One thing I’ve realized about myself during this period of working from home/constantly being at home is that I tend to plan things. A lot.
Like, when I decided that we needed to decorate for Christmas weeks earlier than we typically do—partly because we would be home instead of traveling, partly because, well, why not—I started researching how to hang Christmas lights. And do DIY-type decorations.
Now, I didn’t want that kind of house with all the Christmas crap all over it. In fact, I had something very specific in mind: In Lake Park, Florida, there is a neighborhood that decorates so fervently for Christmas that you have to park your car and walk through it to truly see what’s been done. One year, I spied large ornaments in a tree, crafted of rope lights wrapped around beach balls.
I’ve been obsessed with these ever since. But, I’ve never had the time, money or inclination to do it. Until now, dammit!
The problem is, I saw these a good 15 years ago. Technology has changed a lot since then, and materials have also changed. Rope lights are pretty expensive, too, and I couldn’t quite figure out how they would have lit so many in a tree—how does one string several strings of lights together without having other lights no in between?
Wow, see? I’m already overthinking this, and I’m not even going to go into the TV shows I watched or Pinterest/Google searches I did to try and figure all this out. I did find a website that sells any sort of beach ball you could possibly want, hough, so there’s that.
Is that a penis tree?
Probably. But I promise, it wasn’t intentional. Aspart of my desire to have oversized lit Christmas balls hanging from my house, I also wanted to wrap a tree in lights—another feature of this magical Florida neighborhood.
I settled on Green and purple—a bit of an homage to Florida, but also colors I knew I could reliably get from my local Home Depot if what I ordered online wasn’t enough. I also knew I wanted to have white lights on the porch but wrap green up the tree. the “balls” would be purple.
And no, not those kind of balls. You hang Christmas balls on your tree, don’t you? Get your mind out of the gutter!
In the end, I didn’t order the beach balls (I’ll put that on the list for next year, though). Instead, I took a tip from a DIY website and used chickenwire fencing to shape misshapen spheres that could hold the lights. I wrapped them up in my kitchen in about 5 minutes and then…well, just strung them together.
Did I mean for the tree outside my house to look like a penis? No, I promise, I didn’t. But 2020 is such a shitty year. And it just happens that the tree has two main branches coming off its sides, perfect for holding something festive. Luckily, I was able to score a pretty tall ladder from my neighbor.
Next year, though, I’ll probably hang three from the tree. Just to be safe.
