I am officially turning the lights on Thanksgiving night at 5PM, but had some out of town visitors that were only going to be here tonight. They asked me if I would turn my display on so they would get a chance to see  it before they went back home. I took this as an opportunity to test my display on an audience without all the pressure of opening night. I think it was a very successful run. After they left I decided to let it run through the rest of the nights show. It ran for about 3 hours in all and I was very satisfied with the way it turned out. We hope everyone gets a chance to come out and view our display.

Last night I put my mini trees out in the yard and got them all hooked up to the LOR box. I am decently pleased with them. I think for next year I am going to try my hand at arches and possibly a Mega tree. Last year I had a mega tree and got several comments and was only using a Mr. Christmas box to control it. I love how mega trees look and as long as I can purchase another box in the Summer I am going to attempt to put one up next year.

I mowed the yard last night. I hope this will be the final time for the year. I have been waiting to put out my yard decor until my grass quit growing. It would be a pain in the butt to have to take up extension cords every time to mow the yard. I am going to start putting the yard items up next week when I get off work. I hope the grass doesn't decide to get a wild hair and decide to grow. 

I finally got my white column lights put up. It was getting too close for comfort to keep waiting on Target to put the specific lights I wanted on the shelf. Heather was in Target Saturday and told me they still hadn't put the ones I wanted out, but had what seemed like all the others out. I decided they might not be carrying the particular light I want this year and told her to get me the cool white sphere lights instead of waiting any longer. There is such a small difference in the light, you can't tell they are not the same at night. I am just glad to be one step closer to having my display ready. Immediately after Halloween I am going to start putting yard decorations out. I really didn't want to have any yard stuff out before Halloween. People might have thought I was weird. LOL.

This is a little behind but I thought it should be on here. In July when I purchased my Light O Rama boxes, I knew I needed more plugs to power my display. Since Heather was already upset at me for spending the nearly $1100 on the boxes to control my display, I thought I should go ahead and install the extra power while I was in the dog house. I installed a dedicated 100 Amp sub panel in the garage. This panel has twenty 20 Amp breakers. Each breaker powers a single 15 Amp plug. I know this is major overkill, but I would rather too much power than to have my display set up and running and go all black when there is someone outside watching my show. Each of my boxes have 2 power inputs. Each side has to be plugged in to a separate outlet to have the full power availability of the box. I have mentioned having a Christmas scene airbrushed on the sub panel cover and Heather says I can't. I need people to help me talk her in to letting me get it done.

Tonight Heather made me a design for my FM sign. This will be the sign that is in my yard toward the road to let everyone know what FM station to tune their radio to. If you don't tune to this station, you will think my lights are just going spastic. They are synchronized to Christmas music, but this year I have no plans of having an outdoor speaker. The only way to hear the music is to make sure you tune your radio to 93.5 FM.

Tonight I used my new SPT wire to make several extension cords. I love this stuff. I made 18 cords that will power almost half of my display. I took a couple of pics and a video to show the progress so far. The video's audio is not loud enough for you to hear. I thought that because we could hear it my phone would pick it up too. I will post a video as soon as I get a better quality one.

I finally took the plunge and bought a spool of SPT wire. I found out this really takes a ton of extension cords. I bought all the cords Target had at Christmas last year, approximately 75 cords of different lengths. After getting most of my display put together, I decided I still didn't have near enough. I bought another 1250' of SPT1 wire to make my own cords. It actually came out to be just 16 cents a foot this way. If I was to go to Lowes and buy this length of pre-made cord it would be around 46 cents a foot. 

I finished the front side of the house tonight. I got Heather to help me take some pictures of the display in different modes. The camera does not look near as good as in person. I guess everyone will have to come out and see them to see the difference it really is in person.