Setting up a light show for the holidays in your garden

Do you decorate your home and garden for the holidays? Some people may call what one of our leaf babies site members  (and writer of this guest blog post) does, … excessive…  from a light show perspective. As gardeners, most of us can identify with going a little overboard in the sake of science, beauty, food or environment. Read on and see how the work and ingenuity pay off in a spectacular light show display that makes the whole holiday season… um… brighter..

With that we give you the Christmas in Boonton light show in an article written by our guest blog poster Nick.

PS… we might have taken a little editorial liberty. <3

Making smiles and lifting spirits one bulb at a time.

It’s such a great thing to be invited to do a guest blog post. When I got invited to post about my lights on leafbabies.com I wasn’t too sure about my Christmas lights fit into a gardening blog.  Once I read the site a little though and realized that it was more about having fun and inspiring people, that was enough for me.  So now I’m sitting here thinking about writing this, I can remember the magic of the holidays ever since I was a little boy, around 4 or 5 years old.  

Growing up, during the holidays, Mom and Dad would get my brothers and I in the car and off we would go to drive around looking at Christmas lights. We would spend hours driving around (gas was cheap back then) looking in amazement at some of the homes. I always imagined how much time people spent setting up their holiday light shows.  In the back of my head I had always said to myself that I wanted to be “THAT“ guy. You know the one that put together that crazy holiday light display, with tons of lights and props spread about the yard.  Spreading the Christmas cheer, and making everyone’s holidays merry and bright.

Its hard not to get discouraged when life gets in the way of our projects

Fast forward a few years (I won’t tell you how many)…. And I now have a family of my own.  When we got married (my wife is as much of a certifiable Christmas nut as I am) we decided we should be “THAT” house. I went to work researching how to synchronize our Christmas lights to music.  I stumbled upon some forums DIY Christmas, and Do It Yourself Christmas.  The people on these forums had a wealth of knowledge and were happy to share. It took a while… I had bought and built much of the supplies I needed over the course of a couple of years, but just like many others, life had simply gotten in the away and I just did not have the time to get things done.  My wife and I had just found out that we were expecting and with a child coming soon Christmas lights were simply not a priority.

Not too long after, in 2013, we had just had our landscaping re-done thanks to the help of Advanced Land Managment. We now had a beautifully landscaped property that was simply itching to be lit up.  I had managed to find the time to put out much of the Christmas lights and set things up to be a static Christmas light display.  That year we had setup somewhere around 16,000 white Christmas lights.  Unfortunately getting things set up to be  synchronized to music became not so much a priority with the passing of my mom right on Thanksgiving.  

Right after Mom had passed I had my entire family over at my house, and my brothers asked “Where was I at with this project?” I explained the situation and said I didn’t think I had it in me to get it done.  Both my brothers pushed and said….come on …we can do this.  I can clearly remember that first year, working late into the night, running power cords, network cables and more, just to try and get things working.  Within a few hours we had a little show up and running.  With all of the white lights dancing to music I wanted to incorporate something special to remember Mom.  Out of entire white light display dancing through the season I set one tree to stay on the entire season whenever the lights came on.

But if you keep going it will pay off

Since our first year of synchronizing our Christmas lights to music, the lights have taken on a little bit of a different meaning for me, along with getting slightly out of control.  Our light show now consists of well over 35,000 imported twinkling bulbs.  Along with a few thousand fully controllable pixels (similar to what you would find in your TV).  The light show has become more of a common bond for my entire family.  We do our best to keep all of the generations of our family involved.  

Now our blog Christmas In Boonton Township has become a destination for many, and my wife and I love to look out the window during the holiday season at the families stopping by and watching with amazement.  We don’t do this to be honored, or to be featured on TV.  Our goal is to bring families together to celebrate what we feel is the most joyous time of the year.  Family, to us, is everything and being able to share something from our entire family to another is our Christmas gift to all!

From our family to yours – Merry Christmas & a Joyous New year

A little info about the Tech.

Powered by Raspberries !

As much as I’d like to say that this show is powered by Elvin magic, this year with all of the new additions and changes we started prepping for the show in early May! It takes a little bit of nerdery and research to make this all work The show is controlled by 3 Raspberry Pi computers (unfortunately these are not the kind you grow in the garden) , along with 9 renard light controllers. With these controllers we are able to control every element of our show independently of each other.  Some of which we are even able to control down to the specific light bulb, and color.  We custom build all of our own props, and build all custom extension cords.  The show has well over 2 miles worth of copper wire that connects everything together. If you’re interested in knowing more visit us at our site Christmas In Boonton Township or on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/christmasinboontontwp/ . If you live in Northern NJ or are visiting family for the holidays we’d love for you to drive by and listen to and watch our show