A Blue Lake Christmas

Blue Lake Drive is a popular cut-through to avoid traffic on U.S. 280, but around the holidays, drivers have another reason to stop by. 

Around Christmas time, one house on Blue Lake Drive is covered in Christmas lights and decorations. The house next door, on the other hand, only has one outdoor decoration — a sign that says “Ditto” with an arrow pointing to their neighbors.

Kathy McWilliams lives in the “Ditto house” on Blue Lake Drive, and her friend, Nancy McCay, moved in about three years ago and built the ditto sign. 

“We came up with the idea like three years before [we put it up],” McCay said. “Because of the busyness of our lives, we didn’t get it done until I moved in.”

After deciding to build the sign, McCay said the whole process took a few weeks.

“It was a challenge because I was trying to use scrap lumber and string lights to make this sign,” she said.

Even after the sign was complete, the slope of McWilliams’ front lawn presented another problem. McCay said she had to wrap an extension cord around a tree and herself for stability while she installed the sign. After that first year, they started putting the sign in an easier place, closer to the road.

Their neighbor, Mike Arbo, first started his extensive Christmas decorations for his daughter. Over the years, they have remodeled their porch and he now has a greater canvas to work with, he said. 

“I enjoy doing it, and I’m glad people enjoy looking at it,” Arbo said. “Every year I try to do something a little different.”

Arbo said people should feel welcome to drive by and see the decorations, including a surprise he is adding this year. He said he hopes they enjoy seeing the decorations but also remember Christmas is about more than lights.

“I hope everybody has a blessed Christmas and actually knows the real reason for the season,” Arbo said. “It’s not just all about the decorations.” 

McCay said when people find out they live on Blue Lake Drive, people will ask if they know the people in the “ditto house.” She and McWilliams each have a daughter at Vestavia Hills High School, and McCay said both girls enjoy this sort of attention their house gets around the holidays.

“They just think it’s great,” McCay said. “It tickles them when someone asks if they know the people [with the ditto sign].”

Arbo’s extensive Christmas decorations have also attracted attention before, he said, and he even has families occasionally stop by to comment on them.

“One day there was a family that pulled up in the driveway, and this little boy got out and he gave me a Hershey’s chocolate bar,” Arbo said. 

The chocolate bar, Arbo said, was his prize for having the best decorations the family had seen when they drove around town. 

When McCay added the sign around the holidays, it was initially a surprise to Arbo and his family, he said, and they enjoyed the joke.

“It thought it was funny as they could be,” Arbo said. “It’s really quite creative.”

While the outside of their house might not show it, McCay said McWilliams goes all out for Christmas. McWilliams makes sure the inside of the house is fully decorated for the holidays, McCay said, and after they set up about half of the decorations, they already have too many. But they choose to leave the exterior decorations to the Arbos, she said.

“Everything we do is just so minute compared to the Arbos that we don’t even attempt the outside,” McCay said.

Despite the different levels of decorating, both Arbo and McCay said they enjoy bringing a little joy to passersby. 

 “A lot of people come by and blow their horn, and it just thrills us that it makes people happy,” McCay said.