Life is hectic enough as it is. Add in the stress of the holidays and the crowds at the stores and it becomes very easy to lose the holiday spirit and simply become aggravated and grumpy trying to check things off your list. That's not the way you should head into the holidays, and there's really no reason to. All it takes is a little bit of thinking things out ahead of time to save yourself tons of time and frustration.
# 1 Make sure you have enough lights.
For example, when it comes to putting up Christmas lights, you do not want to find yourself coming up just short of what you need to complete your project. It may be stringing lights around the Christmas tree or doing a full on Griswald outdoor Christmas light show; Either way, if you have less lights than you need, you'll end up bummed out. Take the time to think through your project and measure out how many yards of lights you'll need to get the job done.
Holiday light sets are pretty cheap anymore, so I would recommend getting just a little bit more that what your calculations tell you. Plus, you never know if one of the strands might end up being a dud. Of course you can return it, but it should not get in your way of finishing your lighting project, because once you get started … you really should try to get it all done in one shot so it does not linger. Your family and your neighbors will be just as happy as you when you turn them ALL at at once and everyone sees the magic you created.
# 2 Make sure you can reach an outlet
There's nothing more frustrating than setting up the perfect holiday light display and then realizing you did not leave enough at the end to reach an outlet, or that there are not any available available where you need one. Once again, this comes down to planning ahead. Look at where you're setting things up. Visualize it in your head. Imagine the entire process, such as turning on the lights every night. Is the outlet accessible? Maybe you do not need to reach it because you can plug the lights into an outlet that is controlled by a light switch. That's great, but if you did not think about it in advance, you might have a heck of a time retro-fitting your lights to be able to take advantage of just such a situation.
The good thing is that most of the time, even in the worst case scenario, all you need to do is to get an extension cord or perhaps a power-strip that will allow you to add one more plug to an outlet. Make sure you get a good quality one though, so that in the even you overload the system, it will have a built in breaker to prevent any inconvenient accidents from happening.
# 3 Make sure you have lights designed for outdoors, if that's where you're putting them.
If you are setting lights up outside, make sure the lights you are using were designed for outdoor use. Not all Christmas lights are made the same. A super cheap, discounted Christmas light set that you get for a couple of bucks might do just fine inside your tree or banister, but put it in the harsh winter weather and you may very well end up with a short that could cause someone a shock, potentially start a fire, or less dramatically, simply cease to work making all your Christmas lighting decoration efforts go to waste.