BTW, 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 contribution, my kids have celiac disease ... so make a donation to the Center for Celiac Research at Massachusetts General Hospital - tell 'em Komar.Org sent 'ya! ;-)
2014_10_16: The warmup for Christmas is the halloween webcam which was turned on today. The 2014 halloween decorations have 10,000 lights plus giant inflatable Frankenstein, Grim Reapers, Pumpkins, Witches, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! ;-)
2014_10_29: It's two days before Halloween, so the Christmas Blog has been turned on for those fans that want to start commenting.
2014_10_31: Another crazy-fun Halloween night! Almost 200 trick-or-treaters came by as the weather was mild, although gusty winds came up later in the evening. They almost cleaned me out of candy (I'm very generous, especially early on) and I also passed out shots of Chocolate EggNog, Pumpkin Liquor (and beer & wine) for the "big" kids. Check out all the action in the time-lapse halloween movies while listening to some halloween music and read the funny commentary in the halloween blog.
2014_11_12: First major snow of the year ... maybe we'll have a White Christmas this year! ;-)
2014_11_21: It's a week before Thanksgiving, but I made a turkey for my wife's company. I've been doing the behind-the-scenes coding/infrastructure changes plus pulling the Christmas Stuff out of storage and begun testing/fixing things.
2014_11_22: Webcam #1 was installed at the neighbor's across the street. I'll be setting things up over the Thanksgiving week.
2014_11_27: I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving - my wife made an awesome turkey. My Mom is visiting again this year and has been a great help in setting up the display.
2014_12_01: Fired up the webcams and X10 controls - everything worked pretty well - more stuff to put out.
2014_12_04: I announce that 2014 will be the last year for the Controllable Halloween Decorations and Controllable Christmas Lights. It's been a fun run providing smiles and joy to millions of Internet surfers, but Alek "Griswold" is hanging up his Santa Hat! ;-)
2014_12_12: I haven't done this in a long time, but I took a picture of each of the eight zones - scroll down this page to check out the images.
2014_12_25: The snow finally arrives late Christmas day (about 6" of fluffy white stuff) which makes the display look a lot better ... but will make take down a lot more work! ;-)
2014_12_28: The LAST night of the Controllable Christmas Lights. An Arctic Blast is coming down from Canada, so I want to get a head start on taking everything down.
2015_01_01:
Everything has been removed from Santa's Workshop, the house, and the yard ... Happy New Year!
Santa-Homer Cursor:
