Learn more about them in the Meet the Display section.

“How…..does……how…..can this…..how…..”

“OMG”

“Love it love it love it”

“How did they know what the radio was gonna play?”

“blown away! AMAZING!”

“Mommy, can we make our house look like that? Please?”

“Henry and Margaret’s dad is awesome!”

We’re always asked what the motivation is for putting up our display. The answer: stuff like this.

We go live tomorrow. We have a punchlist of a few items to complete — a few more plugins, fix a light here and there, get a few candy canes in place. But, oh how it took us a while to get here.

It seems as though forces were conspiring against us getting the show live this year. My job didn’t permit me to take off the normal week of Thanksgiving, which has usually provided me with 8 days of setup and configuration. Instead, that was limited to the Thanksgiving weekend, and even then it was limited in time. So, time management was going to be a challenge.

Then there was the weather. Lots of rain throughout November made simple tasks quite difficult. Going up a ladder isn’t so bad, but when it’s raining and cold and you’re trying to stay safe, normal tasks take twice or three times as long.

The humdinger was dealing with the wind. Over the past week, several days we saw wind gusting upwards of 30 MPH over the course of several days, and this caused serious difficulties with the mega tree. Like, expert level of difficulty. Undoing the mess that the wind caused on the mega tree took several days. It was significant enough that I’m presently evaluating new structures around the mega tree that can reduce the problems caused by excessive wind.

Ok, enough venting. That’s behind us….on with the show. Merry Christmas!

For those who don’t want to click away, the 2012 light schedule:

Opening Sunday, December 2nd at 5pm.

Running every night from 5pm to 11pm.

Looking forward to a great show this year!

It’s been 6 months since I put down anything here, but we’re changing that now. 2012 brings a new year with new ideas and renewed enthusiasm for another great show.

The big question on…well, just my mind at the moment…is what this year might hold in store? Is anything changing?

Absolutely. But not for the sake of change — that would be bad. No, instead we want to make sure we’re only improving the overall experience. Addition for the sake of addition is a sure-fire way to make the show worse, not better. So, what improvements are on the horizon?

New antenna: I’ve used a couple of basic antennas in the past few years, with acceptable results. As my wife would say, they were “fine”. So, one of the things I wanted to do this year was improve signal reception and clarity for our FM transmission. After doing a bit of research, I settled on the TM-100 antenna from Ramsey.

This is a great antenna, as I understand. I *could* have gone the route of creating my own antenna using plans from across the interwebs, but I decided I could benefit from the knowledge that others have gained in this area. If I’m going to spend time on something for my display that involves a learning curve, I’d rather spend it on lights than sound. Thank you, Ramsey Electronics.

Flood lights: speaking of lights, how about some new ones! I’m really excited to add RGB flood lights from HolidayCoro to the display this year. RGB lights, programmatically controlled through a DMX interface…it’s everything a geek like me would love. And, for all the possible combinations of colors that can be pushed through RGB lights, I’ll likely only use a few — green, red and white for sure.

The RGB flood lights will enable me to wash an entire area with color — like, the side of the house. It will add a dimension to the display that we’ve not had previously.

I’m looking forward to figuring out how to incorporate the flood lights into both new songs for the show, plus adding some pizzazz to songs from previous years. Should be fun!

As we close the books on 2011, it’s onward and upward to 2012. The new year brings some exciting changes for us:

• I’m starting a new job in January. I’m very pumped about it and ready to take on some really challenging projects.
• Our kids will finish up the school year as elementary kids, and will head back in the fall as middle schoolers. Hoo boy…
• We hope to kickoff another remodeling project this spring. Hello, new kitchen.
• A much needed family vacation. Preferably somewhere warm.

2012 will also bring some changes to the light show. But, I don’t want to give anything away, so you’ll need to stay tuned.

Have a great new year and best wishes for a successful 2012.

We did not escape unaffected.

The wind took out the topper on the mega tree. And it didn’t just pop out of its socket.

The wind managed to snap the topper off at the connection with the top of the mega tree.

As is the case with extreme weather, you usually find out where the weakest link in the structure resides.

The topper connected with a PVC 1″-to-3/4″ male adapter which was screwed into a 3/4″ female connection at the top of the tree. This has always been the weakest connection point, however it has held up in 30mph winds. It’s been the same one in use for the past 3 years.

So, what went wrong? Well, for starters, the adapter could not sustain winds at 50+ mph.  To be fair, those winds are atypical and designing the topper for that scenario seemed over-the-top.  Ah well, now we know our threshold we should accommodate.

So, knowing this is our weakest point (we have to attach the tree topper in some manner), how can we connect the tree topper in a way that minimizes the stress on the connection point?  Easy — we spread the stress.

The adapter threads were the single weak point in the connection. Any force on the topper is transferred to the threaded adapter. The threaded portion of the adapter is approximately 3/4″ in length, and is hollow throughout. Once a strong enough gust hit the topper, the stress point was exceeded in the adapter, and it broke away from the tree.

To counteract this in the future, we need to alleviate the stress that can occur at the adapter. To do this, we want to spread it out — push the stress along other less faulty points in the structure. We can accomplish this by running a metal rod (such as rebar) through the center of the topper and down into the mega tree. We will continue to use a PVC adapter, but by pushing a support bar through the connection, any force on the topper must also extend force on support rebar.  Support rebar, anywhere from 36″ to 48″, should extend up into the tree topper and down into the mega tree sufficiently to handle wind gusts in the 50mph range.

Unfortunately, that won’t happen until next year. We had to pull down the topper this year, and it’s been removed from the show. Alas, we’ve learned our lesson this year.  Hey, another Christmas gift!

If you get the opportunity, stop by the lights this weekend. The weather looks “ab-fab” (absolutely fantastic), so the light display will be on in full force. Plus, I’ll be hanging around and passing out treats to those that stop by!

If we don’t see you, have a relaxing, enjoyable, exciting, fun and festive holiday!

We’ve been noticing more and more cars happening by the house before 5pm and after 11pm — times outside our show schedule. I’ve been tempted to flip the switch on the show earlier or later to accommodate everyone.  (The show is run entirely by computer, even when it turns on and off. Overriding the system would be a serious breach of protocol, so it’s not to be taken lightly.)

We’re expecting a good amount of traffic over the holiday weekend, so we’re adjusting the show schedule for the weekend from 5:00 PM to 12:00 AM Midnight!  This is only for the weekend, and we’ll go back to regular show hours next week.

In November, we ran a contest to see what YOU, the adoring fan, would come up with given the opportunity to pick a song and add it to the show.  Our good friend Merissa Goldstein won, submitting the song “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses.

The song is now LIVE in the show, and I think it turned out great. It’s a bit different from other songs I’ve chosen, so synchronizing the lights to the song required some imagination on my part. At any rate, hope you like the song and synchronization.

And many thanks to Merissa for submitting the idea!