Last year my husband, Joe, got a wild hair and purchased 600 multi-colored twinkle lights for the house. Not for the tree which is covered in white lights, and not for the outside... oh no! Not him! His bright idea (no pun intended) was to border the living room ceiling with them! And, naturally, the kid in him wasn't going to be happy unless every string of 50 bulbs had it's very own blinker!

I'm sure those of you with any imagination at all won't have to be told what kind of of havoc this played with my optic nerves. Being in that room, even for just a few minutes at a time, made me feel as though I were caught on the red carpet while hundreds of insane elves snapped their photographs at random. I gained major sympathy for celebrities everywhere...

Trying to watch television was impossible because of the distraction of the lights. No matter how much I hinted, he refused to remove the blinkers. For weeks we argued and discussed those stupid lights but to no avail.

Finally January 1st rolled around and it gave me a thrill to pull those lights down!!

Since the beginning of November he's been talking about adding lights to the 600 we already have so I knew I had to come up with a plan fast. The situation was starting to get grim as Thanksgiving rolled around and I still didn't have any idea how to stop the mad bulber!

Finally I had an idea and worked frantically to put it into action while he was napping on Friday afternoon! Our home has an enclosed wrap around porch at the front with a total of 10 windows. I had purchased those suction cups they sell for windows last year before I realized what his ultimate goal was for those lights so I pulled them out of storage and set to work. I wrapped each window in lights, leaving the blinkers in, and plugged them in just as he was waking up. Instant magic!

When he saw them he was really upset that I'd used "his" lights for my project. I explained how much the neighbors would appreciate the display and that we should *share* the beauty of those lights. While he was somewhat disappointed, he did admit that the windows looked nice. Crisis averted.... at least until he finds another "deal" on blinking twinkle lights.....