Blogitis and the New LED Christmas Lights

Yesterday, as in 2006, I was a victim of Decorating Day at home. This is the day that I drag out 9 candy canes & posts, 4 lit candy canes and a tangle of wires, 3 signs, and 100 feet of various Christmas lights to decorate our house for the season.

Interesting note... this is only the second time (I think) that I have decorated our house here in PA for Christmas with snow on the ground, and this year I have attempting decorating unusually early (typically I wait until the first or second week in December).

Combining the snow on the ground, unusually cold and windy weather, and the usual frustration of the Christmas Lights was not fun. Most of the lights I had purchased last year had stopped working, so I went to Wal-Mart to replace them (again) at which time I was hit with a wonderful idea, which is going to cause this Blogitis entry to turn into a Gadget entry.

(PHOTO OF THIS YEAR'S COMING SOON)

This year, they are selling LED Christmas lights at most retail stores. They are twice as expensive as regular outdoor lights, but have a number of distinct advantages that caused me to make the switch:

1. They are plastic, and pretty much unbreakable 2. They never burn out (at least for 25,000 hours) 3. They have no reasonable limit to the number of strings that can be plugged into each other (maybe over 100) 4. They use 98% less power

THE SETS I BOUGHT (2 OF EACH):

You can see more photos of LED lights on Google.

Like the old lights, they come in big and small sizes, plus custom shapes & sizes in between. The only disadvantage I can see (besides the price) is that they are not as bright as regular Christmas lights, but I'm OK with that, as the other advantages outweigh those, and I'm always teetering on the line of being over the top with my decorations anyway. Here's another blog entry from last season talking about how people are switching to LED Christmas Lights because of their "green" energy savings.