Rice paper

When Debby Boone belted out "You Light up My Life" back in the day, she was unknowlingly handing me a decidedly uncool yet 'impossible to get out of my head' theme song.

How so? Let's just say I spend a decent percentage of time every month engaged in the activity known as Putting Up Lights. it ...moremay not be a Beijing-worthy sport but hey, there are some mad skillz involved. And always, always that song gets stuck in my head while I'm standing on some ladder somewhere.

Lights set a mood, change the ambiance, deliver a tone, highlight something wonderful, camoflauge, conceal, reveal, arouse and invite. They're pretty important to just about any event. A birthday cake with no candlelight? Not so happy.

So over the years, I've come across every imaginable way of facing the divine challenge, "Let there be light." I have an arsenal of timers, dimmers, strings, ropes, lanterns, washes, dj lights, pin spots, bulbs.... it's like God finished his "Let there be light" by handing me a trunk of crap and saying, "Ok, it's working. Now YOU deal with it. I'm going to go make a sandwich." Sigh.

Thus I wasn't expecting to be quite as impressed as I was with PartyPhoton.com's color-changing LED party lights and lanterns. I've used this type of product. A lot. An awful lot. They're all the same for the most part.

And that is where PartyPhoton differs. Right out of the box, I was impressed by the actual thought- HARK! yes, some companies seem to put real THOUGHT into the packaging of their product- and quality behind these lights. Take the hardware accessories, for example. There are SEVERAL styles of attachment hardware to choose from so that no matter what surface (treebranch, wire, etc.) you are going to hang these from, no scurry to the store or basement is needed. It's ALREADY included. I don't mean that one style is conveniently included in the box. I mean they give you A FEW to choose from. Amazingly rare.

The lights themselves assemble in seconds. You could open the box ten minutes before guests arrive and have them assembled and placed and be an inch or two into your first cocktail before the doorbell rings. So easy a husband could do it.

My daughter made a project out of timing how long the LED lasted. We were expecting 3 days of continuous usage, meaning once we turned the lights on they stayed on 24 hrs a day. The site itself said 50 hours with the enclosed replaceable standard AAA alkalines. She gave up tracking after 6 days. Over 6 days of lights. Incredible.

And as much as I wouldn't advocate leaving anything important outside in the rain, these little ladies had no one around to take them inside one day during a particularly ferocious thunderstorm. When I pulled in that night, every single one of them was still glowing and intact on the branches of the tree. Wow. Great quality there.

Finally, the last thing I'll mention: the colors themselves. the LED cycles through a gorgeous spectrum of colors, changing every 20-30 seconds. Instead of just the classic red, blue, green combos, hues like purple and turquoise can be seen rising up and then melting away. Really, really lovely.

So it's fair to say that I'm pretty damn impressed. For once, a company didn't just deliver on a product. They did it divinely.

Get these. You'll love them.