Food Supplies at Food Bank Critically Needed

One of the charities that we are trying to help this year is the West Valley Community Services Food Bank. On the front page of our newspaper is a story of the food bank and how many families it helps every year. Food supplies are at a critical level especially at this time of year. It is important that we all try to help this worthy cause and contribute canned food items as well other nonperishables. Donations of food can be dropped off at the food bank anytime Tuesday through Thursday 9 AM to 4:30 PM at 120 North Bridge St. in Sheridan. Food donations can also be dropped off here at 334 SE Ivy St. in Willamina (place goods on the porch in Donation Box). Every item donated means someone is not going hungry, and it will make you feel good too. Please help any way you can.

Live Webcam to see the Lights

Some of our friends will not be able to come see the lights of our show. We thought since they could not come to the lights, we would take the lights to them, sort of. TimberTownChristmas is pleased to announce that we will be streaming a live view of the light show on the internet. A camera will be stationed on the porch looking out into the yard and street. Hopefully, a better view can be had if we can find the right equipment. At UStream.tv, webcams can be broadcast for free. During offline times, a slideshow will be broadcasted instead. Some testing and installing a webcam still has to be done but with a bit of luck, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. We are looking forward to showing the world our lights. To see our webcam, click the link on the right. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

I Pink Not....

With all the vast varieties of commercially made light elements (and even homemade ones) to choose from, there are just some things that will not go well with your display. Choose well as to what will blend into your light show. A lot of factors are at work and will also make your viewing public decide whether its a good show or not. Is it the right color? Are there enough of them? Is it in the right place? Is it installed correctly? Does it have enough or too many lights for the element? Does it fit into your theme? Review all your elements to see if some adjustments are necessary.

In this blog, we have shown what goes into our display and as a twist, below are some things that will not be appearing in our show.

A flying Christmas pig?

Pink?


OMG!

In all fairness, the pink reindeer are part of a fund-raising effort to find a cure for cancer. We have contributed to this cause in the past (and encourage others to contribute) but we will not be putting the reindeer in our show.

Halloween 2010

Using some leftovers from a yard sale purchase, we created a small Halloween display.

Enjoy!

Adams' Family

Dragula

Ghostbusters

Munsters

Thriller

Werewolves Of London

Power up!

A large light display needs plenty of safe power. Two new circuits totaling 40 amps were installed in the house panel box. Each of these circuits are protected by the breakers in the panel box as well as GFI (Ground Fault Interrupter) protected where the lights will plug into. A bit of effort was required to accomplish this as it was necessary to keep the existing circuits from overload. It wouldn't be Christmas with no power to make with the blinky flashy. Some rewiring will be necessary to bring more feeds from the garage panel box for next year's upgrades. Also some more extension cords will be needed to reach the SSRs further away from the GFIs.

Deer Santa...

A good friend of ours gave us these beautiful cutouts. We'll post them on the side yard and string some lights from Santa to his reindeer. That way Santa will have some control over his reindeer by using the reins. Isn't that teddy bear cute?

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Included in the set are 8 reindeer with one of them having a red nose. Not wanting to have 7 deer and a Rudolph, we will paint its nose black to match the others. We will give all the pieces a good coat of clear finish to weatherproof them. Another item of the group is a Christmas tree and some lights will be added to "spruce" it up. In addition, some fence posts will be put into the ground and the cutouts will be ziptied to them to prevent Santa and his team from wandering off. All in all, we simply love this outfit and we are sure the viewing public will enjoy it too. Thank you Cathy for giving it to us.
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Being put on notice

In addition to handing out candy for Halloween, we will also be including a small card with the treats going into the children's candy pail. Never hurts to promote a good cause. Our Halloween display has be upgraded from last year by actually decorating our porch with our new light system. Last year, we only had 2 Trick-or-treaters come to the door. Perhaps with a bit of flashing lights, we will get more of them coming to get bits of candy and maybe watching the show.