Sad to say that our first year is winding down. Our final show will be tomorrow night, New Year's night, with the plug being pulled at 10PM. Kind of sad to think that all of the work and effort put into this year's show will be going into storage shortly, until next September or October. We will be back with an even bigger and brighter show in 2014!
    Being our first year, I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of traffic. I'd say we averaged 10 cars a night with many more on several nights. So, probably 200-300 cars total came to view our show. We're pleased with that since we live on a low traffic cul-de-sac street and it was our first year. Hopefully, the word spreads and even more people come to watch next year!
    We were pleased with how the show ran this year. The only exception was that during several high wind evenings, some of our strings decided to blow down from a tree. All else survived unscathed and went according to plan. We will be removing a couple of songs from this year's rotation and replacing them with new animated shows next year, so stay tuned and let us know of any suggestions.
    With after Christmas sales going on, we were able to purchase an additional 5,000 lights that will be placed in next year's display. So, look for new elements next year and an even bigger and brighter show. Thanks for visiting and Merry Christmas!

One of the challenges of designing and building a Christmas light show, and being a little OCD about the whole issue as I am, is that I'm never quite satisfied with how things look. That means frequent trips to home improvement and department stores scouring their Holiday sections for good deals on lights, decorations and other accessories.

I've been thinking over the past few weeks, that several areas of our layout were a little weak light wise. That remedied itself this week with the purchase of about 2,000 additional lights and another tree structure. The additional lights were placed in the shrubbery along the front of our house and the additional tree was placed towards the front. As of now, our display features nearly 14,000 lights and growing.

Any additional light and feature purchases will have to wait until next season, but some of the things I'm contemplating purchasing and building are: color changing LED light strips for the roof line (way brighter than standard C7's using less energy and color customizable), leaping arches, white strobe lights throughout the display and adding an additional color to the small and rotating trees. We'll see how that all plays out as 2014 begins.

I want to say a word of thanks to everyone who's driven by and offered a word of encouragement. The reason our family put this Christmas light show together was to honor the birth of our savior: Jesus. As the Holiday season continues, let's not forget why we celebrate this special time of the year!