The thing that sucks about having Christmas decorations outside is the lights. We don't have much in the way of decorations, a grapevine reindeer, a couple of grapevine snowmen, and another lighted snowman, and we have had them for years. Thursday this week as I was driving in from work, I noticed that half of one of the grapevine snowmen was out. I went out to take a look the next day and I could see right away that there was at least one light that was blown that I could see.
Upon further investigation, at least half the string was blown. The lights had the black/silver coating over the entire inside of the bulbs. So obviously there was some sort of power surge or something. I tried replacing lights individually, but there were a couple that I couldn't get out, and then I actually ran out of spare bulbs. I had actually bought a string of 100 and pulled all the bulbs to replace ones that were not lighting up. on both the outdoor lights as well as any on our tree.
Once I ran out of lights, I decided that since Christmas was only a week away, I was just going to call it a year. I will take the decorations down after Christmas and mothball them until the summer. Maybe I'll just throw them out next year and not put any lights out. It would make things much easier. In the event I look at using them again next year, I'll have to paint them anyway, so I may just cut off the lights and repaint the snowmen. It'll be easier dealing with the lights when they are not on the frame.
