Nagel Family Website

Merry Christmas (in July)!

The countdown has begun… while Christmas may seem to be 5 months away, to me, it’s much closer. That’s because I have to improve upon the lights & sound show from last year with even more lights and various effects this year.

Lasers have been suggested, but are out of the question due to the need for 1) a smoke machine 2) dry ice or 3) a constant flurry of snow (real or fake). There is a particular item I’m hoping to acquire, but (of course) they don’t make it any more, so I’m looking on eBay. It’s hush-hush until I win one, and it arrives & verified to work.

One of the things I really want to do this year is transmit the music via FM radio. I’m still using Mr. Christmas’s “The Lights and Sounds of Christmas”, so I’m quite limited. However, this evening, I opened up the box and found the lines that transmit the audio to the speaker, and hooked up an external speaker to it. I hope this is the first stop in being able to hook up an FM transmitter.

Oh, and more lights. I’m gonna max this thing out. That requires a dedicated circuit, which luckily I upgraded my electrical service this year, so a quick rewiring of a switch and we should be OK.

Next year, I hope to full upgrade the system with one of Showtime Product’s “Light-o-rama” kits. However, since my budget this year isn’t $5,000, this will have to wait.

One thing we learned was we have to go higher up on the house… I’m not a fan of heights, but if it pleases the neighbors, I’ll be hanging off the gutters. The light-up inflatables have been retired, and I was going to get rid of the candy canes, until in a conversation with Andy last night, had an idea how to secure them without strapping them to the porch.

So sure, it appears as though Christmas is 5 months away, but I want to run the lights starting Thanksgiving night (tradition), and I need enough time to get them up, so I should start right after Halloween. Really, I only have 3 months left!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Christmas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.