Holidays are big events in our home - it's all about family and friends.  Several years ago, we were surprised with a last minute Christmas Miracle - my daughter was able to get her shifts covered at the hospital and would be returning home for the holidays! When she called with the good news, I was outside decorating the shrubs and trees with Christmas lights. It was an exceptionally frigid December afternoon in Virginia. She said she was excited to see the house decorated and asked if I had wrapped the tree trunks with lights like she suggested the prior year.  "Yes!" I responded quickly, secretly meaning "yes, I'll get started on that now!" Frozen and running low on holiday spirit, I began to wrap the trees in lights. 

(A question for another day - how do string lights become so tangled??) Dusk had fallen, the rain was now sleet, and my fingers were frozen through two pairs of gloves. Kicking myself for saving the hardest tree for last and dreaming of thawing out over a warm meal with my family, I began to tackle the last seven tightly packed trunks. 

The first trunk of that tree definitely looked better than the last as my patience was clearly running out.  The smooth bark on this crêpe myrtle made it nearly impossible to keep the string lights from falling down to the base of the trunk as I was wrapping. After another hour of struggling under the moonlight, I decided that's as good as it's going to get! I remember thinking - there has got to be a better way.

The happy ending to this story came the next evening when we pulled into the driveway after picking our daughter up from the airport.  She lit up brighter than the trees - she absolutely LOVED them!

The idea for TREE-Z® Wrap came to me a few weeks later on an even colder January day as I was cutting the string lights off the trees. :-) Yes, you read that right - I made certain that I would not have to go through the same process in reverse to take those lights down!

The TREE-Z® Wrap tool truly makes wrapping trees with lights simple and the removal is almost as fast as cutting them off with wire cutters (haha!). I hope this helps you enjoy the holidays and more time with your family!