Thread: Do your Neighbors expect a winter wonderland display?

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I must admit I like decorating for Christmas. Hanging the lights, decorating the tree, setting out some lawn displays. However, during Halloween everyone kept saying, "I can't wait to see what you do for Christmas"! Talk about setting the bar high. Has this happen to anyone? What do you do? Do you do a mad rush to take everything down after Halloween and start putting up your Christmas decorations?

Well I would not exactly say I'm a "mad rush " kind of gal but since we opened the insdie of the house for halloween a big chunk of our halloweeniers the last couple of years asked us if we could open up the house for Xmas too.....and yes we do decorate as much for xmas as we do for halloween. We could not pull the open house night off last year cause we all had health issues here but we are talking about it this year & I was surpised how many of the parents asked about it on halloween night.

Muf

We got a few people saying similar things on Halloween, but our reply was always the same... "THIS is our Christmas!" Short of a few lights outside (and a tree inside) we don't do too much in December.

Originally Posted by the black pirate

I must admit I like decorating for Christmas. Hanging the lights, decorating the tree, setting out some lawn displays. However, during Halloween everyone kept saying, "I can't wait to see what you do for Christmas"! Talk about setting the bar high. Has this happen to anyone? What do you do? Do you do a mad rush to take everything down after Halloween and start putting up your Christmas decorations?

In most conversations of any significant length about our haunt, yes, I am asked if we go all out for Christmas the way we do for Halloween.

Initially I dismissed a large Christmas display, because far too many people do this and do it so very, very well that I couldn't match budgets and storage with them even without the Halloween adiction.

I finally guilted myself into cranking up the Christmas stuff a knotch. But I dove-tailed it a little bit into Halloween. The VERY sturdy, yet temporary 4x4 supports we use for our Halloween arch, and to anchor the entire haunt, are now left inplace when the haunt comes down. The day after Thanksgiving (yep the ugly things are left sticking up by themselves all November), we mount a facade that looks like two 12 foot candy canes, turned so that their "hooks" are touching, forming an arch at the entrance to our sidewalk leading to the house. A [wood] green banner with gold letters proclaims "Merry Christmas" attop the candy canes.

We also set up a "fence" of 3 foot, lighted candy canes around the yard, some airblowns and lights pulsing to music. All of this stores in minimal space and goes up and down very quickly - less than one day. Theme: not much, but looks like a lot. We're just too exhausted from Halloween to kill ourselves at Christmas.

BTW, we also have to setup my 88 year old parents house for both holidays. Busy, busy.

I'd say we do just as much for christmas, and halloween.

I decorate way more for Halloween than Christmas.

I don't do nearly as much decorating for Christmas as for Halloween. I can have my yard and porch Halloween decorations down the next day. I'm planning to continue to expand my decor in the coming years, but, at this point, I still can't see it taking me more than one day to take everything down. Christmas decorations usually include much more extensive lighting displays. All of those wires. I have been making most of my Halloween decorations to save money. This is harder to do for Christmas. Those wires.

Oh yea, I got the same exact comment. I normally go all out for Christmas too, but I'm still so tired from Halloween I told my wife I'm just going to put out one green floodlight and one red floodlight and maybe a reindeer.

We only put out some big red ribbons on the fence posts and mailbox and a few wreaths here and there. I DO wish that there was a way we could share our indoor Christmas tree. Every year, it is a themed beauty that IMO is much nicer than the ones I've seen in Christmas house tours.

Well the neighbors call me Clark Griswald, so that should give a clue as to how much I decorate for Christmas. Unfortunately I also buy too much at the after Christmas sales and a rough estimate is that I have 200 boxes of unopened lights that I haven't used yet...dern electric bills.

My big Christmas project is to lay some pallets on the roof (luckily I don't have a steep slope) then I mount 9 reindeer (can't forget Rudolph) and a sleigh that I got at Home Depot a few years ago to the pallets. I Then have a small inflatable Santa that fits the scale of the sleigh and run red rope lights from the sleigh to all the reindeer as reigns. I have been using white motion lights to simulate a runway on the roof, but after Christmas last year I bought a couple of those "Santa Stop Here" Landing lights so it'll be even cooler this year.

The weather is pretty nice here right now, so I'm hoping to get some of the lights up this coming weekend...but I won't turn em on until after Thanksgiving