Use outdoor Christmas lights, with clear/frosted white bulbs. The same kind you use for home decoration at Christmas time. You will probably need to visit the Christmas store over in Dallas, Carol Ann.

Of course, you need support poles for those, to string them overhead, around the patio, also.

If you want to minimize the bugs, you can also use amber bulbs.

The bulbs are available in different wattages, so pick a wattage that will suit your needs. That will likely be the brightest ones.

You might also check with a couple of restaurant supply houses, to see if they have any to offer.

You can also find them at RV stores like Camping World.

heh. Can't afford RV's, so I wouldn't know.

I tried Camping World but they only had the tiny ornate lights.
My neighbor has the big Christmas lights and at night they look like the Mex. restaurant lights. I bought some at Hobby Lobby today. Can you believe they already have Christmas items for sale?

I was going to suggest Target. They have some really neat patio light sets there.

Yes, I can believe Hobby Lobby already has Christmas stuff out.

As far as hanging the lights, you can always use cup hooks attached to the undersides of the eaves of your house. I really like the look of the multi-colored lights over a patio.

Really though, this sounds like something that could be on one of Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck if . . ." lists! What the heck! We'll hang Christmas lights in the summer if we want to, right?! ;-)

LOL...it does sound redneck. I'm not leaving them up. I'm putting them on a post on the cabana and running them to a post on the corner of the deck and taking them down when we don't have parties. They look good when it's dark and you can't tell they are Christmas lights...or at least my neighbors do.

Yup......Hobby Lobby always puts Xmas stuff out in July. Takes them about 3 mos. to get it all out, it is soooooo overdone.

I don't go there as much as I did, because they moved my area store farther away, over into Flower Mound, on 2499.

For those not aware, there will soon be a new Calloway's on 2499, south of Cross Timbers.

Not that I can afford Smith & Hawken either, but their clearance catalog this week had "Cafe Lightstrings" to the tune of $26.99/26 feet and come in yellow or green. They still appear to be the itty bitty Christmas bulbs inside round globe type outsides, so I don't know what kind of light they'd put out.

I bet Hobby Lobby was cheaper!

Cost Plus World Market also had some of these, but they were priced about the same as the Smith & Hawken clearance bulbs.