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A friend gave me a reindeer for my birthday a few years ago.

Sadly it wasn’t a real one, just a Christmas decoration in a box.

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Ironically, the timing of this gift coincided with my I’m tired of fighting with f*cking lights that don’t stay lit, snowflakes that flip up on the roof and trees that spend more time lying on the ground than standing up change of heart about festive displays… but for some unfathomable reason, I decided to break it out of its box and put it to use this year.

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Easy to assemble? My ever widening ass. The legs wobbled, the antlers kept falling off and the stabilizing bars didn’t stabilize anything.

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Did I mention how pleased my husband was to secure said reindeer in the first snowfall of the season? It just started when I was taking pictures, but trust me.. it was cold, wet and windy.

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The stakes that come in the box? Useless. The wind blew the deer over as soon as we finished.

Solution?

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Drill screws into a flat stump and zip tie the reindeers legs to them for anchorage.

The decorating gods laughed and said, nice try suckers… and blew it over again.

Enter the sledgehammer.

I thought that might be for my head….

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But thankfully it was just to pound two thick iron stakes in the ground. ( side note – those suckers aren’t coming up until spring )

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A roll of safety wire and 20 frozen fingers later…

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There is a lighted reindeer on our front lawn.

Whether he will still be standing there tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

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