Star light, Star bright, The first star I see tonight...

I really enjoyed dressing up our new home for the holidays this year. I had picked up an abundance of decorating supplies during the after Christmas sales of 2009, where everything was 90% off (super-duper SCORE!)

As I strung the lights across the roof-line, my kids danced across the front lawn... singing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Frosty the Snowman"... we had so much fun! Of course it was day-time when we decorated... so we would have to wait until night fall to delight in our display! That evening, we were heading over to my parent's home for the yearly gathering to decorate the "Regal Buckingham Tree" (a fantastic event that includes many delightful traditions that I will have to blog about in detail at a later date :P) Before we left for the evening, I turned on all of our lights, making sure that we would be greeted with all of the wonderful holiday cheer upon our return home.

After all of the evening's festivities were complete, we invited our family members to take a tour of all the Christmas lights in the neighborhood, with it all culminating with a drive down our street. But as we came closer to the curve in the street that leads to our home, we began to see a glow. A glow that became brighter and brighter as we approached...

Once we finally made it around the bend, we couldn't believe our eyes... (Or perhaps it was that we could no longer use our eyes... suffering from a temporary blindness, similar to that of staring at the sun for a brief amount of time!) Our house was lit up like the 4th of July!!!

I have attempted to mute the brightness by running garland around the lights, but it has not really had the dampening affect that I had hoped for...

Meanwhile, we are spreading, what I can only refer to as "Extreme Holiday Cheer," and I will continue to cross my fingers that we do not give the sweet elderly couple that lives across the street, heart attacks every night when we plug our lights in!