Lights

Christmas Lights!

Santaland
Santaland opened for the first time 25 years ago in Madison, MN, a small rural town in west central Minnesota. Inclement weather moved the original Santaland from the frigid cold to the cozy 7,000 square foot second floor in the Heather Nursery & Floral building located on Main Street. Hundreds of volunteer hours and more than $15,000 of in-kind donations have allowed a dedicated group of local and metro elves to create an indoor holiday display that rivals the real North Pole. Santa was speechless when he first saw his new throne. Surrounded by hundreds of packages and more than…
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More views from the UK
One of my other hobbies is oil painting. I create landscapes and abstracts in oils purely for my own pleasure. I was talking with a friend at an art exhibition just last month and she said half jokingly that I should put my art in for the Turner prize (a prestigious art prize in the UK that can catapult the winner into art superstardom.) I said don’t be silly, my paintings are nowhere near good enough. No she replied, not your paintings… your Christmas lights. That got me thinking. We spend lots of time and effort on our displays. But…
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Christmas lights version 3
For nearly a century our parents and grandparents have been hanging lights on trees, houses and yards – and, for nearly that entire time, they were just static, sans maybe a blinking bulb or two – this was Christmas Lights Version 1.0. Then, in the late 90’s, a movement started to sequence lights to music using personal computers. Since the late 90’s and up through 2010, that same basic system of controlling lights has prevailed – a personal computer with software, that controls a box, that turns a typical strand of incandescent or LED (Light Emitting Diodes) lights on and…
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The largest computerized Christmas tree in the world
How does one construct the largest artificial foliage Christmas tree in the world? Bi-Lingual-ly of course! But I’m getting ahead of myself . . . . Let’s start at the beginning. Gallo, the largest beer manufacturing company in Guatemala, has held a tree-lighting ceremony for Guatemala City (and surrounding areas) for the last 24 years as a way to give back to the community. For their 25th Anniversary of the tree lighting, they decided to purchase a new tree; complete with a fully synchronized musical light show! To accomplish this task, Gallo contacted Barrango, Inc., located in South San Francisco.…
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Full backstage pass
I wrote an article entitled “A Day in the Life” for the August 2009 issue of PlanetChristmas magazine. I received emails from people who were amazed by the amount of work and time involved in such an endeavor and thrilled by the excitement that surrounds a life in this business. I thought I would share five weeks of my schedule for those of you considering a career in the decorating world. The weeks described below include the three leading up to a large decorating job and the two of on-site installation. If you really dream to be a superstar lighting…
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The Christmas Ranch
I picked up the phone and it was Dr. Mike Fuchs, the owner of The Christmas Ranch northeast of Cincinnati. I had heard about this place for years and all I could imagine was Santa riding a horse or cooking a giant steak over the campfire, which seemed a bit odd to this Christmas lover. Mike is such a delight to talk with, has a deep passion for Christmas and a real desire to help others. He loves outdoor Christmas decorations and leaves his display up yea r-round. The more we talked the more I knew he was a PlanetChristmas…
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Off season in the Christmas business
It’s that time of the year again when the earth is shifting on its axis, the days in the northern hemisphere are getting longer and the Christmas lighting off-season is in full swing. Wait, you mean you are already planning your 2010 display? Don’t feel bad because many others are doing the same thing. As a result the slow times here at Synchronized Christmas are coming to an end as well. January is usually spent finishing paperwork and getting the financial house in order for the coming year. February and March turn into a downtime for this small business owner.…
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Too many blowmolds?
Over the years many of us have seen this question asked over and over in the PlanetChristmas blow mold forum: “How many blow molds do you have?” It’s a funny thing, but it seems that a lot of enthusiasts/displayers/collectors cannot answer this simple question. I know I can’t. Blow molds have a tendency to multiply over time. Ask any enthusiast on the forum. I recently saw a signature line that read “Blow molds are like potato chips, you can’t have just one.” This is so true! Once the plastic bug bites you, it doesn’t like to let go. Before you…
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GFCIs
We all love to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We compare, critique and gather new ideas (aka: copying someone else’s) while commenting on everyone’s design, but as soon as it rains, what happens? Everything goes dark. What causes it? A protection we electricians call GFCI (Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupters) is a must for your safety when around a Christmas display. A ground-fault occurs when there is a break in the low-resistance grounding path from a tool or electrical system. The electrical current may then take an alternative path to the ground through the user, resulting in serious injuries or…
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Christmas decorating trends
I honestly thought when volunteering for this assignment that finding out what the big Christmas trends for 2010 were going to be would be easy since it was already March and the season was just eight months away. Surely all the merchants had placed their big orders with the manufacturers and knew what they would be pushing hard for the holidays. Boy, was I wrong. If I was a newbie I’d be concerned but experience has taught me no one really wants to say much, at least on the record, because no one has confidence what the real trends are…
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