Holiday lights

What's your favorite color and/or style for outdoor decor?

Me? I'm a fan of the whoppin' big C-9 style bulbs in bright red. So warm, so bright.

I also dig on these modern dangly type of "light shapes" with some kind of plastic frame and a bunch of fairy lights stuck into it. The most common are snowflakes and balls of lights. Saw some shaped like pointy 3-D stars the other night. Wow!

You?

Ku Ku

On 2004-12-08 16:43, Ku Ku Ahu wrote:
What's your favorite color and/or style for outdoor decor?

The tackier the better!!

I had a bad experience using those large vintage bulbs which overpowered and then MELTED my tiny plastic tree I used to have as a little girl!

Thus, I stick to the conformity of modern tiny white (NON-twinkling/flashing) lights.

Although on my tiki patio, year round, I like to use modern non-flashing blue, green and/or purple lights!

I heard this on NPR recently....

One Man's Holiday Stand: A Giant Lawn Grinch

Alan Aerts' elaborate Christmas displays outside his home in Monte Sereno, Calif. have attracted thousands of visitors, to the chagrin of some of his neighbors. Attempts to restrict the display led Mr. Aerts to roll out a giant statue of the Dr. Seuss character the Grinch this year.

Listen at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4195594

I like the combination of blue and green lights, with a little red here and there. the overall look is somewhat dark, but if you use enough, it has an interesting shimmering effect.
I also like those big outdoor lights, the old multi color variety. I like 'em better when people take them down after the holidays, instead of letting them rot away on the roof.

On 2004-12-08 17:14, dangergirl299 wrote:

Although on my tiki patio, year round, I like to use modern non-flashing blue, green and/or purple lights!

It should go without saying that those lights are better up year round!
I hope this is in addition to tiki string lights of some sort.

On 2004-12-08 17:20, cynfulcynner wrote:
I heard this on NPR recently....

One Man's Holiday Stand: A Giant Lawn Grinch

Alan Aerts' elaborate Christmas displays outside his home in Monte Sereno, Calif. have attracted thousands of visitors, to the chagrin of some of his neighbors. Attempts to restrict the display led Mr. Aerts to roll out a giant statue of the Dr. Seuss character the Grinch this year.

Listen at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4195594

I read that local article! At first I agreed with the guy - I love those few neighborhoods where the neighbors put together a fabulous display and you drive through and it's cool. In fact, there's a neighborhood north of Salem, Oregon where there's actually a permanent traffic sign showing you where it is!

But look at the article:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/10344662.htm

The dude spent $150K on the decorations and it draws "more than 100,000 people and 26,000 cars over 45 days of the holiday season"! Would you want that mess in your front yard, adding an additional 45 mins to an hour just to get into or out of your house by car for 45 days every year?!

I think not.

Call me Nimby-ist.

I have a neighborhood nearby that has 80% of the houses decorated like mad, every animated, lighted, sometimes audio-enhanced decoration you can think of, topped off with candle-powered luminaria every two feet or so along the curbsides lighting up the streets! It attracts people in limos, and traffic gets gridlocked & backed up for blocks outside the neighborhood. I always worry about the people who moved into the area & weren't told about this. I figure every house that isn't decorated has someone really aggravated steaming away inside.

You'd think that when it gets that bad (the car traffic), the city would step in and block all non-neighborhood vehicles. At the same time, I'm sure some type of parking arrangement could be made nearby within reasonable walking distance.

Or they could allow only a cetain number of cars in at a time.

I must admit, I'm a huge Xmas fan, but if somebody turned my street into Mardi Gras within a 1/2 mile radius for 45 days I'd be peeved too.

Yikes.

People need to learn to walk more and drive less I guess.

Ku Ku

Damn the icicle lights. I say damn them all.

It seemed that for a few years in my neighborhood all the homes were decorated with white icicle lights. white, whats up with WHITE. It didn't look like Christmas at all, it just looked like a really well lit house/neigborhood.

I say bring on the color, the crazier and more overboard the better.

On the two weekends before Christmas, the police department has officers directing traffic at the two gateways into and out of the neighborhood, and a lot of people park across the street at the school and walk through. You can see more by walking through, and on these 'high competition' weekends, many of the homeowners give out candy canes, gingerbread cookies (usually home made!) & hot chocolate. It's like walking into another world.

On 2004-12-08 18:14, ZebraTiki wrote:
On the two weekends before Christmas, the police department has officers directing traffic at the two gateways into and out of the neighborhood, and a lot of people park across the street at the school and walk through. You can see more by walking through, and on these 'high competition' weekends, many of the homeowners give out candy canes, gingerbread cookies (usually home made!) & hot chocolate. It's like walking into another world.

Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about. Very smart.

Why can't all communities be....well, communities?

But I digress...

Yeah, I succumbed to the icicle lights a few years back. What can I say, they were novel at the time. I still like them, but they do seem to be the "A Very Tasteful Yuppie Martha Stewart Christmas" light of choice.

Where I live (old urban neighborhood with a mix of outright rich and destitute poor and everything in between just blocks from each other) there is a war of taste going on.

It is the battle of "White lights, greenery, and red ribbon" vs. "Whatever, as long as they work put 'em up, the more the better, where's that 12 foot inflatable Homer Simpson santa we got last year at Walmarts?".

My semi-retro attempt at recreating the Xmas lighting of my childhood just blends in somewhere in the middle of it all.

Ahu

Fun post,KuKuAhu! Although,to be honest,I thought Gigantalope posted this! Fun threads,everyone.Then again,maybe this belongs in Bile-Christmas,watching neighbor children,and so on. Sorry everybody.Ho boy.

I thought the Bile postings were for drunken internet posting only?

I'm currently dead sober, unfortunately.

Alan is a kooky guy, very generous...does volunteer work all over. He does cause some traffic problems on his street. I wish I could bother his neighbors as much as he does. He's better known for his halloween antics which he does just as enthusiastically.

Before I got hitched, I lived in neighborhood named Willow Glen. It's totally "leave it to beaver" there.

I scratched together my megre earnings and bought the last Bob's Big Boy ever made. (It was made of the pieces kept in the mold. It was gelcoated white, and kinda looked more like Casper with a burger than Bob.

Once I had it assembled, I placed it by the front window with the shades drawn closed, and had it back-lit, so every passer by could see Bob, shining like the batman signal, with a few blurry colored lights around him.

In the living room, it was a monstrosity causing much friction between the future Mrs Gigantalope (a very tolerant woman) and my own self.

I have always thought the classiest lighting was trees. the wrap lighting, or Palms lit from beneith always make me happy.

I am a sucker for lights on a trailer in the middle of nowhere too

C-7's and C-9's in a mix of ceramic and translucent colors with those old-school random twinklers too.

It starts when you turn the corner
You see A gaint snowman with two snow teenagers on either side, up on the roof.
Then thirty feet away on the same roof a snowman and Santa holding up an 11 foot X-mas tree.
Then look far left it is a Polar bear holding a Polar baby.
The ridge has multi-color swag lights all the way across, then down the hips are white icicle lights, then white icicle lights all the way across the facia line with the every end light on every tip of every icicle, taken out and replaced with a red bulb.
OH, look in the front window, it's an 8'tree with 200 yes 200 feet of the new LED lights from Costco, surrounded by 70' of alternating red and white "pearlized" lights from Target
Then on the wall in the same room a wreath made up of white small lights, I got dizzy trying to count how many.
Then just turn a full 360
Santas, snowmen, reindeer, wreaths, bobbles, a beachball Santa head, and so many ornamints on the tree that you have to look for the green parts.

OK

Now sing along

We got the spirit yes we do
We got the spirit how bout
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

And that's not all
for 19.99 you can have
a baby's arm holding an apple

Happy flippen holidays to one and all

On 2004-12-08 18:28, Ku Ku Ahu wrote:
It is the battle of "White lights, greenery, and red ribbon" vs. "Whatever, as long as they work put 'em up, the more the better, where's that 12 foot inflatable Homer Simpson santa we got last year at Walmarts?".

Ahu

I gotta side with the all white crowd. With colored lights on the tree inside.

I do miss having colored C7 style both inside & out from a few years when I was a kid, but it was really scary taking down the tree and seeing all of the burn marks.

-Z

On 2004-12-08 18:07, Monkeyman wrote:
Damn the icicle lights. I say damn them all.

It seemed that for a few years in my neighborhood all the homes were decorated with white icicle lights. white, whats up with WHITE. It didn't look like Christmas at all, it just looked like a really well lit house/neigborhood.

I say bring on the color, the crazier and more overboard the better.

My wife's cousin covers his house with lights & uses icicle lights in an interesting way: he bunches them up so the icicles are right next to each other, making a bar of white or blue light along his gutters.

Personally I like multicolored C-7s outside, ceramic bulbs used as outlines with "jewel tone" bulbs in zig-zags or "X"es through the middle; and on the tree I put 1/2 a dozen strings of multicolored lights, with large bubble lights along the bottom, small bubblers around the middle, and various specialty lights & light up ornaments mixed in throughout.

I love the old twinkling lights on the tree, with bubblers mixed in.

Now that I pay the bills, hubby's convinced me to switch to LED. We'll see how that goes. I miss the 6 million watt twinklers already. They make this great pinging sound...that's christmas to me.

Outside the giant alternating red and green have been replaced with multicolour LED. The blue gives this freakish UV glow that I swear will blind me of I look at them too long..and the green hardly shows enough to make them worthwile.

More, we need more I say. I was thinking of putting blue and red flood lights on either side of the almond tree, I've seen it done before, makes them look all cool and 3-D. That would kind of make the LEDs pointless I guess.

On 2004-12-09 10:03, freddiefreelance wrote:
...and on the tree I put 1/2 a dozen strings of multicolored lights, with large bubble lights along the bottom, small bubblers around the middle, and various specialty lights & light up ornaments mixed in throughout.

Okay, who else is dying to see pictures of this?

Fred my man, get us some polaroids to browse please.

Ku Ku

I have to just say that it really dosen't matter to me what Christmas lights people put up. I love 'em. What I really love is when the colored lights get covered in snow so they have this whole glow effect...beautiful.

But sadly, this is my first Christmas away from my native Colorado, so I don't think I'll be getting any snow this year...But I haven't let that, or my condo lifestyle, keep me from doing whatever I can. So please enjoy...

And happy Chrismahanakwanzakaadan to you.

I love the frosted multicolor C-9s! Retro American X-mas! The C-7s are too small and not hazardous enough. Grampa always had a big fake tree with about 20 strings of these big bulbs. I always got in trouble for stuffing one of the lower bulbs through the hole in the back of the wooden manger.

-FB