2013
2013
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The Rumor Mill has found more… rumors.
Santa gave all the elves the afternoon off in early November so I wandered down to the well heated North Pole Galleria to grab a couple of slices of supreme pizza at Sbarro since I’m trying to watch my weight. The place was already decorated for Christmas and right there in center court was Santa sitting on a throne and talking to kids. I had always wondered why he suddenly became so hard to find the last two months of the year. I assumed he was working on delivery logistics for all those presents he had to distribute really early…
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Twas the night before Christmas, a visit from St. Nicholas
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I…
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Rethinking decorations
So you are minding your own business, shopping in a store, any store, when you spot something that kicks your creative juices into high gear. You start visualizing the next addition to your Christmas display. You buy as many of the items as you can possibly lay your hands on and begin to incorporate it into the next display that will make you proud you ever learned how to plug in a string of lights. Your idea is a success and you have gained the adoration of Christmas light display admirers for the next 365 days. The next year you…
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Top 10 ideas
Whether you’re a newbie or an experienced decorator, it’s a lot of work to get geared up to start the display setup process. The purpose of this article is to help make that process go a little bit smoother and improve your processes just a little bit. I have learned from the best and brightest at the PlanetChristmas forums and have used that knowledge base to come up with lots of great ideas that help us design, build, setup and tear down our display the most efficiently way possible. At our Belardo Lights display in San Diego, we like to…
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Rumor mill ruminations
What an interesting summer with the war of the Christmas shows, each on the same weekend of July in Conroe, Texas and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This elf made it to both and in some ways they were similar. Hot. I mean as in outside temperature. Both shows had a pretty good vendor hall and lots of Christmas fanatics but that’s where the similarities ended. The Texas show seemed aimed at the hardcore, techie kind of decorator. Very impressive classes with several geared for the Halloween haunter. I knew I was in trouble when this handsome elf was mistaken for an ugly…
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Green Christmas Book
People all around the world are celebrating Christmas in a more environmentally friendly way. Celebrating a Green Christmas will not only help save the environment, it will also save you money. This ebook gives you 50 ways to celebrate a more eco-friendly (and wallet friendly!) Why Celebrate a Green Christmas? While we gather with loved ones to celebrate the birth of Christ, we also need to celebrate Creation and our role as stewards of the Earth. God created us as part of nature and gave us the responsibility of caring for all of God’s Creation. Genesis chapter 1 verse 26…
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Sub Text Santa
With the star-studded Black Nativity (2013) and Tyler Perry directorial A Madea Christmas (2013) slated for cinema release later this year, it is clear that movie studios are still keen to seize the potential of Christmas custom. There’s even a re-emerging rumour that a remake of Christmas in Connecticut (1945) might be on the cards; with Jennifer Garner in the starring role. But, what is the real ethos of the Christmas movie and how does it relate to the original message of Christmas? In the fourth century, the pagan festival of the Winter Solstice was claimed by Christians as the…
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Put a mega-tree on the roof
It all started a couple of years ago when we needed to find a suitable house to help care for an aging relative. All my previous hard work building and sequencing a customized display for our old house was going down the drain. The old house had tons of shrubs and provided a natural setting for lots of lights. Not so with the new house. Not a single shrub anywhere. My creativity languished for 2011 and all I did was put a 16’ inflatable Santa on the carport roof. It was a good location where the south end of our…
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RGB as simple as 1, 2, 3
There’s a technology heading for the decorative lighting world that has the potential to be a very disruptive force. Just as we try to get our heads around basic LEDs to displace incandescents, now we’re being asked to use something called RGB based lighting, meaning the lights can be told to change to any color of the rainbow. Good gosh. Can someone slow down so the rest of us normal people can catch up? LEDs are here to stay By now you probably already know the advantages of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). They only consume 10-20% of the power of…
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