Christmas Lights and Zip Ties

I had what I thought was a great idea!

It turns out it is a great idea.... surprise!

We love Christmas lights. We drive around to see Christmas lights. But we really stink at decorating our own house with Christmas lights.

Hubby leaves lights on one of the trees and around the front windows all year because he hates taking them down.

I decided I wanted some lights in another tree this winter and I don't have the time or patience to carefully wrap strings of lights around the branches anymore than he does. And the string of lights I found on sale were snowflake lights, not exactly the kind of wire you can wind around branches anyway.

That's where the zip ties come in! I haven't seen or read anywhere else about stringing Christmas lights using zip ties, but it worked, it worked well, and it was fast!

I used the white zip ties I found in the garage. I had to chain a few together for the larger branches, but it was so easy and fast that I could it with gloves on!

I even used zip ties to hold the extension cord to the tree so it wouldn't dangle down at weird angles across the front of the house. I ran out of white zip ties and used the black ones from the barn, but both colors blend in with the bark on the tree, so the color didn't make a difference.

I'm pretty excited that I can go out today and snip the zip ties with scissors and take the lights down quickly. Yay! Fast and easy!

We bought a bag of 100 zip ties this spring.

One of the best 'equipment investments' we've made in a while!

Vet2Be is positive I'm zip-tie crazed because of all the things I've used them for, inside the house, in the barn yard, and now for Christmas lights! There is a small stash of them in the camper and in the two old cars, too.

Right next to the Gorilla duct tape :)