Here we are at the halfway point between the lights turning last season and the lights turning on for this season and we seem to have a plan. I toyed with a few ideas of what to change and what to add, where I finally settled is changing the left hand side of the house to a walk through area with the donation bin inside a “Santa House” that can double as a photo op as well as adding two additional pixel panels to the lower section of the house beside the garage.
Continue reading “We have a plan”Category: lightorama
We are live, Christmas 2021
Not a lot of items got completed on schedule, but fortunately the schedule was forgiving enough that I got everything finished with about 3 hours to spare. Unfortunately because of current COVID restrictions we could not have our usual light up party for the 2nd straight year. This severely impacts our fundraising efforts as we traditionally collect about 50% of the donations on the first night from friends and family.
Continue reading “We are live, Christmas 2021”Half way through the ’21 install
Time flies when you are not getting much done. Here we are half way through my install schedule, I’ve had a couple of weekends that haven’t been as productive as intended but have been trying to catch up as best I can. With Halloween behind us it will be an all out push to light up.
Continue reading “Half way through the ’21 install”Building the Bucket Lights
One display item I always enjoyed when I was a kid were driveway lights made from putting ice-cream buckets over C9 bulbs. This is something I had been thinking of doing for some time, when contemplating the new items I wanted to add I realized I could build a modern RGB version of this in a similar manner to how I built my North Poles last year.
Continue reading “Building the Bucket Lights”We are a go
I’ve spent much of this year debating if I would do a big light show this season. After much consideration the excitement has built enough for me to commit to building another show this year. We will go live 3 months from today on November 27th, hopefully we will be able to have a light up party with a road hockey game and people in our house again. I really missed not having the light up party last season.
Continue reading “We are a go”We’re half way there ’21.
It’s hard to believe but we are already at the midway point between turning off the lights on January 2nd and the official Light up on November 27th.
Continue reading “We’re half way there ’21.”That’s a Wrap
All the lights are taken down and put away, which puts the final bow on the 2020 Christmas season. The teardown was completed earlier this year than it ever has been in the past, we had some good weather early January then a really nice March which allowed me to get it all finished up early. We are also still under struck lockdown conditions so have no commitments with the kids. Being done by Easter is usually a good year, this year we were done by the spring solstice.
Continue reading “That’s a Wrap”We are Live, 2020
At 6pm on November 28th the lights turned on for the season. Our usual light up party had to change due to restrictions on gatherings and the number of visitors to ones home. We managed to reconfigure the event to have a drive by bottle drive for the McKnight Atom hockey teams and also collect food for the Calgary Food Bank. Although it wasn’t the event it usually is, it was great to see many faces I haven’t seen in the last 8 months and have a short socially distanced chat with friends when they were dropping food and bottles off.
Continue reading “We are Live, 2020”2 Weeks to Light up
Its now only two weeks to our official light up on Nov 28th. I fell a little behind schedule on the install over the last couple of weeks but knew I could make it up this week as I had 3 days off work.
Continue reading “2 Weeks to Light up”Installation ’20 is underway
I have traditionally called my installation “build”, but since I have been building props; arches, north poles, stockings, RGB Santa and install structures for the last couple of months I needed a new word. My Install usually proceeds a couple of tasks I need to do to get ready. These are prune my trees, to maximize their light holding capacity and turn around my garage to put the car away and get out the lights. Canadian Thanksgiving is when I traditionally do these and this year was no exception, the difference was I also began my install this weekend too.
Continue reading “Installation ’20 is underway”
Chasin' Rudolph 