Back when we were handing out Halloween candy, and a few neighbors were outside, I floated the idea of being one of those streets where we do "community lights" and hang lights from house to house and tree to tree. Teresea, who is like Mrs. Christmas was totally on board, and Vince across the street said his wife Alicia would love it. Around the week before Thanksgiving, I started talking about it in terms of reality and not "this would be something cool to do" in the abstract form. I started chatting with other neighbors, seeing how they'd feel about it. And before I knew it, our house was Christmas light central. I had neighbors dropping lights off left and right.
That did however mean Asa and I would be the one checking and organizing all the lights. We started working on it Thanksgiving week. It's worth noting everyone else had theirs neatly packaged up, and we were the only lights that needed untangling. Apparently we're the Christmas light rebels.
After some hard work on the lights, Asa and I did head out for our free Aroma Joes coffee. It's nice to be able to ride our bikes down there. I'm loving all this new bike-ridable stuff. I hear something new is going in across the street there, too. Hopefully it's something good. Speaking of treats, Jasmin sent along some chocolates for us. It's so sweet of her to think of us, but she really doesn't have to send us anything. Still, I won't say I haven't enjoyed them.
Obviously after Thanksgiving we have a lot of little things around- so we had a few charcuterie lunches.
And day after day we went out and did a little more work on the lights. I had them all color coded and catagorized by Saturday.
And then we got to work. Our first thought was we would do our tree first- a jumping off point- and then start connecting other trees. Asa was our resident tree climber for the whole week, and totally killed it. (In fact, I took a picture of him in all the trees he climbed this week, and it's a lot). He is a bit sore after it all though. He was just barely getting warmed up with our first tree.
We decided the easiest way to bridge the gap from our house to Sam's next door was to come up to the peak of our garage and over- so Asa did climb on the roof as well.
And after one day, I felt like we had something going.
We took a break from the lights on Sunday. We had planned to do them after the 1:00 games were over, but then it poured down rain. So instead our Sunday was spent getting our free Dunkin Coffee and having a taco bar.
Well, that and Asa and Calib arguing over spots on the couch.
Monday some of my good black Friday items started to arrive. I finally got myself a Kuerig, so when Asa isn't up (or around) to make me coffee, I can do it easy peasy. It's also great for Hayden when Asa and I are up early and cash an entire French Press Pot before Hayden is up, and he still wants a cup.
Hayden was super helpful on Monday. We got all the Christmas decorations up inside, and then at the end of the night he hung out with me on the outside couch. He even made a little charcuterie plate for us, got me some water in wine glass and then put on a movie. My kids, man, they are THE. BEST.
Tuesday I had to run out to get stuff to make my annual Ainsworth share of cookies for the cookie boxes. But, since I was out anyway, I did stop by for free Wawa Coffee Tuesdays. (Man, I'm just racking in the free stuff lately).
And since we were already at Wawa, and Asa had a reward for a free shorti sub, we also had lunch.
After getting all my groceries, I did a bunch of yardwork. I cut down a bunch of stuff that was over growing in the side yard, and then I got to work on my succulent "wall". It's basically an old bed spring hanging on the fence, but it's filled with air plants and succulents wrapped in burlap (which I got by cutting up an old potato sack). This, my friends, is recycling at it's finest. I have big dreams that I'll learn to propogate succulents and fill this whole thing. I'll keep you posted.
Since we were also coming up on December, I had to make our annual Christmas punch board, too. I actually asked the kids if they wanted to still do this (you know because 2/3 of them are adults), and they were like, completely offended at the prospect that we wouldn't do it. They said we HAD to have the auction, and Calib asked me "what are you trying to ruin Christmas", so I went out to the dollar store, got my supplies, and we'll be doing this for another year.
The punch board wasn't the only thing I've been crafting. I had all kinds of gift giving things to do. My senior year in high school, I had this awesome English teacher fresh out of college (so she was just like 5 years older than us), and she was amazing. She was the first teacher who totally let you use cliffs notes (as a help to know what the hell some authors were getting at sometimes), and she played all these fun games with us. Anyway, her and her family have taken part in a lot of our projects over the years, and when she saw my library shirt from our library reopening, she asked how to get one. I was happy to make her one as a thank you for being such an awesome teacher. It arrived this week and she posted the sweetest thing online.
I also got around to sending T'Ola her going away gift, and Layla her 4th birthday present. Can you believe she's four already?!
Calib's been at work late the last few nights, so Etta has been hanging out with me while Asa and Ellie are couch buddies. But the other night, Dipper thought it would be cool to come hang out too. Etta was nervous, but did really well, even when Dipper was poking her in the face. Etta is also doing pretty well with her new puppy neighbors Emmett and Tyson. Obviously she doesn't hang out with them, but she's getting so she isn't super reactive when she hears them barking, so that's good!!
Wednesday morning we were back out untangling and testing the last of the lights that neighbors had dropped off, hoping to start getting some from tree to tree that evening. Unfortunately, we got rained out yet again.
While Asa checked on his students, I got to the business of baking all my assigned cookies. This year we're down-sizing and each only making three kinds of cookies. I got peanut brittle, rice rispies and the peanut butter crackers.
And I had them all done in one day. It was amazing! (Also, I made peanut brittle for the first time ever!)
The rain did stop Wednesday night long enough to make it down to the Boba Truck. You know my love for the pretzle truck, but the Boba truck is a close second. Asa, Peyton, Calib and I all walked down there to get some and then we came home and watched our first Christmas movie of the season- Scrooged.
I decided since I was only doing 12 activities on the punch board, I'd have a few extra things every week too. This weeks event went on the chalk board.
Thursday was a super busy day around here. I mailed all my cookies, the first time in the history of cookie baking they were made and sent by December 1.
And then we had a bunch of errands to run (though we did stop by for some free All You Can Swirl).
Errands included registering the new car in Florida. We're officially offical now!
And then we got to the business of putting up more lights. We decided to try stringing the lights from Vinces to our house first to get a handle for how well it would work. We have to make sure the lights are at least 14 feet off the ground for trucks and such (it's an HOA rule), so we did some measuring and planned out our steps. But before we knew it all kinds of neighbors were out helping and directing and offering extension cords, ladders, and even offering to use their electrical outlets.
Fun fact: that woman up in the tree with Asa is another Teresea (we have a lot of those in the neighborhood!) and we met her about five minutes before she acsended the ladder to help out. She moved in four houses down from us in October, and we hadn't met yet.
By the end of Thursday I was feeling pretty good about our lights, but I knew Friday was going to be a big day.
Friday while Asa worked, I made some homemade lemonade and some reindeer cookies for a semi-planned little driveway get together we were hoping to have after all the lights were up.
And then after lunch, Asa got to climbing trees and stringing lights. Here he is in the new neighbors tree (Aka, T'Ola's old tree)...
...and the tree across from that one...
...and then in Sam's tree....
over across the street from Sams....
in BOTH of their trees...
At this point it had basically just been me and Asa out there- though Vince was doing his own tree, he helped us with ladders and held things steady. Calib would show up every once in awhile to hold the lights on the pole so when we were affixing it from tree to tree, cars could still easily make it through (though by the end of the night, we'd have half the neighborhood yelling "Car" every time one came by).
I put up some lights on our front porch, in our bushes and along our palm tree..
And took in all of our work for the day. Except for Vinces tree (on the right in the back there), Asa and I put up all the lights you see. It was funny though, because lots of people drove by telling us how awesome it was, especially letting Vince know. Don't get me wrong, he was very helpful. But it was just funny how many people told Vince it was awesome, while Asa was actively up in a tree. Still, awesome, right?
That multicolor light is literally one strand! It goes on forever!
Now the original plan was to wait to string the over the tree lights until Marcus got home from work. He's a climber- like, for fun and competatively and we had always hoped to get him up there to help string them. But, Asa and Marcus had literal opposite schedules. So we thought we'd put up what we could, and then wait until he got home to do his house. In the meantime though, we put out a holiday spread for everyone around us to come enjoy.
We had hotdogs and hamburgers, and snacks. Of course the homemade lemonade and cookies as well. It was a nice night for it, and we all got to enjoy the lights. It was really awesome, because people walking by and driving by would stop to tell us how great it looked, and they were so excited Blue Spring Drive was finally getting in on the community lights. I just wanted to thank all my immediate neighbors for their help, reaching out to the neighbors I didn't know as well to see if we could climb in their trees, providing lights and extension cords, letting us share the electricity cost of it all, and just general helpfulness. Everyone was pretty all in on this crazy idea of mine- and then were so complimentary of how it turned out. Jayme literally told me "Congratulations" and it just made me so happy.
We had done a lot, but I did still have one giant string of lights, and Marcus came home to join us all and suggested we keep going with them, so there we were 10 pm- back at it stringing lights throughout the neighborhood. People we didn't even know were getting on board- you'd make it down another house, and the next house would be like "use my tree!" It was great. We had lots of people walking dogs stop by and introduce themselves- and we met a whole lot of new dogs. This light thing has been a real community builder, let me tell you.
A big shout out to the Harvison's for all their help with us last night. Mike comes up with the engineering ideas, Teresea is the untangler and Marcus and Asa climbed the trees and drank together. (We missed you, Kyle!) I was basically just the director of the whole operation. Some refered to me as the mayor, but I don't want to get a big head about it or anything.
Peyton and Calib even got in on it. Peyton was all excited about climbing trees, and Calib did Calib.
In all, the pictures do not do it justice. We have nine houses strung together, and I already know we're spreading lots of Christmas cheer. People stop us all the time to tell us, we've got people taking pictures of it, people who walk their dogs telling us great job, it's just kind of awesome. People who didn't plan on putting up lights, are now throwing them in their bushes just to add to the lights.
I will say, it is bringing together people in my immediate vacinity. Not everyone gets along perfectly well. This is the subburbs after all, we've got our dramas. But, we all came together to do this. Everyone was at our house eating and drinking and enjoying the lights last night. Even tonight, we had a text chain going asking about when we were turning them on, and once we all did, everyone was out there again chatting each other up, and admiring the lights.
If you live around, I highly recommend checking it out. You can't miss it. Round the corner on Blue Spring Drive, and it's all right here. I really wanted to do it to spread some holiday cheer. I first discovered that our neighborhood did things like this in 2020. And 2020 was such a hard year, it just brought back some Christmas joy to see it. And I know we've all moved on from the Pandemic, but there are still a lot of people out there that might not be feeling the Christmas spirit for whatever reason. I just hope if they live on Blue Spring Drive, this gives them a little tiny bit of it when they drive under it every night.
We were up late with the lights last night, cleaning up and everything- but that's good, I'm trying to adjust for our cruise this upcoming week. I have to stay up for karioke! But, for whatever reason, I did not sleep well last night. Luckily, Marcus gifted us these awesome tumblers, so I had plenty of room for my coffee.
We also got some cookies from the Watson's for hosting last night, which was lovely. These are delicious!
We still wanted to thank everyone for getting on board, so we decided it was lemon picking and distributing time.
I picked a whole bowl (even wearing my Lucy's Lemonade shirt!) to go hand out to the neighbors.
Some, we had to leave at front doors.
That's it from here. As always, I leave you with some Waterstraut dog pictures.
Next up: We are going on a (FREE!!!) cruise, and spending some time in Orlando. Asa is taking the whole week off to spend with me on vacation, and it's not even our anniversary or anything. This is life now, apparently, and it's amazing.
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