Simple and Sweet! (Not to mention..QUICK!)

My de-lighted wire deer that was supposed to be turned into a grapevine deer has met a problem!  Mark came home and decided that the yard needed to be decorated.  My de-lighted deer which was now painted black caught his eye.  That and a funky-looking wire Christmas tree wound up being used as decorations near the driveway.  After a full can of spray paint, the deer is now white again. My vine covering experiment will have to wait for another time.  This reindeer has been called back into use!  We stripped the wire tree of all of its blown lights and put a small cluster of white lights at the top.  In lieu of snow (something we rarely get this far south!), we put some hay down on the ground.  At least our de-lighted wire reindeer would eat well! One string of lights around the whole little grouping was all that was needed to complete the look.  I had no desire to stay out all day decorating at this late of date. When I do that much work, it had better be for more than a couple of days!

 

The next thing Mark wanted to do was decorate the doorway.  The entryway had already been decked out on the inside but the outside was a tad dark to suit him.  I convinced him that a bit of garland and a few lights was all that was needed.  As I untangled a few strings of lights, I sent him down the lane a bit to gather a good bit of pine boughs.  What he brought back looked mightily like a full pine tree!  But it would work!  He snipped the "tree" into small workable pieces for me to wire together.  The garland only needed to be about eight feet in length so this task went quickly.  The lights were added and I wired the whole contraption above the door.  It looked quite nice!  Ahh....that was finished!  Admittedly, our decorations could never compete with our neighbor's down the street.  That house and yard is decorated with about a gazillion lights and all sorts of outdoor adornments.  It is beautiful but, personally, I will stick with just a few well-placed lights and maybe one or two ornaments.  Sometimes...simple is just better.  Besides, the Little Bayou House is not fancy..it is rustic.  A gazillion lights would not change that and I really would not want it changed in the first place!  I like it the way it is!

I believe all of this sudden desire to decorate the yard was in anticipation of the arrival of our son-in-law and daughter.  Robbie and Elizabeth were on their way here to spend the holidays with us!  Christmas is just so much better when kids come home to the Little Bayou House!  I am quite sure that tomorrow will see Elizabeth and me in the kitchen!  All sorts of cookies, candies and other goodies will soon fill the dining room table!  Yep, Christmas is coming!

Happy Reindeer!

My oldest brother is as bad as I am about rescuing anything that we deem reusable.  It matters not if it is something we might use ourselves, if we think anyone can use it, we save it!   That is what has gotten both of us in the predicament of mass clutter!  His is not as bad as mine as he has a nice shed to store these items..I have to use mine quickly or the place begins to look like a junkyard!  A couple of months ago, he rescued a deer!  An elderly couple had one of those lighted, wire yard sculptures of a reindeer that they asked him to haul to the dump.  Instead..he hauled it home.  I think he knew that it would be just a matter of time before I noticed the deer and asked for it.  I did...and well, the deer is sitting by my front step!

This morning, Michael and I started refurbishing my fantastic reindeer!  First, we had to figure out just how its head was attached because at the moment, the poor thing's antlers were inside its belly!  I had an inkling that this was not anatomically correct and we needed to do some sort of extraction.  Soon, Michael had him all in the right order. His head was on straight and he was proudly wearing his antlers on top of his head!  My reindeer was already looking much better but those ugly lights had to go!  Michael headed off to put down a bedding of hay in the dog pen where Ms. Ez likes to sun herself on cold days.  (Why we have a dog pen is beyond me since it does not even have a complete fence anymore but since Ms. Ez likes it..we keep it!)  I started ripping the lights from the wire frame.  This would not have been terribly hard except for the fact that when we reattached the head we did not use a lot of logic.  Wires were twisted this way and that around the frame!  I had to untangle, uncoil and eventually, literally, rip the light wires!

Just as I finished the job, Michael came around the corner and stared at my light-less reindeer. I proudly announced that I had the reindeer all de-lighted!  Michael's comment?  "Yep, he does look pretty happy at that."  Groan......de-lighted and delighted...ok! Tomorrow, I will get a can of paint to do him over in black.  I have this vision in my head of wrapping this frame with grapevines or wisteria vines to make a more natural, rustic version of a lawn sculpture!  I will be sure to photograph the process and final results!  But for now..my deer does look a lot happier so I suppose it is really delighted!  I am, too!