Happy Holidays With Rope Lights!

It seems that they are always adding different items for holiday decorating. It is interesting to me that as soon as there is a new outdoor lighting item everyone in the neighborhood seems to have it. A few years ago it was the icicle lights. I had never seen them before when our neighbor trimmed their house with them. By the next year everyone in the neighborhood and half the other decorated homes in a sixty mile radius had icicle lights. Now the big thing is rope lights. These are the cords of small twinkle lights that are threaded inside plastic tubing. The rope lights come in a variety of colors and lengths. You can get them with clear tubing and colored lights, colored tubing and white lights or matching colored tubing and lights. Each combination gives off a different lighting effect.

We have an old fashioned light post in our front yard. Each year we hang a wreath on it, which is fine for during the day, but at night no one notices the wreath. Last year we bought red rope lights and wound them around the pole. This created a very festive look in the front year. The plastic tubing protects the lights from rain and snow so they last longer. This year we are going to get the rope lights to outline our home with on the outside. The plastic rope is so much easier to handle than the cords of lights because the tubing does not get tangled.

The rope lights can also be used indoors. The small twinkle lights glowing inside the tubing gives a completely different lighting effect from the standard strands of lights. This summer one of the resorts in our area created a large lit flag of the United States for the fourth of July. They did this by using red, white and blue rope lights. The resort owner exchanged some of the blue bulbs with white ones so it looked like stars. The resort anchored this lit flag to the side of their resort.

As the fall season approaches and Halloween decorations flood the stores I have noticed that there are robe lights in orange and black. It will be interesting to see what the black ones look like when they are lit up. I noticed our neighbor was wrapping some of these tubes around the rails of their deck. They always have quite an elaborate display for Halloween so I am sure the rope lights are just the beginning of their holiday decorating.