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Too early. Not even December yet.
Hit my house with a vengeance today. I have been decorating like a mad woman tonight. Hanging lights and ornaments getting all the stuff out of the attic and turning the inside of the house into Christmas central. Hopefully I'll still have enough energy left this week to get the the outside done. Man, I am tired and my shoulders are sore. I am sleeping in tomorrow.
Too early. Not even December yet.
Hit my house with a vengeance today. I have been decorating like a mad woman tonight. Hanging lights and ornaments getting all the stuff out of the attic and turning the inside of the house into Christmas central. Hopefully I'll still have enough energy left this week to get the the outside done. Man, I am tired and my shoulders are sore. I am sleeping in tomorrow.
sounds like your hubby owes you a massage.
good job 2blonde.
Hit my house with a vengeance today. I have been decorating like a mad woman tonight. Hanging lights and ornaments getting all the stuff out of the attic and turning the inside of the house into Christmas central. Hopefully I'll still have enough energy left this week to get the the outside done. Man, I am tired and my shoulders are sore. I am sleeping in tomorrow.
you are so lucky and so is everyone else who gets to put on lights. i'm lucky we get a christmas tree.
living in a ranch sucks
You live IN a ranch?
you are so lucky and so is everyone else who gets to put on lights. i'm lucky we get a christmas tree.
living in a ranch sucks
Man you are below Dung, it lives on a ranch!
That's early!
I'm putting up our tree right now.
Getting a tree sometime next week, We could either do an 8 footer in the corner of the room or a 20 footer in the middle right in front of the fireplace. Decisions decisions.
I can't even get into the holiday spirit with it being 89 degrees!
oh thanks
isn't it bad enough that i live like 9 miles out of town
Last edited by spurs=bling; 11-27-2005 at 05:18 PM.
People outside Texas think everybody there lives on a ranch.
My intent was to put up the Christmas tree and start working on the outside lights...but I just couldn't get into the spirit. It's too damn warm!
Beats the out of hanging them when it's 45 degrees and raining, though....I should really get out there. All of my stuff has been pulled out and ready to go....
Shoog, where do you live?
I'm currently in Silver Spring, MD.
My dad lives on the NE side off Walzem.
We're all in the wrong line of work!
Decorators in heavy demand for the holidays
Web Posted: 11/27/2005 12:00 AM CST
Rosemary Barnes
Express-News Business Writer
More Christmas lights and ornaments adorn the city each holiday season. All it takes is a lot of help from some enterprising business owners.
The business of decorating for Christmas is a burgeoning industry that many San Antonio homeowners and business owners couldn't survive the holidays without. There are about 100 area businesses that offer Christmas decorating services.
Once considered a privilege reserved for affluent residents who traditionally have hired professionals to decorate their mansions and grounds for special occasions, seasonal-decorating businesses are flourishing, as the middle class increasingly demands their help bringing the festivity of Christmas to their homes.
As with most trends this century, it's the time-starved and accident-prone baby boomers who have created a huge need for businesses that design, install and remove colorful lights, ornaments, fresh wreaths, garlands and Christmas trees from the front yard to their family rooms.
Kevin Lipscomb, who founded San Antonio-based Outdoor Décor Inc. in 1990, has witnessed and profited handsomely from the increase in demand for his commercial and residential Christmas lighting services in recent years.
"There is so much business out there that every year I turn away 75 to 150 customers because I don't have the time to work them in," Lipscomb said. "People call me for all sorts of reasons, but it all boils down to they just don't have the time to string lights on their houses and trees, and they're afraid of falling off the roof."
Formerly in lawn maintenance and struggling to support his family, Lipscomb 15 years ago experimented with installing Christmas lights on a neighbor's house at the suggestion of his wife.
About 50 residents in the area who saw Lipscomb's work quickly hired him to hang lights on their houses. Lipscomb had found his calling.
"We had been watching that Chevy Chase movie, 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' that has the famous scene where he discovers this huge knot of Christmas lights stored in his garage," Lipscomb recalled. "That big knot is everyone's nightmare. I eliminate the knot and other problems associated with lighting up your house for Christmas."
His prices range from $250 for stringing lights around the trunk of one tree to $5,000, which covers the cost of lighting the exterior of one of the city's larger houses and all the trees on the front lawn.
In a three-month period, Lipscomb will net about $100,000 in sales and take home an $80,000 profit. But his work doesn't end in January. He's also the local distributor for commercial holiday lights, which he sells to18 dealerships around the country.
"If you only want to work three months out of the year, this is the perfect job," Lipscomb said. "If you do it right, you can make enough during the holidays to live comfortably all year long."
Lipscomb and two crews of workers have been installing exterior lights on homes and subdivision entrances nonstop since Nov. 1. Over the next few weeks, they'll work day and night stringing lights on the rooflines, columns and trees in the front lawns of about 90 houses and 30 entryways to some of the city's most exclusive gated communities.
They'll stop hanging lights Dec. 15, take a short break and on Jan. 6 return to remove the lights, which are leased to customers. Lipscomb owns all the lights he installs for quality control purposes.
"I don't want to be untangling knots of lights that people have tossed into a box in the garage," Lipscomb said.
This season, people will notice that Christmas lights are brighter, more durable and more energy-efficient than the traditional incandescent holiday lights. This is the first year that commercial LED Christmas lights have been on the market.
Most commercial decorators have switched to the LED lights because of their brilliance and reliability.
Karin Senneff, who co-owns the San Antonio-based Plant Interscapes with her husband, Mike, said setting up Christmas decorations for clients was a natural extension of the company's primary interior landscaping service. The couple founded the company in 1982.
In addition to designing and maintaining plants for commercial clients, including most of the city's banks, hotels, malls and large office buildings, the company also installs holiday lights and decorations for most of its clients.
The company, which has branches in Austin, Dallas and Houston, grossed $7 million in sales last year. Seasonscapes, the company's holiday business, produced about $1.2 million of that.
"One of our customers asked us several years ago if we could decorate their building's interior for the Christmas holidays," Senneff said. "It grew from there. Now, we design and make most of the decorations, which we lease to the customers. We have a 20,000-square-foot storage unit in town where we keep the decorations and lights year round."
The majority of their clients need Christmas trees, wreaths and centerpieces for their lobbies and lighting along their rooflines. The company hires 100 seasonal employees to help with the installation of decorations, which began Nov. 15.
This year, Plant Interscapes won a $325,000 contract for holiday decorations at the Shops at La Cantera, a village-type shopping center that opened in September and includes upscale retailers Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Tiffany & Co.
Crews, working at night after customers and employees have left, have installed more than 400,000 colored LED lights on the rooftops and trees. They recently added 18 large silver stars designed by Senneff and her staff and manufactured in Costa Rica at focal points throughout the property.
Well more than 2,000 labor hours have gone into the holiday project at the retail center.
"It's been a lot of work, but very exciting for us," Senneff said. "We've been out there since Nov. 1 working on all of this. But the end product looks spectacular."
Jack Cross, owner of Arthur Pfeil Florist on West Ashby Street, has been helping scores of owners of the city's older and larger houses prepare for the holiday season since he bought the business in 1982.
Cross is carrying on a tradition established by the late Arthur Pfeil, who opened the flower shop in the early 1940s. He said the holiday decorating does not cons ute a large portion of the business, but it is an important recurring aspect of his December trade.
"The clients who need my help decorating their houses for the holidays are the same clients I've helped with weddings, parties and all their floral needs," Cross said. "They come to me because they don't want to do the decorating or just don't have the time and because they want that professional look to their holiday decor. And they have the means to pay for my services."
Preparing a large house for the holidays entails the purchase and decoration of as many as three 10-to12-foot Christmas trees; fresh garlands for the mantles, staircases and exterior balconies; wreaths for the front door and other areas inside the house; and large poinsettia plants placed throughout the home.
Work on designing, buying materials and making the decorations begins in the summer months, when Cross meets with each client to talk themes and color combination. Cross and a team of four or five assistants begin setting up the decorations the Friday after Thanksgiving. They return in the new year to remove and store decorations for the next season.
"Usually, clients want to change the design or colors every three years," Cross said. "Some of these decorations can be very ornate. Some wreaths we design can cost $375. The cost always depends on just what the client wants."
Decorating a large house from top to bottom can cost as much as $12,000. Trimming a Christmas tree with a client's collection of ornaments, which can take four people as long as five hours to complete, runs about $1,200.
One of his longtime clients said her job as a personal assistant for a local entrepreneur keeps her so busy that she has come to rely on Cross to decorate her family's Christmas tree, design wreaths, prepare gift baskets for friends and business associates, and anything else she needs to bring her Spring Oaks Estates home alive for the holidays.
"It can be expensive, but it is worth it," said the woman, who is in her early 40s. "It's comforting to know I can just call him and tell him what I need this season. Jack does such great stuff. I can trust his taste and good judgment."
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We live on a ranch, north of SA, and we still put up lights and the whole getup.you are so lucky and so is everyone else who gets to put on lights. i'm lucky we get a christmas tree.
living in a ranch sucks
We have a 12 foot tree. Any bigger and it's hard to setup, too much smaller and our ~30' ceiling dwarfs it.
tell that to my father.
Good point. I guess if no one sees them, then it doesn't really matter.....it just helps put us in the holiday spirit.
Nothing like it being a crisp 35 degrees outside, and you're in the house with your family, decorating a tree and drinking hot chocolate. As cliche as it may sound, it is one of the best feelings in the world.
yeah nothing beats that. but the holidays are kinda hard for us since my mom passed away.
....so I turned the air conditioner waaaaaay down in the house and got started at least..
my tree is up....lights go up on the house this week
All I can say is that I was talking alot of about having a real tree is the ONLY way to go...
and Mom brought home a 4 foot fake one today...
oh well....where the do i get those pine scented candles again?
Why are we surprised that it's warm right now? I'm not. I'll take the warm weather (well not 80+). It's better than it being 45...I can't stand cold weather. I'm putting up lights tomorrow. People say that it's too early but time flies. December comes around and bam..Xmas is here. Get the most out of it is what I say.
I have one of those "fiberoptic" prelit (whatever) christmas trees. I guess I could start looking for my boxes of decorations. I need to do alot of house work first, I don't want to go for for white trash christmas as my theme....
When was it.. 2 years ago? We had the Summer that never ended. At least we have had 3 true cold fronts so far this time.
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