J.D. Krouse hasn’t had a holiday decorating disaster yet, but he has come close. “I’ve never been shocked, but I almost fell of a ladder once putting icicle lights up. I stretched too far and lost my footing a little bit. I almost grabbed the gutter and ripped that off,” he says. No, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to up Christmas lights.
Enter Brad Finkle, a self-described handy outdoorsman when it comes to all things merry and bright, and author of the recently published “Holiday Hero: A Man’s Manual for Holiday Lighting.” “Every season, I would get hundreds of calls from just average homeowners with decorating problems,” says Finkle, who’s been a professional holiday decorator in the Omaha, Neb., area for the past 30 years and has won awards from the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. “I thought, ‘There needs to be a how-to-guide to help people who don’t know how to decorate.’ ”
For novices and hate-to-decorate types, Finkle, who must have gotten his Christmas decorating gene from his mother because he grew up celebrating Hanukkah with his dad’s family, says a plan is the “must-have” of the decorating season.
Now, there’s a real holiday hero.
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