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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Copeland Christmas Gets a New Garage Door

Over the past month, we pressure washesd the house, and painted the driveway and garage floor. Today, the new garage door gets installed, and I'm so happy! I can't believe one guy is going to install the door himself. He said it would take 3 hours. We'll see.

News Crew Near Copeland Christmas

We lost a hometown soldier in Afghanastan last week. He was 24. I think it was a mine. Anyway, the funeral this afternoon took place behind our house and it was a sight to behold. White clysdales carried a glass casket cart with dozens of military personnel in the procession. Two ladder trucks hung a humongous flag between the raised ladders while the street was shut down. Horns and bagpipes were playing and the local veterans bike group was in full force and joined in the procession. Neighbors all hung flags and some even went to the public open casket viewing.

I took other great shots of the procession from my kitchen window, but I won't post them because I think it was a private funeral. Here's the Chopper 5 that circled the house all day. He needs to come back at Christmas to see the lights from up above....how cool would that be!

By the way, our house is "A". The funeral home is "B"

Easter 2010 at Copeland Christmas

We have decorated for Easter here at Copeland Christmas.

Half of the north poles are done

Today, I wrapped the north poles in red duct tape after I sanded the extra spray foam off them. I made a little paper template so that I would get the same tape angle on all the north poles. This is one thing that always bothered me about the last set of north poles...some had wide stripes and some had narrow uneven stripes.

Spray Foam Expands Over 48 hours

I filled the north poles with spray foam (Great Stuff Big Gap Filler) and let them cure for 2 days.


The north poles fell over because the foam pushed out the bottom...which is what I wanted. Today, I used a saw and sander to make the bottoms nice and smooth.

Here's the video of the spray foam air pocket on the bottom of one of the north poles.

Here's how I cut the notches for the cords at the bottom of each pole.

Lastly, here's the video of the conduit being glued to the inside of the north poles.