Melted

You know that you've got too many lights on the tree when you start to melt the extension cords. We put the tree up over the weekend and we put the lights on a dimmer switch. A few days later the dimmer switch went out. It melted. So I switched over to one of those big ol extension cords that is specifically made for a tree that has all the different plugs down the length of it. It had an on/off switch so that was kind of nice. Well today the lights went out completely. I looked at the cord and it too was melted. Ok. Not just a fluke anymore. Time to address the problem. I have a 7.5 foot non prelit tree. I say non prelit because at one time it used to be prelit but they all went out. So the last time I had the tree up I took all the burned out lights off. Anyone who has ever had a prelit tree go out I'm sure feels my pain. You can't just "unwrap" the burnt out lights....nope.....they're entwined in the tree. I ended up cutting all the lights off the tree. Yup, however many million lights there were, got cut off and we bought new lights that year. So this year we get to put all these new lights up. I can't have the lights simply drape the tree, no, they have to be wrapped around each and every branch so the entire tree is lit. (Thanks Jodi!) :) I love the way the tree looks when you do this. The down side is that it takes alot of lights. 500 to be exact. So I've got those mini lights on the tree, two strands of bubble lights (which I love, love, love!) and two strands of flame tip lights. Now I should have known that the flame tip lights were a little bit too much. They started to get warm right away. But we figured that's the way they were. So after melting episode #2 today I decided to take the flame tip lights off the tree. That was a chore!! But luckily I didn't disturb too many ornaments in the process. ;) So now I have a surge protecter with two seperate extension cords. One for the mini lights, and one for the bubble lights. We'll see how it goes!