SCREENSHOT of Alek's CONTROLLABLE Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease 2007

Use the three christmas webcams to view live images of 17,000 christmas lights and also CONTROL them - heck, you can even inflate (or deflate) the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! All three webcams are online from Thanksgiving to Jan 1st between 1700 to 2200 MST (GMT-7) which is when you can turn stuff on & off to entertain the neighbors. Plus send "Instant Messages via Webcam" for all to see. HO HO HO! ;-)

If you enjoyed the christmas lights, please consider donating a few dollars (tax deductible) to the over $30,000 raised for the Univ of Maryland Center for Celiac Research.

$1,000: Bronner's Christmas Wonderland - Christmas Lights Etc - Colorado Home Finder - Colorado Real Estate - LED Christmas Lights - Photo Christmas Cards - KIYU Burrito Reindeer!
$100: Anonymous - Coolest-Gadgets.Com - Patti/Noah - Gary Castro ($500)
$1: Dirk and Kyle Komarnitsky ... and their Big Green Buddy and other $1-$99 contributions

Santa-Homer Cursor: Remove - Tiny - Small - Normal - Big - HULK'in

Free Christmas Music

There is still a lot more stuff to put out (especially in Santa's Workshop) but what the heck, lets turn on the webcams and X10 controls ... so Internet Surfers can view and control Christmas Lights - Happy Thanksgiving! ;-)

☺Welcome back Windoze Firefox Surfer 024.008.170.041 from Louisville Colorado United States (39.955°N 105.168°W) United States flag

You have visited 228 times, last at 2008_11_26_18:40:34.189 - is your name Griswold? ;-) ☺

Halloween & Christmas FAQ should answer most questions - plus some misc. media reports
The lights are wind powered and carbon neutral - Al Gore would be proud!
The Christmas decorations throughout the years and even more cool Christmas pictures
Other folks who have done nutty stuff like this and watch entertaining time-lapse footage of Christmas lights videos
More about the Zany Guy behind all this and also see his Halloween Decorations! ;-)
What will be new for Christmas 2008 and for Halloween 2008

HULK says Puny Humans can add some cheerful christmasy comments now in the Christmas Blog

While I appreciate the folks who have asked if they can donate/PayPal to cover the costs of the lights and (wind powered and carbon offsett'ed!) electricity, I've never asked for donations and don't plan to change that. While it is a bit of work to put up all the Christmas stuff, I do it anyway for the neighborhood kids and the web site is just my way of saying "Merry Christmas" to folks around the world. If you feel compelled to make some sort of donation, my kids have celiac disease so make a donation toward medical research at the University of Maryland - tell 'em Komar.Org sent 'ya! ;-)

Circuit Layout & Electrical Analysis for Christmas 2007
Circuit   X10-Zone   Amps   Lights   Description
Garage        1       5.1    1,600   Garage Icicles, Blue Ball
Panel-1       1       5.3    1,800   Junipers, Column, Swag, Bubble Lights, Skiing Polar Bear
Balcony       2       6.3    1,300   Balcony Novelties, Train, small Homer/Santa/Tree, US Flag
Panel-2       2       7.5    2,400   North Candy Canes, small Frosties/Tree, Tree Presents
Panel-3       3       7.4    1,800   Upper Roof Icicles, Chimney Star, Orange ON/OFF Outline
Panel-5       3       7.5    1,900   Tree & Fence wraps, 10' Mega Tree, West Candy Canes
Panel-4       4       9.9    3,200   Front Yard Christmas Tree
Window-U      4       0.9      250   Upper Window Decorations
Garage        5       1.6      400   Snow Icicles & Bells by Tree, Inflatable SpongeBob SquarePants & Elmo - Tickle me!
Window-L      5       1.2      300   Lower Window Decorations
Balcony       6       1.0      300   Santa Plane on Roof
Panel-1       6       3.2      400   Frosty and Snowman Family
Balcony       7       0.6      200   Roof ON
Garage        7       1.8      200   Inflatable Santa, Tin Man, Red/Green LED Tree
Balcony       8       1.2      400   Roof OFF
Garage        8       1.4      250   Burrito Reindeer and Inflatable Homer - D'OH!
Office        *       3.1      400   Various stuff in Santa's Workshop!  ;-)
                                        1:Blue Rope Light   2:Rainier Beer Sign   3:Three Candles    4:Hulk Lamp
                                        5:Christmas Tree    6:Groovy Lava Lamp    7:Stepping Santa   8:Red/Green Present
TOTALS       17      65.0   17,100   TOTALS

A question I'm often asked is how much does it cost to light the holiday display - the electrical meter does spin a bit faster. That's easy to calculate - with all 17,100 lights ON, the current draw is 65 amps. Multiply by 120 Volts and divide by 1,000 to get 7.8 KiloWatts. The approximate cost of electricity in Colorado is 10 cents per KiloWatt-Hour ... so to run the display continuously for an hour, it costs 78 cents/hour - not much! But remember that Internet Surfers are turning the lights on & off ... so divde that by two and then multiply by the 5 hours/day it's active, and the electricty costs 195 cents per day. Multiply that by 31 days and for $60, a whole month of holiday fun is provided to people around the world ... plus some awareness and thousands of dollars in donations for Celiac Disease Research!

2008 Christmas Lights Updates

For reference, here is the christmas 2007 webcam updates.

2008_09_30: The warmup for Christmas is the halloween decorations webcam which was turned on today. Over 9,000 lights in the Halloween Decorations plus giant inflatable Frankenstein, Grim Reapers, Pumpkins, Witchess, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer Simpson - D'OH!!! ;-)

2008_10_26: The Christmas Blog has been turned on a bit early in case Halloween fans wanted to start commenting.

2008_10_31: Another crazy-fun Halloween night! Over 200 trick-or-treaters came by during record warm temperatures. They almost cleaned me out of candy (I was too generous early on) and I also passed out shots of Bailey's, Port, and Egg Nog Whiskey. Check out all the action in the time-lapse halloween movies and the funny commentary in the halloween blog. Come back for halloween 2009! ;-)

2008_11_05: Radio station KIYU in Galena, Alaska (look that up on a map - wayyyyy up/out there!) again "sponsors" the Burrito Reindeer with a $1,000 donation. This pushes the total raised for the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Disease to over $30,000 - what a great way to start off the Christmas Season - please consider adding your direct donation too.

2008_11_19: Thanksgiving comes late this year (27th), so I'm a few days behind last year, but making good progress as I start the Christmas deployment. Fortunately, the weather has been mostly a sunny 50-60°F ... which is a lot nicer than having to put out your Christmas decorations in below freezing temps with a chilly wind and/rain/snow.