Driving around, we’re starting to see lots of houses covered in Christmas decorations. It ranges from a wreath on the door or piece of tinsel around the letterbox to houses and/or yards covered in decorations.
Decorated houses near home
It is interesting to note how differently our neighbours decorate the outside of their homes. for Christmas
One of our favourite houses (they do it the same every year) uses lights – they have little white lights dangling off the verandah like a waterfall, Santa, sleigh and reindeer made from lights on the roof and various candy cane lights scattered around the roof and walls of the house.
The people behind us also use lights – they have coloured lights through their trees and a lot of white lights over their fence and rose arbour.
Then there is a house near us where they have pretty much filled their front yard with plastic Christmas items. Some have lights draped over them and others have lights within them so you can see all the decorations at night or day.
There are so many options available!
Christmas light drives
In a week or so, we will take an evening drive to view houses and their Christmas decorations. There are a few suburbs renowned for this, but there is an increasing number of houses throughout the city doing the decorations so we just drive around rather than fight crowds to view the famous ones! Either way, the kids and I love seeing them. Do you make an effort to visit decorated houses?
In the past, we haven’t done a lot of outside decorations as we were hidden behind big fences. But we got a new fence during the year along the side so we may string some lights through our fruit trees, as well as decorate a tree out there (which we always do for ourselves.)
It’s an interesting thought – is decorating your house on the outside for you and your family, or for people passing? It is certainly part of the Christmas spirit, and a lot of fun!
We have never decorated the outside of our house – though Mum wants to do something this year… My kids love driving past all the “Christmas Houses”, and they get excited every time we pass one.
Some of the houses I see must be done for other people – so many of the decorations are on the roof so people inside the house can’t possibly see or enjoy the decorations.
We do it for us (our kids anyway) and passers-by – we have lights in the trees along the footpath so we can see them from inside the house and people can see them from the street.
We hang tinsel along our fence and a wreath on the door – everything else is inside and mostly on the tree.
There is a house not too far from us that has amazing decorations. We’ve driven past it before but last night we actually stopped the car and had a proper look.
Not only is there stuff in their front yard and on their roof, there is an inflatable, Santa merry-go-round on their neighbour’s garage roof, things on the fence and two rooms full of decorations! Everyone is welcome to walk down their driveway to look at it all.
SO many lights and moving decorations – it must cost them a bit in electricity every year so I did wonder what would make them go to such lengths. But they collect donations form visitors and sell raffle tickets – all proceeds going to the main trauma hospital in the state (country?) The daughter of the house was in a horrific accident some years ago and this is her way of thanking the hospital staff.
It was truly amazing. A photo would have been fun actually!
We used to decorate the outside of the house with lights and the ubiquitous lighted Santa. But with money being tight these days, we only decorate with lights and trees inside and don’t bother with outdoor decorations anymore. The only thing I do outside is a wreath on the front door. It’s not practical for me to run up my electricity bill when I’m trying to budget my money. As long as my daughter gets to enjoy a lighted tree indoors, that’s all that matters to me.
This is 5 years later, I am sure the drive through the neighbourhood is even more interesting now. If you take some photographs this December it’ll make a great follow-up to this post.
Hmm, I’ll certianly be looking at and photographing local Christmas lights, Magic Pixel. I wonder how a follow up post will go – I know two of those houses aren’t doing the same thing any more but other houses have started their own look since (including a massive one across the road from us!)