Took several days (a week or more) to get the display down. We had quite a number of people come by after Christmas. Not sure if it was because...we had a power outage and the show computer was OFF on the couple of days we were out of town...and they came back or what. (Need a UPS for the show computer) The display tear down has taken longer than 2010. One thing is I do have a little bit more stuff. Need to check work schedule vs. time to tear down. May not run it past Christmas next year.

Shorter "Reminder Commercials"
It's cute having your own kids do these, but right now they are at 45 seconds or more in length. Just watched someones video who had the lights moving during it...and it probably 5 seconds in length. That will help move things along. Also need to change the opener. Again great example here. Look at the beginning and at 5:30 in the video. Just a quick reminder without a lot of stuff that I have in there now.

Put out traffic cones
Maybe small orange cones in the gutter. Probably need to weight them if they are the smaller ones. This might keep some of the cars from stopping in front of the house and make
Dripping Icicle Lights
I would LOVE some of these, but they are so expensive. Will be looking into these on the DIY side of things.

Vertical Poles
These have always intrigued me. Just saw a video with poles in between the arches. Would that block the snowflakes that way?  Maybe zip tie them to the 4 trees that have the snowflakes up? Mmmmm.

Larger Mega Tree
This is for certain. I also need to purchase some Christmas Light Show stuff to build a better mega tree. I also need to look at the number of lights on it. If I go higher, I must increase the light count. This year I only had 16 strings on the tree. Each one doubled back for two lines coming down the 11 or 12ft. I honestly need to increase by 8 or 16 lines to make it look fuller and to keep the distance between lines closer together.

LED Snowflakes
Hit the motherload! Got 7 snowflakes from Target. Started not to get the blue LED ropelight ones...glad I did. Just have to remember when sequencing...if I am going to want a solid WHITE "hit" in the music...not to include those. Think it will be fine. May do some swapping in the summer with some folks for the solid white ones.

Controllers
Will need to add at least one right now for the snowflakes. I am sure I could eat up the channels with a few other props...so possibly 2 more. Got to remember I already have some extension cords for one controller! (to cut up and use)

SPT cord
I may end up buying some. I have tons of extension cords. Had one guy on the forum talk about how nice it was to have the "thin" stuff to use. Man. Not only are those cords I have a pain to roll up, but to store...running out of space! Also it is overkill for some of the elements using thing oversized cords for 100 mini lights!

Digital Note Book of thoughts...
I think that I am going to use this blog as my "Notes" more this year. I would jot down things in a notebook, but really afraid that I will miss some stuff. May double post here and there...so as not to forget ;-)

....well, at least several.  Changed the setup for one.  This is the 13th revision...no kidding.  I would have to go back and look, but I think the other picture was the 6th. Now on the picture... 

Snowflakes
The 7 snowflakes you see are made of coro board (4mm).  I am going to post over in my projects section the pictures of it and populating it with mini lights.  Thanks to Chris1976 over on Planet Christmas for the pattern.  Instead of being in a straight line across, I am going to put them in a staggered pattern of either 4 up at one level and 3 down. Alternating each one (up or down).  The mini trees are now in 2 colors, green and white.  I will be able to alternate the colors with the different channels. 

Mini Trees
I cut down the number of mini trees in order to do that.  What does not render real well is that I will have a line of mini lights (one of green and one of white) running back to the pine island from the street.  Real hard to draw that depth in the picture.  If you look closely, the street is at a angle slightly.  That is not a true depiction of the road.  Also the mini lights running from the mini trees are actually acting as a type of extension cord.  I am going to take a length pvc pipe, and mount it (with 90 deg angles and small section of pvc) in front of the pine island.  I will attach the mini lights to the pipe and pull it tight.  Hopefully that will keep the lights off the ground and help with ground fault issues.

Mega Trees
With the mega trees I am going to keep both of them at 10ft.  That seems to be the magic height for most strings to fold in half.  That would double the lines going down to the ground.  The mega tree on the right (refer to my previous blog post on this matter) I am strapping a pipe up against the pine tree.  I am actually going to mount one of the controllers at the top of the tree so as to get close to the plugs for the lights!  I am think about using pvc so I can put a type of "T" on the pipe (screw that in) and mount the controller onto it.  I will still have to use at least 2 of the channels on the bottom left corner though.  I am using 6 channels per color.  Since I am using Light O Rama controllers...I only have 16 channels on the controller.  The lines on both mega trees are going to be 5" apart and go and attach to the ground.  I will probably use light stakes to keep it from touching the ground though.  Last year, I doubled back into the pole for my one mega tree.  I thought it was a little skinny, so this will help fatten them up.  The trees are also going to be one sided, so this will also keep it THICK looking and that is what I am shooting for. 

Rainbow Floods
The Rainbow Floods I mentioned earlier are also not in the pictures.  That would be hard with the little windows paint program I use to do this with.  Just as well...need to spend the time building and sequencing anyway ;-)  I will use one flood on the porch roof, shining on the 2nd floor.  One Rainbow Spot on either side of the porch shining on the downstairs windows and one Rainbow Flood on the carport.  All of those will be on the 3 channels for red, green or blue.  I will have 4 other Rainbow Spots on the trunk (shining up) of the 4 center trees in the pine island.  I will use a rest of the channels on each individual tree.  I will use that for walking bass lines, etc. 

Gutter Lights
I have added green LED lights to the gutter as well.  So I will have the warm white LED (retros as mentioned earlier) and the green to alternate between. 

Bush Lights
I am actually going to have to order or buy some green mini lights.  I have ran out.  I hope that I don't end up overloading my power panel by adding GREEN mini's to the mix as well.  As with the gutters being on separate channels, I am going to split the bushes into porch bushes and separate channel for the carport.  I hope the effect of fading between green and white will work out well this way. 

Twig Tree or "Holdman Tree"
I lucked up on this one!  The sticky little thing in the center is one of those Christmas Trees that looks like a stick figure with lights on it.  Sometimes they are called Twig trees, sometime they are called "Holdman Trees" (http://www.holdman.com/christmas/).  This guy was one of the first to put extra lights on these trees.  Found this at a thrift store for $5.00.  That was a steal.  1000 mini lights on it (clear).  Will add about 800 red and 800 green lights on it.  Hard to get the green lights on white wire though.  Hope to get that settled over the next week. 

Arches
The arches look more like baby arches in this picture.  They will be full size arches on 8 channels.  One side will mirror the other to save on channels.

New Songs and Sequencing!
I have not even started sequencing yet!!!!  I am so far behind last year.  I hope that the fact I have several songs from last year already sequenced will speed things up.  I know with the floods and the RGB stuff....that will slow me down some.  On the songs, I know that I am going to add the Barbara Streisand version of "Jingle Bells" and Go Fish's version of "Joy To The World".  If I am lucky I hope to add the Coke Christmas commercial thing.  Nice and short.  Also if I am lucky I am going to add...Disney's "Believe In The Magic" and TSO's "Christmas in Sarajevo" .  We will see on the last 2.  Would love to add "Kripton" from Superman...but my wife might hate me for that since it is not CHRISTMAS.  Such a cool opener though!!! ;-)  I know that I am going to keep a lot of my Harry Connick stuff from last year.  Oh yeah... looking for a Carol Of The Bells that starts out kind of ominous sounding.  Ladies voices...etc.  I just can't find the song (heard it once) nor the link I heard it from before!!!

Projects Page
I need to update that big time.  All my projects are in a half way done stage though.  So that is why I have not posted over there.  Hope to soon.