Success!

As many of you recall, Steve had some challenges last year when he tried to put up the Christmas lights on our house and even has the scars to remember it by. The end result was very minimal outside lighting in 2008. This past weekend, he decided to leverage the good weather and take on the task of adding Christmas cheer to our home.

After hearing a suspicious noise, I ran outside to check on him, fearing the worst. Turns out, Steve had a new plan of attack for those lights which involved a totally different approach. I admired his ingenuity and ran back in the house to get my camera to document it.

Instead of moving the ladder along the front of the house while putting up 2 to 3 feet of lights at a time, he instead propped it up on the side and used it to climb onto the roof.

From the roof, he leaned over the edge and using plastic clips he had pre-attached to the lights added the lights to the roof-line.

Some of the clips slid under the shingles and some were clipped to the gutters. As our friend, Lance always says, "Every job is easier if you have the right equipment." Those clips were a good purchase.
The end result, he was able to rather quickly attach lights to the entire front of our house for the first time!
Of course, we can't turn them on until after Thanksgiving (my rule), but he tested them out and they looked great. Steve's outdoor Christmas lighting 2009 was a success!
I asked Steve if he was going to remove the residual evidence (see the black lines) of the ladder sliding down the front of the garage and he said "No", he likes the visual reminder on "how not to use a ladder" to be there.
So grateful no ER visits were involved in the hanging of the lights this year!