I love Christmas and I love getting outside and putting up the Christmas lights – provided it’s not below zero!  I don’t go Griswold crazy, but the lights go up every year!

Last year, I discovered a very cool picture of a park where large lighted balls were placed in an open snow-covered area.  The look was magnificent.  Each ball was large – I would guess 3-4 feet around and wrapped in a single color of christmas lights.  The balls were haphazardly placed around a lighted christmas tree and the look was stunning and something I knew I had to try!

There was one problem with this project, to effectively cover balls that large would require many more lights than I was willing to purchase.  Solution – use smaller balls!  My yard isn’t that big anyway, but having 4 foot balls scattered though out my yard would be very cool!  Maybe next year!

First things first – where to get the balls to wrap?  Last year when I tried this, I used grape vine balls!  Grape vine balls are wonderfully decorative during the day because they are natural looking and look awesome laying about a dormant flower bed.  The problem with grape vine balls is  that they can easily be crushed under a foot or more of snow – it happens!

This year I have been purchasing metal garden spheres.  These are much sturdier and I have used them in lots of decorating projects – I love multi-functional objects!

On each sphere, I simply wrapped a single color of christmas lights and you can see the lovely look it provides.  This effect is especially nice when it contrasts with white lights in the rest of your Christmas lighting.

How many lights did I use?  The small ball has 210 lights and the large balls have 300 lights!

One more tip – wind will move the balls so anchor them!  I use a tent anchor, but anchors for landscape edging would work well too!

We finally received some snow!

And more snow…

Happy Holidays!