notes?

[neuroticmumof3]

My neighbours definitely believe in more is more. Two houses up the road have joined forces this year and have a combined effort stretching across the front of both their gardens. Delightfully ghastly. My son calls me a ghetto snob.

[DartsAgain]

The downside to outdoor lights is that I can't sleep well unless it's dark. Any neighbour leaving lights on all night would soon find me a whimpering wreck from lack of sleep.

I think I'm the only person in the street who cheered when our council began switching the street lights off between midnight and 5:30am!

[ByTheWay1]

We have cherry red lights in the tree outside the front door, and red leds round the porch - and the kids have indoor lights in their windows (snowman/rudolph/santa), oooo - and we have 2 or 3 indoor sets in the living room window and 300 leds on the tree and I wrapped some battery ones round the garland on the mantlepiece... and .....and......and.... looks great to me, the neighbours probably hate them, but I-don't-care!! They go off by 10pm.

I want some rope lights along the guttering, but hate heights!!!!

[tillyferTINSELpants]

We don't do outside lights, but I do put some in the window. Nobody goes overboard round here!

I do like this guy's lights though (sorry for Daily Fail link!)

[ouryve]

The people across the road usually put up loads of lights at the beginning of December. Half of them are knackered by Christmas day. They get taken down again about March-ish.

[startail]

I refuse to calculate DHs contribution to global warming caused by his Christmas light habit.
They are far too much fun!

[LineRunnerCrouchingReindeer]

I've just dragged my tree down from under my bed, and unboxed it.

It looked wittily retro last year. This year it just looks horrible. Perhaps draping it in excessive lighting will help?

[PastGrace]

Keep can I come to your house this Christmas? I'm going home but my mum's trying to fob me off with just one tree and I am NOT HAPPY. We normally have two, once or twice we've had three.

[KeepInMindItsAlmostChristmas]

Duck I have 7 feet trees in the living room and den and a 6 foot one in the kitchen

Come December if it don't move I decorate it

[LineRunnerCranberrySauce]

My smile would wobble at £17 a week. I'd be re-thinking the whole thing faster than an artificial flickering candle.

I reckon a drink door is a form of trademan's entrance reserved for the Tesco delivery driver who has all the boxes of booze.

Maybe you vomit out of it aswell.

[duckdodgers]

keepinmind are they all inside? We only have 1 7 foot artificial tree inside but have another 2 real ones we planted in the garden that we decorate to!

We have been doing it for years now and ok its extra electricity but theres no way it cost £34 an hour to run, we have them on for an average of 5 hours a day from the 1st December - I have never had an electricity bill of £5000 thank god

This year we ahve a charity tin but we keep it in the window, I didn't trust it in the garden.

[PastGrace]

There's a house near us that does a huge display every year. They have a charity tin chained to the door so no-one can steal it (and signs that there is CCTV - not sure if that's true or not) but everyone drives over and parks up and they let people walk through their garden. It's fab - better than any of the lights in town.

I think done properly they can be a sort of public service

[BalloonSlayer]

I thought I remember reading there was a news article about houses that are absolutely covered in lights.

A couple were saying that they didn't mind the expense . . . they loved their lights. The interviewer then said the TV company had worked out that the lights were costing the couple £17 per half hour in electricity. Apparently their smiles wobbled visibly.

[tardisjumper]

we have got solar powered ones. We have them on the tree but they can be used outside. [smug emoticon]

[Angelswings]

Counting down the days until we put them up next weekend.

[TheHumancatapult]

i can not wait till next year to put lights up on my house and not going to care what anyone thinks ds3 will love them

[monkeyLFDTwench]

I love that film keepinmind. We always watch it a few weeks before Christmas - today will be the day! We like to tour the neighbourhood looking for the most outlandish displays, and when spotted even ds3 (3) knows to shout "Griswald!"

"Lot of those little lights aren't twinkling, Clark ...."

"I know Dad, and thank you for noticing ...."

[KeepInMindItsAlmostChristmas]

I have 4 Christmas trees

[duckdodgers]

KeepInMindItsAlmostChristmas a poster after my own heart , us to

Our cabling problems were solved a few years ago when DH bought this amazing outdoor box for plugging things into - it has 24 separate sockets - so all you have to plug into the house is the 2 leads coming form it!

And I always switch my lights off at 10pm so no keeping anyone awake.

[KeepInMindItsAlmostChristmas]

We give National Lampoons a run for their money

[Rhubarbgarden]

Londonmumsie they are by Ecosavers.

[ViviPrudolf]

We were debating putting lights in our tree at the end of the drive, I even had the box in my hand in the shop but decided against it as we'd have to faff about with extra long power leads and it would mean cables across the drive so decided against it.

We got home yesterday to find the neighbours had done it! The tree only hangs about 25% over their side, and as such the lights are primarily on that side but even so it looks fab and our pals came round and said "love your lights"

Result!

[Moln]

i really NEED to know what a drink door is.
.