Progress

We are coming right along with our 2008 show! We have 4 sequences already complete and we did some work on creping some lights for easy set up this year. Today we worked on getting our 27 lights going. We are going to have 3 different colors on the peaks of our house: Red, white, and green. So today we switched out the bulbs of multi color lights with either red, white, or green. Ryan was over so he lent a hand and we got all of our peak lights done in just about two hours!

It's Here!

Today we received our order from Light-O-Rama! We had to great big boxes laying on the floor in our garage and we were very excited! We opened up some of the boxes to see what we all had, and it looks like we are going to have a lot of fun setting it up! All together we got four (4) 16 channel light controllers, four (4) 100 foot cables to hook the controllers to the computer, and an adapter that connects the cables to the computer. We are very excited for next year!

We have been working on our songs and they are coming right along, our "Queen of Winter Night" sequence is just about done and our "THX 'Broken' Theme" is done, so we are moving right along!

We are actually talking about hooking up one of the controllers to the lights that we have currently set up... We just can't wait for next year! Things are well on their way for 2008 and we couldn't be more excited!

Our Display: Past, Present, and Future

For as long as I remember we have been decorating for Christmas. It started in the early 90's (About the time I was born) We had a couple soldiers and a few strands of lights here and there. Over the years we grew more and more. More lights and figurines were making their way into our display. In 1994 we moved from Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota to Oakdale, Minnesota. Oakdale was our growing place. We grew tremendously throughout the eight years that we lived there. There were a few lighting completions and we entered and won many of them! In 2001 our family moved yet again to our current location, Waverly, Iowa. Our display has grown a little here and there the past few years, but nothing really big has been added since the move. A few figures here and there, more lights, and the household favorite blow up characters... But no big "WOW" so to speak. That is why, for 2008, we plan to blow our visitors away! We are adding a brand new light show to our yard that will replace our previous display. So, in other words, our 2008 display will be completely new! We are already hard at work planning for the new things that we will be adding, so keep an eye out here to see if any updates have come up. 2008 will be a grand year and we hope that you can take part in another great holiday season!

Sequences!

Since we recieved our download of the Light-O-Rama Sequence Editor right after purchases our Starter Package online, we have already started to program a few sequences for our 2008 display! We plan on having about 4 to 5 different sequences that will play randomly when our display is lit. Theses sequences are:

• Wish Liszt (Toy Shop Madness)
• Queen of Winter Night
• Christmas Eve/Sarajevo
• THX "Broken" Theme
• Wizards In Winter

We are unsure about using Wizards In Winter because as many of you know, most everybody uses it for their display! Also, I want to give a big thank you to Randall from www.andrewschristmas.com for sending me the sound clip of the THX "Broken" Theme! He has a great display that you can check out at his website above.

Here is a link to his version of the THX "Broken" Theme: http://www.andrewschristmas.com/videos/THX.wmv

Thank you once again Randall!

This year is already looking to be a fantastic display!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Wiechmann Winter Wonderland Blog! We hope to use this blog to help update everyone of what we've been up to. Now that the 2007 holiday season is over, we are already working our buns off for next season! Normally we would wait to start working on new things for our display, but next year we plan on adding animation to our display. And from what we hear, it consists of a lot of work so we are already getting started!
Just last night we ordered a 64 channel "Starter Package" from www.lightorama.com this contains everything we need to get our display animated!
We are already working on a few songs for the display, as well as some other animations. 2008 is going to be a great year so don't miss out! Check back here for more updates as we progress throughout the year!

-Zach Wiechmann