Outdoor Decorating

Outdoor Christmas decorating

4 x 4 Design
So it’s time to take the big step and animate your light display? Since most people use Light-O-Rama controllers we figured they would have a few tips on how to get started. We talked to John Potochnak and he said they’re now getting serious with simple plug and play solutions. Light-O-Rama is about make available 50 music sequences that should help bring animation to more displays. The challenge is everyone uses their light channels differently so it’s tough to create sequences that will work over a variety of venues. Luckily the pros have figured out a trick that will make…
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SuperStar Sequencer
For Christmas of 2008 I spent untold hours building my first SuperStar display using 288 segments of green and white rope lights. Controlled by 48 multiplexed channels it was a true example of Light-O-Rama’s motto of “imagine it, then do it.” Traditional mega-trees can spin, but my SuperStar could do patterns in all directions. Most importantly it could shoot beams downward from the star to the ground. The next summer I got an email from Light-O-Rama announcing a device called a Cosmic Color Ribbon. I thought, well they did it, they made my SuperStar display obsolete. With 12 Cosmic Color…
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Light-O-Rama
In 1975 Dan Baldwin was a newly minted computer science wizard and had just married his longtime sweetheart, Mary. That first Christmas together they bought a three foot tree upon Mary’s insistence and a family tradition was born. For the next 20 years that little tree, plus some accessories, was just about all the decorating the couple did for the holiday season. Something changed in 1995 when Mary took it upon herself to go outside and string a few lights along the top of the fence. Dan looked at her work and said “we need more lights!” Soon there were…
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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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What’s Christmas Expo?
We get this question, a lot. To most people Christmas is that time of year when there seem to be plenty of days off from work between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Christmas trees start popping up like weeds. Then there’s the challenge about getting into something called the Christmas spirit. It’s hard to define this time of year but it’s hard not to notice most people do seem a little nicer. Then there’s the hassle factor. All the amateur shoppers hit the stores in search of presents causing traffic headaches and long lines at the checkout. Relatives come to visit…
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The world tour
It may well be the most unique concert tour ever undertaken by an individual performer. “The House on Christmas Street International Tour 2010” is entirely supported by fans of one song. Singer, songwriter and 2010 Grammy nominee Judy Pancoast wrote “The House on Christmas Street” in 1998 as a tribute to those mega-decorated houses she’s loved all her life; the ones that can almost be seen from outer space and make the passerby wonder how the homeowner is managing to pay the electric bill. “There seems to be one of those houses in every town,” says Pancoast, “but to my…
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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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Modern marvels: vampire plugs
How many 100’ orange, pink and green extension cords are used in your Christmas display? How many times have you run a giant cord to power that one string of LED mini-lights? Ever used a 100’ cord when a 17’ one would do fine? Do you hate the color orange? There’s an answer to your electric distribution challenge. If ever there was a modern marvel in the Christmas decorating world, it has to be the little devices we call vampire plugs. Take a length of lamp cord, add a vampire male connector to one end, a female at the other…
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