Christmas Lights and Christmas Decorating Tips
The holiday between November and December is usually not complete without Christmas lights. Around this period, Christmas lights hanging on Christmas trees, door posts, bushes and statues become common sights just about everywhere. Everybody likes the sight and most homeowners go to any length to get a few battery lights with remote flickering in their houses. But it’s funny most people don’t have the slightest idea how these lights function.
If a comparison is to be made between the way decorations were made with Christmas lights about three or four decades ago and in recent times, you would discover that small-sized 120v bulbs were used for decorations during those periods. A string of these bulbs had between 20 to 200 bulbs and each bulb consumes about 5 to 10W of power. Though they can still be obtained in some stores, battery lights with remote are now rare for the following reasons:
They are on the costlier end: They cost about ten times what regular bulbs cost today.
They consume a whole lot of power: If a strand has about 50 bulbs and each bulb consumes about 6watts of power. That amounts to a whooping 300watts per string. Most home prefer to decorate with up ten strands every season. Image what such quantity of power can do today.
They give out so much heat: Imagine when a family decorates with up to three strings of light having about fifty bulbs in each string! That would be no different from heating up your entire house with a 750watts space heater! Thank goodness Christmas falls in the winter, else there would have been cases of heat burn with these bulb.
The only good thing about these bulbs is that the rest of the string is not affected when one bulb goes bad. This is because the bulbs are connected in parallel and current is the only limitation to each string.
Let’s move over to some decorating tips to give your home, office and yard the perfect Christmas scenario.
Hang Up A Large Batch of Colored Popcorn: Pop up a big batch of popcorn and allow your kids or young visitors to string them up together using plastic craft needles that are safe for their fragile hands. You can add up a few fruity cereal on the string to give it a colorful look before hanging them up on outdoor trees and bushes. Popcorn can serve as a natural décor and a nice Christmas treat for little birdies.
Make Some Artificial Snow For Your Trees: Do you want your Christmas tree to shimmer with snow like the ones in the stores do but do not know how to go about it? Simply mix baby powder with some salt vigorously until you get a snow-like substance.
To ease your decoration up, pour a gracious volume of lightweight spackling paste (which can be obtained from any hardware store around you) and a little quantity of water in an old big bowl, beat them together until you get a texture similar to that of smooth buttercream icing.
Go on and fill your Christmas tree with the delight of ‘your’ snow and do not forget to keep the thickness of your snow moderate on the tree. Thin your snow by adding more water and thicken it by adding more paste depending on its outcome.
You Can Go about the Conventional Way of Decoration: Lighten up you home and tree by giving important places like the fireplace the beautiful touch of green and maybe red. Hang colorful gewgaws alongside your green décor to give your home that perfect holiday touch.
Be Creative and Move Away From the Norm: Decorate with colors other than red and green if you want to give your home a beautiful and yet unique touch of Christmas. You can as well pray some branches with colors that match the décor of your home or a warm gold or silver color.
Make Your Home Visually Impressive: To make your home look more appealing this holiday, make and put up flashy Christmas garlands on your end tables. Let them surround a solid-colored set of decorations. You can make these garlands by stringing gewgaws together.
You can also drape bowls with gold or silver beads and place them around your home for a flashier holiday look.
Make up Your Decorations with Tiny Accessories: To give your living room the perfect festive appearance, place small models of reindeer and candles on your mantle and end tables.
Explore Different Shades While Decorating Your Tree: Do not just dump a single color of decoration on your Christmas tree because it can render your tree boring and unattractive. You can start with one shade of color and end up with an entirely different shade. Just make sure the shades you choose do not make your decorations overly done.
