I can only remember decorating the outside of the two houses for Christmas. My parents current house (the one I grew up in) and our house in Louisville that we lived in for five years. Although I hated decorating the tree at my parents' house, I loved decorating the outside. You see, my parents' house is a country style with the white front porch that should have rocking chairs on it, which is perfect for a country style Christmas. One year we decided to try using evergreen garland with red bows and that is what we've stuck with each year. We wrap each post with the evergreen and then place a red bow at the base. We then wrap the evergreen around the railing coming up the stairs and place red bows at the bottom. Before my parents replaced their deck with the composite stuff, you could see the staple holes where we used the stapler to keep the evergreen and bows in place. We've added a few things throughout the years, more evergreen garlands along the railing and even lights at one point. When it snows, it looks even more beautiful because of all the colors, the blue house, the green garlands, and the red bows.
Our house in Louisville was decorated very simply. We put green wreaths on the front windows and then a candle light in each of those windows. It is very classic looking especially since our house is red brick on the front. For a couple of years we put icicle lights along the gutters. I prefer the white icicle lights and my husband prefers the blue, so we'd trade off each year. Getting the wreaths up each year was a challenge. The previous owners had done this and that is where we'd gotten the idea. Our only problem was that we didn't know what they had used to keep the wreaths up. We tried several things for 2-3 years and then finally I figured out that we could use suction cups with hooks. We did that and voila! we had wreaths that stayed put on the windows even in the strongest winds!
The unfortunate thing with decorating your house in a certain way is that you tend to move to other houses where you can't decorate the same way, so we currently have five wreaths in our basement just sitting there hoping for the day that they will be used again!
Nice memory. I remember too always waiting too long to put up the decorations until it was soooo cold, my fingers would freeze. I would have to work for a few minutes, then go inside to warm my hands. But, I loved the finished product and plan to continue in our new house.
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