Deck the Yard with Lights and Music - Fa La La La La La La La La

Everyone knows we take great pride in having the best decorated yard on the block at Christmastime.  Over the last few years, we have not done as much as we would like, but we still made it look pretty good.  For a few years, we have been comtemplating setting up a music and lights show, but haven't had the time or money to do it.  After Christmas last year, we bought a light show box on clearance at Home Depot.  It had six zones and played 20 different songs.  We decide it would be a good way to try a "beginner" version of a light show.

The first week of November we got down all of our boxes of lights (which is a lot) and started planning.  I made a list of all of the lights and tried to figure out how many watts were in each item.  Then I drew a picture of the yard and started laying out the six zones.  I even set up a few trees in the living room to test it out and see what it would look like.  When we finally started putting everything out we found out we needed more extension cords (we spent a lot of money on extension cords).  Once it was all layed out, it was time to turn it on and test it.  Unfortunately, we had way too many watts and blew a fuse immediately.  Our main problem is that we only have a few LED lights but a lot more of the old kind.  LED lights use a lot less power. We had to rearrange some of the zones and unplug some of the lights.  We also decided to have some lights stay on all of the time.  We finally got it working, but it would only play for a few minutes before it would blow a fuse.  It was pretty frustrating.  Unfortunately, the fuse wasn't a standard size we could buy at a Walmart or even Home Depot.  Instead of ordering them online, we just decided to get the wrong size and hope it would work.  Luckily, it did (for the most part). 

It was really awesome!  We had our lighting ceremony on Thanksgiving night.  We had lots of family stop by over the next days and weeks.  Dave and Kara's family were in town for Thanksgiving and they stopped by to visit and see the light show.  Both of our parents and Jesse's family also came by.  David Wenk even drove by with Holly and Alyssa one night when he had them.  We also got lots of positive comments from our neighbors and noticed that people would slow down as they passed our house.  One of my doctor's even drove by and sent me a text about it. 

This first-timer experience wasn't perfect for us.  Normally, we have our lights on timers and they come on at dusk and stay on for 6 hours.  We couldn't put the light show on a timer and the music was pretty loud so we didn't turn it on for very long.  Usually only from 7-9pm or even less, which meant that the rest of the time our yard was pretty disappointing compared to normal.  We also found out that if it was too cold, it would speed up, which overloaded it, and it would die. Most nights we would go turn it on for 20 seconds or so to warm it up and then turn it off and back on and it would work normally.  I also noticed that it didn't play all of the songs, so I think something with the fuses must have messed it up.  We also had a problem with it tripping the breaker at one point. 

Even though we had problems, it was still really cool.  We haven't decided what we are doing with it next year, but we did buy a lot of LED lights on clearance. 

If I ever transfer the video to my computer and can figure out how to attach it, I will.  For now, here is a picture of our wonderful yard!