A Whole New World

Have you gone LED yet? I bought new LED lights this year, lured by the safety factor, mainly. We always get a live tree, and like to keep it up for 2-3 weeks. No matter how diligent I am with the watering, the tree is usually pretty crispy by the time I'm ready to give it the heave-ho. The heat given off by the old incandescent lights always had me a bit worried, but what's a Christmas tree without the lights?

My favorite discount store (kinda rhymes with Margaret) offered both cool white and warm white colored lights to choose from. I brought home the cool whites, but returned them after one strand was up---they really looked blue, which I didn't want. The warm lights are what you see in the (sorry so blurry) photo above. They are startlingly bright, without the warm, candle-light glow of the old incandescent lights, and I'm not too thrilled about that.

The good news is that the brighter lights allowed me to use less strands (5 on a 6' tree), they are totally cool to the touch, even after being on for hours and, of course, they use much less energy and will be less expensive to run. So despite the aesthetic drawbacks, I'll continue to plod forward into the new world of LED lights.