Posted on 12/21/2005 9:55:27 PM PST by CharlesWayneCT
(NOTE: Complete set of pictures are at referenced site above)
I've "finished" my lights for this year, I put a couple at my blog but I couldn't get picture links to work from there so I've put them up on my "maj.com" picture site (which I only have because I use "brickshelf.com" to host a few lego pictures.....).
In this picture, you see the house as it looks as you approach it on the road. I've moved the flag to the roof, to get it out of the way of a new tree but also it is much more prominent. As you approach, it seems to move from the wall to "floating", as you will see in the next picture. I've put up lots of hooks, and build structures using cpvc water pipes, sometime gluing and sometimes using screws. This lets me take things apart and store them as long thin pipes.:
Here's the view you see as you pull up. If you look on the left, you can see a tree from my back yard, it's 2000 lights staked to the ground and hoisted up into a tree. I've got about 5000 lights in the back yard that are barely visible from the front, but we can see them from windows).
I use 8 timers on 6 circuits for this light display (2 circuits are 20-amp circuits, and most timers only do 15 so I have 2 timers on each of them). I also have 2 light sensors to control the lights attached to the house, which come on first and turn off last. There are about 4100 lights physically attached to the house. I put a few red lights in the green light sets around the windows/porch/garage to make it look like holly.
This is a view from another angle. I didn't used to like metal sculptures, but a few years back I decided deer were "natural" enough. I'll never have santa or his sled, but if I ever catch a break on a 50 percent off sale, I might add a polar bear or a snowman (we don't usually get enough snow for a real snowman, although if you look carefully you will see the remains of a snow fort we built (a big mound of snow which the kids dig holes in).
In this view you can also see another tree in the back yard, it's all the way on the right. We call this the "bear tree", because from our kitchen window it looks like a bear, swaying in the breeze like it is lumbering up the yard. It is a simple 14-foot pine tree, and I put about 2000 lights in it this year.
I have several artificial trees I've picked up after christmas, I set them up outside and put lights on them. Here are two surrounding my front door, which has a wreath that a kind neighbor gave me one year in appreciation for my lights (I don't advertise my lights, so we get little traffic, but most of the people in the neighborhood know about them and come by).
I sadly had my front-yard tree die this year, I left a little of it, painted it white, and covered it in about 1300 blue lights:
This is what it looked like the previous year, when it had about 3000 lights in it:
I didn't like how white the deer looked, so after christmas last year my daughter and I picked several colors and test-sprayed the deer until we found a color we liked. We ended up with a couple of different colors. I painted everything, including the lights, because the clear lights washed out the rest of the display. Here's a family of deer hiding under a holly tree (The holly tree is actually in my neighbor's yard, but they kindly let me put lights in the tree. I use clear lights to accentuate the green shiny leaves and red berries, this is the only place I like to use clear lights which are otherwise, as I said, too bright)).
My newest addition is my new fake blue tree. Since I had a lot of extra blue lights because of the dead tree, I needed a place to put them. A storm had blown over my roof-mounted TV antenna, and the mounting pole was sitting on the side of my house waiting to be discarded. It was about 10 feet tall, with legs, so I added a few feet with another tube, painted the whole thing copper, and built a tree around it, containing about 2200 lights, mostly blue with a few hundred purple lights:
Last year the most dissapointing tree to me was my big red "fire" tree (look at the picture in a previous post, you see it on the right, the tree is 40 feet tall and I had lights draped down it). The problem was first that I didn't like the draped lights, and 2nd that every big wind blew the lights around in the tree so they would end up bunched and I'd have to get out the pole and fix them (I use a long pole made of a stick and a 16-foot telespoping pool-cleaner pole). Anyway, this year I decided to go horizontal instead of vertical, and I also decided to accent the red with some green. The tree isn't very full, so I'm not entirely happy with the effort, but next year if I can figure out a way to work around the tree (it's almost 50 feet from the right side since there's a steep hill) I'll do this again, I like it much better than last year. There are about 3750 lights in this tree, it probably needs about 1000 more.
The first couple of years, I was annoyed by the light pole in the middle of my display. Then I decided I'd make it into something. I got a flexible dryer vent, bent it into a candy-cane top shape, and filled it with spray-foam insulation. I attach it to the top, and wrap the entire thing with about 600 multi-colored lights (these were too bright, so I removed all the "orange" lights and replaced them with darker red/green/blue lights). And in case you are wondering, I moved the camera when taking this picture, not on purpose.
I hope you have enjoyed my lights. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
As a Jew living in this great country founded by and fought for (for the most part) by brilliant and tolerant Christians, my display is modest. I put three strings of lights in sequence under my eaves: blue (for the color of the Star of David in the Israeli flag representing Hannukah), green and red (for solidarity with my Christian brothers and sisters in this Chritmas season).
Merry Christmas to you and yours, friend!
I really like the deer. Looks like they were sprayed an amber color.
Thanks. Looks like I'm getting some new deer. My story is that PETA (People for euthanizing tiny animals) wanted to liberate the deer, but couldn't figure out how to get them unplugged (because I tape all my plugs).
So, knowing the deer would rather be dead than trapped in my christmas display, they humanely decapitated many of them, leaving their heads scattered around the yard to warn other deer to stay away.
They did however try to escape with some antlers, which I found on another street.
Tonight I will try to re-assemble the deer and see how many lights I can get back up and running. In the meantime I'm looking for last-minute sales. I might also simply pull all the really damaged light strings off the deer, and after christmas try to figure out a way to attach new strands of lights.
My daughter is actually much sadder than I am. They also kicked a few deer. One of the babies was beheaded, but doesn't look otherwise damaged.
So I'm off to find new deer, and to pick up paint.
And EXCELLENT color identification. I just dug up the paint can from last year, and sure enough it was amber. Some were painted other colors first, and then overpainted to give them different looks, I was trying brown for a while but my daughter said it was way too dark.
I may post pictures of the carnage tonight.
FOrtunately, they were only interested in the deer, and did not cause any major damage to anything else.
Merry Christmas! :o)
You used to live in CT, right? We have a traditional New England colonial house... just a white/clear electric candle in each front window and two small lighted trees on the front porch (clear lights). I like the traditional look, but it's lots of fun to see houses decorated like yours. As I said above, your colors are fabulous! :o)
Very magical with just the right combination of colors. I love it!
Have you considered green wreaths, with maybe fake or real fruit attached? Sometimes that really adds to the "traditional" look, (it's what they do in Williamsburg for example).
I have a neighbor who does a wreath outside hung on each window (each with a red bow), and just puts spotlights outside to shine on them -- and it looks great.
Merry christmas. And yes, I lived in Connecticut, from when I was 4 to when I was 11. The CT in my name isn't for "connecticut" it's for "Critically Thinking" which is the name of my newspaper column.
You're obviously not afraid of color. I like that!
I definitely like color, but I do seem to like my colors solid, so I don't use a lot of multi-colored light strings.
As my wife likes to tell people when explaining how obsessed I am with this, I first started one year after finding a large supply of lights in a KB Toy Outlet in an after-christmas sale. I bought about 4000 lights that day, all of them multi-colored.
The next year, I would sit in my house watching TV and pulling the light bulbs out, re-arranging them into solid color strands.
I still do that some, it's the only way to get orange lights. So I'll take 5 strands of multi-colored lights, and make 1 orange, and sometimes I'll make a couple of blue-green and red-pink light sets (since I can already buy those colors separately, and if you put enough of those together it gives you different "shades" of color.
Merry Christmas.
WOW!
That is a magnificent and artistic display! You really have the Christmas spirit, to put in all that time and work (not to mention the electric bill) to beautifully celebrate the Holy Season.
Thanks for sharing with us, esp. artistically-impaired folks like me!
Merry Christmas!
Don't stoopid vandals just pi$$ you off? I'll have to try that amber paint thing. I think bright white lights on our front bushes are nice, but sometimes deer look a little TOO bright. I don't have any critters in the yard, just the lights on the greenery, but someday I'd like to have some. I'd even like to get a little lighted flamingo to annoy the next door neighbor. ;o)
Wow! So beautiful! I love it when people decorate their homes for Christmas so all are able to view the lovely lights! Thanks for posting these.
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