Let There Be Light

The lights we'd ordered for our deck arrived Monday, so that evening Craig pulled them out and began wrapping them around the poles he'd added to the railing.  He kept wanting to try different ways to string them-- I never would have given it this much thought!  But unfortunately, it was cold outside and I quickly ran out of steam helping him.  I wandered off to fold laundry and let him mull things over a bit more.

Tuesday afternoon, I returned home from my walk to find that Craig had added a hook outside Ryder's (second-story!) window and had rigged the lights up with a rope to pull them up that high.  Now he was carefully re-stringing them to get the loops all just right.  I wasn't freezing and I wasn't busy, so I buckled down and actually helped this time around.  This strand of lights came with the bulbs tucked away in a separate box, which meant that while we kept re-stringing them and lifting them up and down from the second floor, we didn't need to worry about breaking any bulbs, so that was great.  Once Craig had things mostly how he wanted them, we began screwing in all the lightbulbs.

There were still a couple more glitches.  We had enough left over to add one more swoop angling towards Bentley's room, but that was against the house.  But we didn't want it ACTUALLY against the house, or it would rattle any time the wind was blowing.  Fortunately, we have a couple large hooks for hanging baskets that we haven't used, so we moved one of them up to Bentley's window, and it's perfect for keeping the lights a few extra inches away from the wall.

It's hard to see Craig's master vision in this picture, but everything radiates out from Ryder's window and then travels the edge of the deck.  It's a nice look!

Artsy!

I've never been so anxious for it to get dark before!  But, naturally, Craig was busy with Zoom meetings, so we had to wait even longer.  Finally we were able to step outside and ask Bentley to plug them in for us so we could both see it for the first time together-- and it was so magical:

This picture really doesn't do it justice-- in reality, it's a much softer, yellow glow, and it lights up all the trees in our backyard, too.  I absolutely LOVE it.  (Also, see Ryder's head poking out his window up there?)

Ryder had been about to fall asleep, but this woke him up in a big way!

Bentley was also very excited about the whole thing!

I think we might need to throw a party on our deck now...  We will definitely be spending a LOT more time out here!