Well… We got all excited (not to mention tired of folks asking us when things will be turned on) so we’ve decided to move the date to turn things on to today, December 2nd. The lights will be on 5-10 PM starting tonight at 1228 Main Street in Wilton, through January 6th. Just tune to 96.9FM to hear the music when you’re close enough to see the house.
Merry Christmas!
The display won’t be turned on full time until Dec 6th, but you can check out a few pics now on the new Photos page.
13 days ahead of schedule, Wilton Lights is up and ready to go. You may see us outside testing some animations or tweaking things, but everything that needs to go up, is up. See ya Dec 6th!
As of 11:50 PM Saturday night, the 21 foot mega tree is up and running. 96 strings of mini lights, 4 strings of strobe lights, and another 2 strings of mini lights on the star (9,821 lights in total) are all working great. Still need to tighten things up before a good wind comes through, but otherwise it’s good to go. Just 2 more minor (but important) projects to complete and we’ll be ready for showtime.
We’ve just installed the 6 foot tall Bethlehem Star on the roof. It’s insanely bright and illuminates most of the yard. If you’re driving by we’ll have a simple animation running on it until it’s time to turn everything else on (Dec 6th).
We’re well on our way to have the display ready. in the next couple weeks. Here are some pics of what we’ve been working on.
The star topper on what will be our 21 foot tall tree of lights, though it doesn’t look like it from directly below. We actually have this turned on most nights if you happen to be driving by…
The “mini trees” are out and ready to go.
The 6′ star which will go on the roof just got a completed frame. All it needs now is some paint and wind-free day to get it up there.
We’ve synchronized the Halloween lights to “Thriller”. If you happen to be within sight of the house and the lights are on, tune in to 96.9FM to hear the show.
UPDATE: Halloween is over but you can still check this out on The Video Page.
This was sort of a dry run for Christmas this year, and we identified and fixed several issues. Now that we’ve put all the orange away expect to see winter elements hitting the lawn soon. The Mega-Tree pole should be up any day now.
Just for laughs, we’ve put out some halloween “mood lighting”, which consists of 6 flood lights and a couple of our decorative cut outs (a trick-or-treating Frankenstein and Linus & Sally waiting for “The Great Pumpkin”), hooked up to a light animation controller. It’s nothing too elaborate, but we’re pretty sure we’re the only folks with a flashing house this month.
These lights will run from 5:30 to 10:00 PM until Halloween.
We’re currently working on a few plywood elements of the display. Most notably, the sign which will tell people that they can hear the music which the lights are synchronized to on their car radios.
This should be completed in the next few days.
Here is some of the haul we picked up during Walmart’s 90% off after Christmas sale this past January. There are 150 boxes there, which works out to 15,000 lights.
On the floor there is 1000 feet of cable to be used in making custom length extension cords. Oh what tangled webs we weave drag all over the lawn…