• My wife and I moved into this house back in 1986, and I have been lighting it up ever since. First started out with C9's the first few years, then got into the chaser lights for several more years. Up to the point where simply turning on the porch light became a big 

         NO - NO!       

This is an old house. When it was time to cook dinner, out go the lights or breakers start a popping.

To quote Tim Allen

 "SO, I REWIRED IT!"

Fast forward a few years to the mid to late 90's, I saw Mr. Christmas at Kmart (Lights to Music) for a hundred dollars and thought, what the Hell! I was hooked. The next year I tried to double the 6 channels to 12 with 2 connected together...did not work. eCommerce was in its infancy; time was running out. again to quote Tim Allen... I added "MORE POWER!" I took 6 power strips, plugged into the 6 channels, then went 'Willy Nilly' with it. This was quite unique and did so for 2 years. 

 Enter... LOR.   Light O' Rama 

This, in my honest opinion, was when Holiday Lighting took off, but not at first. I had already been using 16 channels of LOR for a couple of years now.      But then there was the TV Commercial with "Wizards of Winter" in 2004,         I expanded from there. 

 Started adding Halloween around 2005. Building props, built a working Ferris Wheel that was lit up while turning. We even had characters for both holidays. Around 2008, I added my neighbor's house to the show, and was up to eighty channels. Since these are AC lights, I had well over 100 orange fifty foot extension cords running 20,000 Christmas lights and another 6,000 lights for Halloween. 

Retirement, now what? 

  I retired in 2019 and decided to put more time into the show. I started to look at going digital and how much of the kid's inheritance would I need to spend. (ha-ha) This meant I had to build a new show. after building the old show for over 20 years, not to mention the cost involved. It turned out to my surprise that the cost was quite reasonable and the timing too. After discussing it with the Boss, it was "green lighted". 

Starting anew, making new friends. 

 
It is funny how one can live in the neighborhood all these years and find another couple your age, who have been here just as long, and become partners in a light show. 

LOR to xLights 

Just the facts man. 

When I first started to research this, it became clear, this was the next logical step to take. LOR was such a pain to program, that it would take 20 hours to make a semi decent sequence for just one song! With xLights, I can make several sequences or re-map other people's sequences (more on that later) in less time.

  Below, you will see the Christmas show from my first year and spent about thirty or so hours to do. Then there is the Halloween show. A much larger show with about the same amount of time spent programming, discovering its full potentials and other hints and tricks and still learning. Christmas programming will start in September. 

 
For those who are not familiar with pixels a quick lesson. 

1 Pixel (aka) a Node = 3 lights Red, Green, Blue and if you light all 3 you get White. But, with this combination you can create over one million colors. 

So last Christmas there was about 5,700 pixels or 17,100 lights.

 
Halloween 2021... Total count 7,435 pixels or 22,305 lights

Christmas 2021...Approximately 20,300 lights

Halloween 2022 Total light count 25,029 lights!

Christmas 2022 Total light count 24,237 lights

Halloween 2023 Total light count 26,267 lights

Christmas 2023 Total light count 24,863 lights

 
The above info will be moved into more appropriate categories since this site is only a few months old and I have other hobbies to do. 

One final note. 

Personally, would like to thank the Developers of xLights who, without their endless effort, continue to improve this freeware program for everyone to use. 

Please go to xlights.org and research for yourself on how cool this hobby is! 

There are many vendors

This is our mascot Sadie. She loves to pose for the camera.