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Monday, December 7, 2009

Fibro-Friendly Holidays: Low Altitude Decorations

Collage of various Christmas images, made from...Image via Wikipedia

I missed posting on my blog yesterday because I spend the afternoon with my hubby decorating the outside of our home for Christmas. When we were done, I asked him how he liked the decor and he gave me the thumbs up. He also commented, "I like the low altitude decorations better too."

What my hubby is referring to is the switch from hanging lights from the edge of the roof to focusing on decorating lower down and within easy reach. I basically sat almost the entire time as we decorated the front yard. This makes everything easier to put up and take down, which is definitely fibro-friendly.

Here are some photos I took using my cell phone camera which illustrate what I mean:

This is a holiday yard card, purchased on eBay last year for about $15.00. As you can see, the card covers a lot of space, i.e. appears large and impressive. It is made from the same ripstop nylon as a flag and it installed very easily in about 15 minutes. I added some snowflake lights and some fencing, both with posts that go into the ground as well.

It wouldn't be the holidays without Santa. I bought this decoration several years ago. He originally came with a plastic pole which unfortunately broke when Santa gained weight from a prolonged rain downpour. I found a sturdy plant trellis at the hardware store that now props him up. Isn't he cute holding his candy cane?

You can see the stool and folding chair I used yesterday on the front porch in this picture. The few lights that do get hung by Robert from the roof line are easily accessible from the porch with a step stool. Our security screen door doubles as a mesh to attach a rope light candy cane. Net lights adorn the hedge on the right and down the walkway, snowflake lights hang from a line of plant supports on the left and candy canes with ground stakes line the flower beds and hang from the porch banister.

It still took some time to get everything up and I need to devote extra time to rest over the next few days. However, with reaching minimized and most of the decorating done in the seated position, this year decorated the house with my hubby's help was more pleasure than pain. Despite the lack of high altitude decorations, we received several glowing reviews from neighbors as the walked by or came over and said hello while we were outside.

Another fibro-friendly choice I made was deciding to only go all out decorate the outside the house this year. Robert and I consider it our Christmas gift to our neighbors. We seem to set the tone in our neighborhood with our decorations--in fact, just yesterday we inspired several neighbors to break out their own decor and start decorating as well. We do have a few Christmas things here and there inside the house, but I find choosing were to focus my efforts really helps me conserve my energy over the holidays.

Here is a movie clip of our home:





How do you make the holidays fibro-friendly? Leave me a comment and let me know.


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1 comment

Anonymous said...

I have POTS as well, so standing still, and even worse so with my hands above my head make me pass out, as well as fibro. flares, so I decorated the tree on the bottom, sitting, and my mom came by and did the lights, and the top half of the tree.