Updated the website today

For the first time in a year, I updated the website (www.copelandchristmas.com) today.

While I was updating, I figured I'd check out my google analytics account to see how the website traffic is going. I had a whopping 12 unique hits today. I need to call a friend in Fort Lauderdale at www.LauderdaleChristmas.com to thank him for having a link on his website. He has an AWESOME display...definitely worth a drive to check it out...he uses all LED lights too and the blues are beautiful.

A peculiar thing happened to me yesterday. A guy showed up at the door while I was in the garage setting up the display. He is from Venezuela, owns 11 shopping malls, and wanted to know if he could buy Christmas display items from me. He had a print out of our website and a car filled with 600 strobe lights that he was bringing back to his country. He said he was from Miami and wants to do big displays for his malls. He flew into Miami to buy stuff and ship it overseas. Dunno if the story is true, but it's definitely a unique one. "Good luck, guy from Venezuela!"

Amandas Gold Christmas Tree

Today, me and Amanda put up a new gold tree. The gold reindeer will go near it and the gold angels will go on top of the cabinet.

I am so lucky to have her do the climbing while I stay on the ground! She and I put glitter music notes and gold balls all over the tree. What a beautiful addition to this year's display. Now, we have a pink tree, two purple, a blue, three silver, 5 green, a white, two red, and 3 aqua themed trees!

An Very Special Annalee Gift

Last year, I wrote about some really great visitors that came to see our display. One of those visitors dropped by a little early this season and had a very special gift for Copeland Christmas!

Gayle goes up north each year and said she was going to the factory where Annalees are made and that she would bring me back a genuine New Hampshire Annalee. Sure enough...she rang the doorbell last Sunday morning and asked if she could drop off this little grandma decorator to me!!!

This is the kind of thing that makes John and I soooo excited to do this big Christmas thing each year. It's pretty hard to adequately express how cool this type of occurrence is...I love it.

Santa Hat Tree Topper

I've gotten so much done this weekend. Today, I put up the Tinsel Tree. I decided to make it red/silver. It has a very cool LED color changing spot light below it, so it requires no strands of lights. The ornaments are from the auction and I got the hat from a thrift store several years ago. I really like the tree...now I just need to find a cool tree skirt. I think I will find a light weight white skirt and then I'll put a couple strands of red light under it so it's illuminated.

Here's the ladybug tree. This year I added some glitter floral branches. I think it needs a black or white tree skirt.

Here's the Wizard of Oz Tree. Over the last 2 years, John has been giving me these ornaments as birthday and anniversary gifts. The dolls are Annalees, the nutcrackers are from JC Penney and some of the other ornaments are Hallmark. I made the bows and tree skirt last year out of gingham. The mirrored ball ornaments are supposed to represent the Emerald City and Yellow Brick Road and the red tree is supposed to represent the Ruby Slippers. It all makes sense to me...I wonder how many onlookers "get" what I was trying to do. :)

Next steps...I think the curio cabinets need to be cleared and Christmas-ified. I also need to figure out how to talk John into keeping this silver tree in the "real tree spot." His big thing is that each year, we need one LIVE tree that smells wonderful and gets decorated with sentimental ornaments. I'll figure out how to give him his tree but keep my silver tinsel tree here.

The 09 Display is Beginning to Take Shape

Over the last couple days, we have been unloading the storage units and filling up the porch and garage. John’s plan is to build all the infrastructure for the garage display. My plan has been to get all the themed trees done. The staging area is the porch and I think many of the trees will stay on the porch as part of the display.

 

John has a great idea about how to decorate the porch this year. He wants to put a bunch of trains on the porch and open up the area to be part of the main display. Last year, he decorated the porch, but it was also a storage area and was just kind of cluttered. So, we didn’t love for people to be walking around out there.

Here’s the gator tree. It just might stay here on the porch ledge this year.

 

The Antarctica scene has received two rather large snowmen and a bright aqua tree. Joey said they have no trees in Antarctica…good thing we are doing a Make Believe Antarctica display! And I still see remnants of Halloween off to the left. John had a good idea of keeping the Halloween tree out and decorating it with all the Nightmare Before Christmas characters. What a fantastic idea…now I just need to watch that movie and find a slew of character ornaments.

Here’s the biggest pain I’ve been dealing with…I can’t get these remote controls to program correctly. You’re supposed to plug in the received to an outlet, and push a corresponding button on the remote to activate the system. It worked fine last year. I’ve googled it and found other people who are having the same problem. Today, this bag is headed to Jonathan’s…if anyone can figure them out, it’s him.

New Orleans Christmas Store

We went to New Orleans last weekend for the LSU game (we won)! Anyway, there is a cute Christmas store near in the French Quarter and I couldn't resist snapping some photos.



Love this idea for the tropical scene. I was going to do it last year, but I never did. Maybe I will do it in 2009.

Brought the Antarctica Scene Indoors

I brought the antarctica scene into the dining room today and started hooking up the lighting.

I used some LED icicle strands that added nice icy accents. The icicles come in strands of 10 and have a DC converter. I yanked the tiny LEDs out of the clear plastic icicles and pushed the LEDs up through tiny holes I made in the polystyrene. Then, I hotglued the icicles back onto the bulbs.



In the bottom of the polystyrene, I carved out grooves and shoved the extra wire lengths into the grooves. Then, I taped the bottom up. The only view that's not so great is the one from under the glass dining table. Oh well, I don't plan on getting down there all that much.

One pretty cool thing that I hadn't planned on is that I put three lights under the water. The lights glow from below.

2009 Ideas

I have a few more ideas I need to get documented...I will lose them if I don't put them in writing.
I got this penguin thing last year on clearance. It will go nicely on the Antarctica scene...which I decided will go in the dining room. I have an Antarctica DVD which might get played under the table. I will wrap the two framed prints with a wintery, icy paper. I will put the white feather tree and the two silver trees in this scene. I will try to put the two giant snowmen on either side of the table. They might not fit in the room though.


Next....
I have an idea for the center of the garage...
It will have a giant wooden sleigh that is filled with presents. The right side of the garage will be Santa's workshop again but will have a sign this year so there's no mistaking what it is. The two 4-ft Annalee elves will be filling the sleigh. Some of the elves will be attached to a dowl and will look like they are standing on top of each other (being all goofy) helping to laod packged. There will be one extra goofy elf that is doing a flip in the air (from fishing line).

Next...
We have the following scenes that I still need to wrap my head around...

• gingerbread scene
• snowman scene gator and owl tree
• circus scene
• 'Twas the night scene
• peackock tree
• USA tree
• Wizard of Oz scene
• ladybug scene
• gold angel scene
• red cardi nal scene
• carollers scene
• snowboarding village scene (w/ fog machine)
• pink disney tree
• water scene in the village
• ...more to come....