Christmas Decorations

Just today, I noticed my neighbor four houses up has put his Christmas lights up. Traditionaly, I put mine up the day after Thanksgiving but he's been beating me to it ever since he moved in four years ago.

Well, I'm thinking of starting my 2006 display a little earlier this year; maybe sometimes this week. Already have several boxes of Forever Bright and Target/Philips LED Christmas lights ready. I'm still working on my controller; a pair of solid state relays and a 70 volt speaker transformer which will be triggered by an audio source so I could get the lights to *blink* to whatever song I'll play. I've already figured out the wiring, just need to mount everything to a board and wire up a few outlets and run extension cords for each "channel".

I wonder what songs I should play for Christmas. I already have Lindsey Buckingham "Holiday Road", Mavis Staples "Christmas Vacation" from National Lampoon's Vacation and Christmas Vacation respectively and the soundtrack from Home Alone and Home Alone 2 on my hard drive.

When do you start decorating ?

I typically start decorating the day after Thanksgiving; but since I now live with my sister, my decorating schedule may have to be altered slightly to hers if the schedules differ. But I still intend to hang Christmas lights in my room on 11-24-06 regardless of her decorating schedule.

I wonder what the guy with the house that played along with the song by Manheim Steamroller last year is going to do this year. Hopefully he/she does it again, and with a new song as cool as it was last year. I bet they had to start months in advance with all the programming.

-Cameron

The_LED_Museum said:

I typically start decorating the day after Thanksgiving; but since I now live with my sister, my decorating schedule may have to be altered slightly to hers if the schedules differ. But I still intend to hang Christmas lights in my room on 11-24-06 regardless of her decorating schedule.

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i keep them up all year long

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0012/feature7/index.html

We start in December, if we get keen enough of course. Just sucks that it will be about 37degC and 90% humidity when Xmas rolls around.

I started decorating late last week with one simple decoration.

I live alone and thus do not put a Tree up. I do help doing so at other houses.

In any event, I ordered a Christmas Tree Advent Calendar from L.L. Bean and it arrived. I liked the way it is made and looks so much it is now on display on a table in my living room.

bobisculous said:

I wonder what the guy with the house that played along with the song by Manheim Steamroller last year is going to do this year. Hopefully he/she does it again, and with a new song as cool as it was last year. I bet they had to start months in advance with all the programming.

-Cameron

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He's doing it in a local park this year so he won't cause traffic jams around his home again. He has some volunteers working with him for this year's "bigger and better" display. The plan is to make it into a drive-through lighting attraction where they'll charge a modest admission. He'll get some of the proceeds and the rest will go to a local charity. For those who want to locate it for a visit, here's another article with the details.
:goodjob:

alaskawolf said:

i keep them up all year long

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I have two neighbors that do that.

Bought another 60 White LED set of Philips from Target today to go with my other Philips sets from last year. Only one thing I noticed; this year's set was two times brighter and had a much whiter light compared to the dimmer, bulish color that my old set has.

Guess I'll have get another current set so it dosen't look like the Luxeon lottery

Bah, his display last year was freaking insane cool, but I don't know if I could pay $15 bucks to see it. I see their are free shows, but still. 15 bucks? That can be a lot to just drive through a park to see and hear a song being played...

-Cameron

I bought a blue set from Target and mixed it with one set of white I bought the other day. I also found two sets of my Forever Brights that I had since 2001 and added blue LEDs to one of them. I'm going to add blue to the other white set I have as well; the blue and white really stands out.

There are people near me that already have their lights up and running.. me, I'm not that brave but I do have mine ready to go. Talked the wife into buying her first LED tree lights this year, too!!!

When I lived in Seattle, my window displays and inside-the-house displays "only" used 1.4 megawatt-hours (MWh, not kWh) of electricity for the whole month of December.
Nowadays, with most of my Christmas lights being LED, I don't expect to use more than a few kWh for the entire month - and that's really pushing it.

We are going all LED this year for Christmas lighting.

I want one of these. http://www.christmaslightsetc.com/productdetail.htm?productid=16905&CategoryID=668

Now, who is going to buy it for me as an early Christmas present? :laughing:

Got my lights hooked to the timer today. More lights going up on the roof soon when I have time to drag out the extension ladder.