How Deer....

My Christmas deer--the doe grazes and the buck rears his mighty antlers via little motors in their bodies

When it comes to decorating for Christmas, I must admit that most of the plastic and inflatable stuff I see on people's lawns just turns me off. Oh sure, there are some displays that you just have to admire because of the 2000 yards of extension cords that must be used to power the display. Some have so many different images, Baby Jesus mixed in with the snowman, with the Grinch, with the North Pole, with Santa hopping out of the chimney, with candy canes, and candles........I could go on and on and on, just like many of the displays do!

My little M & M's call streets with no ostentatious displays "dead streets". They want to go down the streets where the electric meters are whirling off the wall powering the million megawatt displays, but they aren't very interested in something tasteful and just simple. So I'm not sure how my little deer display will measure up with them.

The other night, my little Girl M commented that I should take down my professionally installed lights on the eaves. "Just take them down and put them in the garage," she told me. Now I took exception to that artistic appraisal! That cost me a bunch! But I thought that some more ground level decorations, tastefully done, might add some artistic merit to the whole place, and she might like it better. She is coming over tomorrow to see it, so we'll see if it makes the cut.

Slowly but surely my neighbors have gotten their displays put up. One neighbor on my court and I had the same company install our lights, so we've had them up for a couple of weeks now. One brave neighbor put his up on his big two story house this past week, and several did it this nice warm weekend. One guy hates to go up on ladders, but has two sons who love the adventure of climbing up on the roof, so he supervised when they did the high work. Another guy, father of a 9 month old, was up on the high part yesterday. I hate to see fathers go up on roofs, I've heard more than one disaster story of the results of falls. That's why I pay the professionals to do it, don't want any member of my family up there putting them up or taking them down, it is too risky. But as of today, our street has its share of lights, painted Santas, inflatables, spiral trees.

My neighbor across the street has solved the whole decorating dilema, she has 4 beautiful wreaths that fit on her four outdoor light fixtures. Gets the message across, but with only about 5 minutes of work. She had to come over and give me moral support while I put my deers together and "planted" the trees behind them. Everything had to be anchored with pins and heavy bricks and stones to keep them from blowing over.

Herre's how it looks with the eave lights


The deer show up better in pictures than in person because the deer are lighted by the flash from the camera. In person, they are just lights, you can't make out the deer shapes. I have an idea about rigging up a spotlight, I'll have to investigate that later this week. I think I have some leftover parts from previous lawn lighting jobs, so maybe the deer will get lit by a spotlight. Until then, we'll have to see how Miss M judges my attempts to upgrade my Christmas display.