Ordered Stuff for the 2010 Display

Today I ordered a rotating tree stand, 4 boxes of shooting star icicle lights and the Moon in My Room.

The moon has been sitting my online Walmart cart for almost a year. I figured I'd just go ahead and buy it finally. The shooting stars were sold out last year, so I'm happy to get them early this year even if they are full price...$25 per box is killing me.

2010 Copeland Christmas Set up Begins

We had a small party tonight with family to kick off the decorating season. It was soooo much fun. The guys got the whole backdrop done in the garage and my friends and I got most of the kitchen done!!!
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New purchase

John bought these guys today
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Before and After

Here's the living room (Sept 26, 2010). Below, you will see how it looked in December 2009.

This goes out to all those people who think we must keep the display up all year long. :)

Copeland Christmas Storage Units (archive photo from 2009)

2009 Copeland Christmas Storage Units
Originally uploaded by ladybugfalcon

My good friend/neighbor spends a lot of time hanging out with us during the holidays. Our dogs play, we enjoy a glass of wine, and we love meeting all the guests which come through the house. She thinks it's funny that guests always ask the same few questions. Here are the questions that we ALWAYS get asked...

When do you start each year?
Where do you store it all?
How long does it take to do this?
How long did it take to collect the stuff?

Here's the answer to one of the MOST ASKED QUESTIONS here at Copeland Christmas.

We store all the Christmas stuff in our two storage units just up the road in Palm City. Here's John in October 2009 getting the first load of stuff to bring to the house.

The answer to the MOST ASKED QUESTION is...we start in September.

Here's what guests see as they approach the font door.

2010 Copeland Christmas Show Dates

Made the decision last year to end the show on the 25th. Those few days after Christmas, and especially after New Years Day are just a bummer. Not much traffic. The house is always a mess with new After Christmas Sales. This year, I'm hoping to make it to Orlando to see the Disney and Universal decorations. This will give us a few days to get away after Christmas and enjoy someone else's decorations for once. Yay! This was a great decision...now I just need to get John to keep to his word.

John: the last date of light is Dec 25th. What the first day this year?

What I learned at the Mini

Yesterday, I went to the Christmas decorators workshop called Florida Mini. So, before I forget, I want to document a few ideas, tips, and tricks that I picked up at the workshop.

• Village: A village mountain ca be constructed from spray painted aluminum foil.
• LOR software tip: in Edit -> Preferences, I can delete that annoying yellow pop up.
• LOR software tip: I can select a portion of a song by highlighting a portion of the yellow timescale.
• Show Idea: I can have one of the voiceovers tell guests that an "all on" photo oppty is forthcoming.
• LOR software tip: I should consider putting the north poles and roof stripes in separate tracks so the channels are more manageable to navigate.
• LOR software tip: use spacebar to stop the song from playing
• Visitors: Still don't have a great method for accirately capturing the number of visitors.
• Villages: Some people prefer the Foam Factory hot knife to the little red one I have.
• LED Lights: almost all LED lights are half wave which always have a flicker.
• LED Lights: when a half strand goes out, cut it in the middle (where there's only 1 wires) and connect it to another half strand. Remember to have a rectifier on both half strands.
• LED Lights: Some people dip the entire strand of lights into Corrosion X overnight in a 5 gallon bucket. They take the strand out, let the extra drain back into the bucket, and let them dry. This is supposed to increase the number of usable years substantially.

Questions I still have:
Why are LEd strands commonly 60 count?

Photos from the 2010 Planet Christmas Mini in Tampa

Planet Christmas Mini OR BUST!!!!

On the way to the Florida Mini in Tampa. It's going to be so much fun

Copeland Christmas Gets [bad] Press

Perhaps it's good press because there's no such thing as bad press. Some blogger with a blog called It Sucks to Be You found out about our Christmas display and decided it would suck to live next us. During his 5 minute rant, he got most of his facts wrong. Here's the article...

SUCKS TO BE living next to Danielle Copeland, overzealous Christmas light displayer

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