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Kailee Wise is among the most brightly spirited residents of famed Taffy Lane in Orléans, annually festooning her house and front yard with so many lights and Christmas decorations that Rudolph can safely turn his nose off when Santa’s sleigh is still kilometres away.

It took Wise 30 hours this year just to set up the hundreds of electric candy canes and army of inflatable snowmen and Santas that have for years awed passersby on this, the most festive street in Ottawa.

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She has no idea how many lights she has and says she prefers not to think about her hydro bill.

This year, though, she added one single decoration that instantly transformed her display of brilliance into a brilliant display of humour: A lit sign on her neighbour Yves’ comparatively sparsely decorated lawn that points to hers and simply reads “DITTO.”

“It’s getting some kicks and laughs from people, and I hear them chuckling, so that’s good,” says Wise, who adds that she’d joked with the next-door neighbour about just such a sign for close to a dozen years before finally getting down to brass tacks, or, in this case, corrugated plastic and Christmas lights, this year.

It took her the better part of last Saturday to make the sign, she says, and the accompanying snowman holding it was a broken disused one she salvaged from Yves’ backyard.

“He said ‘It doesn’t work,’ but I said ‘Don’t worry, I have an extra light bulb I can use.’

“So he just shook his head and said, ‘Go ahead. Go ahead.’

“But people are laughing and taking pictures, and I’ve seen a couple of posts on Twitter. And if someone puts in an extra circuit board for us and pays the hydro, we’ll just continue along the whole street.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com