Christmas Lights (1 Viewer)

[Jay Taylor]

With the southern central states having unseasonably warm weather for about a week around Thanksgiving and the first winter storm forecast for Thursday many of my neighbors and I were inspired to get the Christmas lights up before the freezing storm hits. The neighborhood decorations are already looking pretty good. This may be a very good year for Christmas lights.

How’s the decorating going in your neighborhood?

 

[Jay H]

Saw lots of new decorations up. I'm sure the same warm spell moseyed over to the Northeast and midatlantic states too. I was out hiking on saturday in upstate new york in shorts and a short sleeve jersey...

However, good thing we're not in north Dakota and the northern plains... they seem to be in the low teens for highs!

Jay

 

[Paul D G]

Last year we were one of two houses on the block to put up decorations. This year there are many more - probably due to the warm weather.

One thing I hate, tho, is tacky decorating. Some houses just have a bunch of lighted things in front of their house, or they hang a string of icicle lights that droop in the middle and don't reach the end of ledge they're attached to etc. The guy at the corner, who has rarely come out of his house since he moved it, was out going whole hog but he blew it, in my eyes, by leaving a big gap between light strings. You know, instead of starting with the last light ended he streches out the end of the cord, plugs the next one in, and streches that out so there's a two foot gap between lights. argh.

Best holiday display ever: http://masl.to/?A38B2364E

I grabbed this off the net last year because I knew I'd never find it again. It's real. The guy's site had pictures of the computers, etc he used to set it all up.

EDIT: Just found this: http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/xmaslights.asp

-paul

 

[mylan]

I would say my neighborhood is decorating about like last year, we have three that do the icicle lights, two that do the lighted wire animals, and one blow up Santa. It does seem like they are decorating earlier, I guess because we have had some mild days down South. My wife and I put our tree up Sunday, we've never had a tree up in November before.

 

[McPaul]

Tried to click that link, it takes me to a ".wmv" file. what reads this?

 

[Johnny Angell]

Well, Windows Media Player will.

 

[Parker Clack]

http://www.owen-and-adam.com/prog/lights.wmv *Note the music used in the video is © Trans-Siberian Orchestra

 

[BrettB]

Thanks for that Packy. Not sure I'd want to live next door but fun to watch on the internets.

Jay, I think we've had pretty good weather here in OKC for several years now. I always put ours up Thanksgiving weekend. Definitely beat the weather this year.

Our house isn't real elaborate but I do have a diagram on AutoCad.

We took a walk in the neighborhood and our street is (as usual) one of the better ones. Probably about 75%.

 

[Jay Taylor]

Now all that you need is a robot interface to hook up your lights!

While shopping in Target we saw some LED Christmas lights from Phillips that were selling for $12.95 for a string of 60 compared to about $1.95 for a string of normal miniature lights. They claim to use 88% less power than a string of 100 regular miniature lights but have about the same total light output. We decided to test three all blue strings on our dock. We chose the ball shaped type that is the size of a marble.

The LED lights are really beautiful with a deep blue color. For years we’ve liked the colors of the C9 and C7 bulbs with see through colors as opposed to the painted bulbs. The LED lights make the C9 and C7 bulbs look washed out.

Placed side by side a string of LED blue lights looks like a beautiful deep saturated blue and a string of C9 or C7 regular blue bulbs appears to be an unsaturated washed out turquoise. By themselves the C9 and C7 bulbs look fine, but when placed within view of the LED lights they pale in comparison.

The claim by Phillips for the LED lights is that they will last for 25,000 hours. The problem we’ve had with regular Christmas lights is that the color flakes off the inside of the bulb which then makes for white spots in the colored string, or the color fades. Time will tell whether the LED lights have problems that reduce their life after they’ve spent some time in freezing weather.

Here’s a couple of links describing them:

Christmas Lights etc.

LED Christmas Lights and How to Fix Them

Do any of you have experience with the LED Christmas lights?

 

[MarkHastings]

Completely agreed! The ones who buy a bunch of those giant inflatable things and stick them all over their yard??? IMO, it's just 'meh'. Not much in the way of creativity. They're a dime a dozen now and I'm not crazy about them at all. Too cheesy for my tastes.

I like the more simplistic christmas lights around the trees and houses. There is this one 'farm-type' house that has a bunch of white lights around their white picket fence.

 

[Elizabeth S]

Wow, that house was amazing! Thanks for posting that!

 

[Buzz Foster]

We got our done over the weekend. We did beat the cold weather, as it is going to be 13 tonight, and 29 for a high tomorrow. Not much warmer this weekend, either.

 

[Edwin-S]

Windows media player plays .wmv files.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

Agreed!! There's a guy that lives nearby that I swear has at least a dozen of these inflatable things occupying every square inch of his front yard. It's absurd. And when the blowers are turned off, it looks like a bunch of garbage bags flapping around in the wind.

 

[Paul D G]

We have one house which would look nice but the completely ruin it but running a string of lights into a star shape in EVERY window in the front of their house, then they have a green rope light going around the front door and around the garage. Of course it's not long enough to it just terminates partway down the far side.

We have this patch of bare land next to the front door. I stuck one of those spiral light trees in the middle then took six strings of lights and scattered them over the ground. Looks kinda cool, like a garden of stars. Hopefully, when there is a light coating of snow on the ground the whole area will glow.

-paul

 

[MarkHastings]

It's so white trash.

Affordable ways to go "Big" with your white trash decorating.

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

We decorate pretty simply with a couple touches of excess. My mom used to be an accountant at a factory that made christmas decorations so I got most stuff for free. I have a couple strings of Candelaria. These are small, white plastic buckets spaced about a foot apart that have C9 lights in them. When lit, it looks like a candle is burning inside. I put a string on each side of my driveway. Among the neighbors, my driveway is now known as the landing strip.

I also put up a Santa with two reindeer. These are basically iron rods bent into shape with a string of lights on them. Of course, the front reindeer's nose gets a flashing red bulb.

The rest is just strings of white lights around the yard light and porch rails and colored lights on our large evergreen. It took my son and I about two hours last Sunday to put it all up.

 

[Gil Clark]

There's a guy about a mile from me, up in Frisco TX, that does the same. Traffic gets BAD around his house.

http://www.friscochristmas.com/

He's got videos from last year (3 songs).

 

[MarkHastings]

Did anyone see "Deck the Halls" yet? There is a scene in the movie (there's a quick shot of it in the trailer) where Danny Devito's character uses LED lights on his roof to create a jumbotron type of display with video.

I wonder if this is (or will be) possible? I'm sure someone's working on this idea right now. Just string a set of Red, Green and Blue lights up and control them with a computer....but I assume the lights would be too slow to respond to video speeds? It would probably work more like an animated gif I assume....