Christmas Lights Advice

Easter is just a couple of days away – I love this time of year and do the best I can not to let Spring Fever get to me.

I just realized today that I hadn’t changed out the bulbs in the 25 foot C7 light strands that we keep installed around our front flower beds. (Note, Christmas light cords are rated for 90 day outside seasonal use – so I know that they can be susceptible to UV degradation.)

So changing out the light bulbs was this evening’s project – along with a little bit of Springtime raking to unearth the light strands.

We ran 25 feet of lights on each side of the walkway that goes from the sidewalk to our concrete stairs. By doubling the 25 foot light strands it gives a more concentrated effective 6 inch light spacing which looks more impressive from the street.

I love to change out lights that we use to accent our yard all year long. (Fortunately, we live in a funky craftsman neighborhood where the folks around us look at our Christmas lights as art!)

I’ve installed opaque white, pink and purple c7 bulbs. They are sooo pretty (but apparently hard to photograph – photos coming soon!). During the day, they look like Easter Eggs – and look electric pink, purple (hotter pink) and white at night.

Christmas bulbs and cords are cheap compared to home renovation – and you can change them anytime. If you don’t have little cottage flower beds in your front yard, C7 and C9 bulbs in the colors of the season or for your party are easy to install above a deck or along a fence-line.

So go check up in your attic or out in the shed – you might not have pink or purple on hand but some clear Christmas lights are great for brightening up your Spring just as well!

Happy Easter from the Christmas light lady,

Shellie
Christmas Light Source

C7 bulbs

Is it March already?

Flowers are blooming, Spring is definitely in the air so it must be time for St Patrick’s day – and it is!!

Since I’m three quarters Irish on my Father’s side of the family I feel like I have to get into the St Paddy’s day spirit around this house. It looks like Ireland is celebrating the holiday as well.

Shorth and sweet history of St Patrick

St Patrick ministered (most think) in the middle of the 5th century. Born in Roman Britain he was captured at 16 and lived in slavery as a shepherd in Ireland until he escaped and returned home. He says that his faith grew in captivity – he prayed daily and made his escape when he was told by God that it was time to go home and his ship was waiting. It was and he did.

After he was ordained as a Bishop, he returned to the Emerald Isle to baptize thousands of Irish people. We don’t know much about the details of St Patrick’s life but he is a venerated figure in the history of Christianity and Catholicism.

St Patricks day has evolved over the years to a celebration of all things Irish and green. Where the tradition of punching a classmate if they weren’t wearing green came from… I don’t know but I wonder if kids do that any more??

Itinerary for March 17, 2010

We’ll be eating green frosted cupcakes tomorrow, wearing green and watching the Quiet Man – the perfect movie and a March tradition around this house. I wonder if you can make popcorn green?

Decorating for St Patrick’s Day with Christmas Lights

We’ll also be switching out our light bulbs around our front yard flower beds to be green (good thing we live in a tolerant neighborhood without covenants regarding having some sort of Christmas lighting out all year!!)

We’ll also be outlining a couple of doors and windows inside the house with green mini lights to make the family party more festive for just a few dollars more.

However you celebrate it, bring out your inner Irish, have some green food and light some green lights to celebrate the Holiday and Spring!!

Top O’ the Mornin’ to You,

Shellie O’Gardner
Lights for St Patrick’s Day

Now there is another choice in “white” when it comes to LED Christmas lights — Champagne!!

This color is a rich golden white – I love it. I think it is a great answer to a desire to have a mellower LED light on a Christmas tree. I think I’ll be using these lights with my vintage ornaments this year.

Here’s a video that I shot showing off this new color

Shellie Gardner
Champagne LED Christmas Lights

So, you’ve installed all of your mini light sets – let’s say on the front of your house outlining your windows, or you’ve decorated some small trees planted closely together. Everything looks great but egad! you have lights hanging out in the middle of space, marring the perfection of your Christmas light display. Don’t despair! Here are a few tips to avoid this situation.

1. Plan your projects with a wider variety of lengths of lights. By combining short and long sets of mini lights you can more closely tailor your sets to the best length for the run. When you order your lights, make sure that you note whether the light sets have a male/female plug set or just one stackable plug. (Because naturally, if you only have on plug on a set is has to be the last set). Mini lights are commonly wired in series which means that they can’t be cut to fit. C7 and C9 stringer style light sets are wired in parallel and can be cut to fit and properly terminated so they don’t have this issue (get an electrician’s help with this – you know you have a crazy electrician brother-in-law – give him a call.)

2. For just a bulb or two jumping the gap between windows, consider wrapping those bulbs with electrical tape. The success of this plan is going to be dependent on your weather and you own propensity for perfection and tidiness in your Christmas lights display.

3. Paint the extra bulbs. For small indoor projets where you just have a couple of bulbs to hide, paint the bulbs with an acrylic black paint. Messy but effective.

4. Track down a product called Black Out Caps. These handy little plastic caps fit right over the mini lights you want to take out of your picture.

Good luck with all your Holiday and Decorating Projects!

Shellie Gardner
Black Out Caps

I’m frequently asked, “So, what’s the difference between residential and commercial led christmas lights and what should I choose?”

LED Christmas lights from HOliday Creations come in two different version. What style you choose depends on your project, installation requirements, availability and your pocketbook.

Standard LED Christmas lights come with a standard male/female plug set and can be connected up to an average of 60 sets in series. These UL rated sets are great for indoor projects, crafts and HOliday decorating. In the mini light versions of these sets – razzberry and strawberry – the LEDs are spaced 4 inches apart and come in 35 and 70 LEDs to the set. Superrazz or G12 residential sets are 6 inchesa apart and the bigger C7 and C9 Sets are spaced 8 inches apart. This 8 inch spacing is one of the biggest differences between residential and commercial C7 and C9 sets because the commercial versions are 12 inches apart.

You can use traditional splitters and extension cords to install your residential light sets.

Residential sets are frequently the best choice is you want to place lighted objects in multi places in a room and sheer number of sets is not an issue.

For external applications and those where flexibility of installation and weather resistance is a high priority, commercial LED Chrsitmas lights might be a better solution for your project. Designed with proprietary 3-wire engineering, Holiday Creation LED light sets can be run up to 125 sets is a single run. If you are looking at C7 or C9 sets which are manufactured with 12 inch spacing, that is an incredible 3125 of LEDs run off a single plug.
Commercial sets have a custome proprietary modified coax connector on each end. Spacer wires, Y’s, T’s, multiple outlet adapters, and 3 different lengths of spacer wires allow you to design a lighting plan that can light over 3000 feet of roofline, plaza, trees, etc with only one plug.

Since commercial SED light sets require a power adapter (that rectifies the incoming voltage waveform to provide reduced flicker output), they generally aren’t a good choice if you need to plug in a bunch of sets in different places since the adapters would add alot of needless expense to your materials list.

Be sure to order a couple more adapters and a few extra spacer wires when ordering your commercial lights so you don’t get caught without that one 12 foot spacer wire that you needed.

Both styles of LED Christmas lights have impact resistant injection molded LED lenses that are weather resistant – just remember you can’t remove the bulbs to customize the color and when one may eventually burn out, you’ll need to compensate for that one LED visually but doubling back during installation.

Considering the pros and cons of the two styles of LED Christmas lights only your ultimate project specifications can determine which specific style of set is right for you. So, as we get closer to the Holiday Season, grab a hot cocoa, sit down with pencil and paper and then you’ll know which choice is the right one for you.

Shellie Gardner
LED Christmas Lights

This morning I am catching up all of the email thank you’s with 10% discount codes from the Christmas Light Source recycling program.

Every day we are still receiving 4-6 large boxes of lights to be carted en masse to a local recycling facility that processes them in country in the most ecological way available.

It’s so good not to see these beauties end up in a landfill after dutifully providing hours of sparking light All the proceeds from the recycling program will be used to purchase books for the Toys for Tots program.

Occassionally, we receive boxes of completely unused lights that have never even been out of their packaging. These lights we take to a local thrift store that supports The Safe Haven Women’s Shelter. If you live in the Fort Worth area, consider dropping off your unused items there to support this worthy cause.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! Now is the time to light up the porch with clear mini lights and think ahead to red, white and blue for the patriotic Holidays as well as we honor our Veterans and Celebrate our Indepence!!!

Happy Summer Everyone!

Shellie Gardner
Christmas Light Source

Spring is in the air and that means Easter is right around the corner! I’ve just published a new article about decorating for Easter and incorporating a little sparke with Christmas Lights.

As spring approaches each year, we anticipate the warmer breezes wafting into open windows and the wonderful sights of spring green leaves and flowers appearing from the once frozen winter ground. The celebration of Easter seems to be the turning point for many of us when we think of spring finally arriving and gracing us with a much-needed respite from the cold, harsh winter months.

See the rest of our article on Decorating for Easter.

Shellie
Christmas Light Source

LED Christmas Lights have really burst onto the scene for Holiday decorating over the last few years. But you may be wondering, “what are those LED Christmas lights and where did they come from?”

Well, I’ve put together a brief history of LED Christmas lights. I’ve refrained from techno-jargon. I’m saving that for another article

Here is a sampling…..

LED Christmas lights are widely accepted now as one of the many choices of Christmas lights available to consumers. However, it was years ago that the concept of LED’s was actually discovered. Christmas lights are a recent application for LED’s. Light emitting diodes (LED’s) were first used for commercial applications. There really is a history behind LED’s and the effect they currently have (and have had in recent years) on the Christmas light industry.

See all of the article Brief History of LED Christmas Lights.

Shellie
C9 LED Christmas Lights

Every celebration is better celebrated with lights and the Jewish holiday of Succot, or Feast of Booths, is no exception. Succot is a yearly celebration commemorating God’s protection of the Israelites during the forty years they wandered in the wilderness prior to finally reaching the Promised Land. A new succah is built each year complete with wallsa and a roof. The roof is covered in green leaves. Netting is hung from the ceiling of the succah. Attached to the netting are fruits and vegetables. During the Succot festival, meals are taken inside the succah, along with other Jewish observances in honor of Succot. White mini lights would be beautiful strung across the roof and celing of the succah. The lights would softly illuminate the succah for evening meals.

See more of our article with some quick suggestions for using lights to celebrate some of the Jewish Holidays

I just found a fun site dedicated to Christmas. It’s alot of fun with quite a few fun freebies and articles. After you are done here you might consider running over there . The site is Jinglebell Junction. Have fun as you surf for Christmas!

Here is a snippet of the write-up on their front page:

You’ll find all kinds of neat Christmas things here… from an on-line Christmas arcade, printable coloring sheets, recipes and crafts to wallpapers, avatars, famous quotes, clip art and fonts. We have our own forums if your looking to connect with other Christmas enthusiasts.

Best regards,
Shellie Gardner