As those that follow our display know, we try to add something new every year. New for 2016 will be our Yard Train. This is a train that will travel around the entire display.
We posted pictures and a video of our progress in the How-To section of the web site. Be sure to take a look and see how we are progressing!!!
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Just a quick update. The 2015 videos are online. If they "stick" they are on our Facebook page (moodyfamilychristmas) and on our Vimeo pages and finally here on the website under Photo & Video.
Here is the link to the website video page for 2015. http://moodychristmas.weebly.com/christmas-2015-videos.html ENJOY and thank you all once again for sharing the season with us.... OMG .. its 11/25/15 and tomorrow night is LIGHTS ON!!! .. I first have to apologize for not posting and keeping the site up to date. I can see that my last post to the blog was Jan 2015!! This is NOT what I intended with this site.
We added some new elements this year. The old incandescent porch wrap has been replaced. The roof line and windows have been upgraded to pixels. Lots more color and movement. We hope you come out and see us this year. I had a bad case of blues regarding putting up a display this year at all. Sandra inspired and helped me get everything set up and the blues have turned to joy and pride in the way our display looks this year .. I COULD NOT HAVE PUT THIS DISPLAY UP THIS YEAR WITHOUT SANDRA !!! .. 'nuff said .. Hope to have more for you later... Bob and Sandra Then suddenly it was Christmas and the rains came. We shut down early and for three nights it was dark ... then ... it happened ... that realization that ... I didnt take a single picture or shoot a single frame of video .... ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.... As I said the show had been dark for three nights but on the 4th night I tried to light it up to get some video ... All was well in the world. All the elements lit up and the show was running perfectly. I set up the camera on the tripod and started shooting ... Did I mention it was FREEZING outside now.. Did I mention that I usually take 3 angles of video which means I have to sit through the entire show at LEAST 3 times ... Did mention there are like 19 songs in a full show rotation? Oh and last but not least did I mention that the glow from a display in the night sky attracts visitors that park directly in front of your camera setup ... ROFL ... Yes this was my punishment for waiting until the last minute ... So anyway .. several hours of filming, watching, moving and trying to keep warm followed by several more hours of editing.... here we are ... The Moody Family Christmas 2014 videos are ready ... (well mostly ready ... I ran out of space on Vimeo for the week so there are 6 videos sitting in my Dropbox that are waiting for my upload allocation to roll over... ) 2014 brought a lot of updates to the display. Unfortunately most of them were behind the scenes. Visually, our biggest event was the addition of the 12-string 180-PixelTree. It was a huge success. So much so that the joke around the house was we could have just put the tree out then stood in the yard and blinked a flash light and everyone would have still have loved the display !!! LOL .. We had a lot of fun this year with the tree and all the new sequences. We picked up a few tree sequences from Brian Bruderer at Superstarlights and from Dave Torres at Holidaysequences. They were awesome additions. However they came a little late in the season so just to get them out, I did all the sequences on a couple of them but the other two, I basically just turned everything on and let the tree be the center piece hoping that no one would notice. That lasted about 15 mins. The first song where the tree was doing its thing and everything else was static brought a tiny voice from one of the cars that said... "How come nothing else is moving??? ... BUSTED !!! The tree also afforded us a little creative fun. The Santa Watch sequence was a 30 minute throw down but received a ton squeals from the kids. I sat down and did the voice over and scavanged a few effects from other sequences and poof ... All in all it was a great year and we would like to share it with all of our friends and family in the community. The posted link will take you to our Christmas 2014 album on Vimeo. Video Album is at: http://vimeo.com/album/3207281 Thank you and Merry Christmas. Bob and Sandra Happy New Year everyone... I know last year I was pretty lax with keeping up with posting and progress. But Sandra and I have already set our goals and for the most part the 2015 additions are planned, set and already in progress. We have already made decisions on all that will be added so we can proceed with purchases, construction and programming.
Of course we ALL know it will NEVER happen (Sandra all ways tells me to never say never.. ) but we hope to have everything done and ready by October 2015. Then we can stop, check it twice and have it up and running on Thanksgiving night without having to kill ourselves in the process... Any takers ?? LOL... Keep an eye peeled on the blog and the website.... we aren't talking Super Secret Squirrel projects here... as they develop we will give you all a peek ... Bob and Sandra Well on Friday and Saturday (11/21 and 11/22) we got six inches of rain. Water was up to places we had never seen it reach before. We thought for sure that Thanksgiving light up was bust and we would be lucky to have it up by the first week of December ..
But after 4 long days of sun up to flashlight work... we fired up the show tonight to test it.... A few minor issues to fix on Thanksgiving day .. but .. we managed to get it up and running. Sandra kept me sane. When something would go wrong she was right there with encouragement and love... Thank you sweetheart .. I couldnt do this without you!! So .. let there be light... Have a Happy Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving night at 6:00 PM ... we launch another year of planning to all the smiles from our visitors. Bob Hard to believe that LIGHTS ON 2014 is only 15 days away! With a steady focus on the tasks at hand we will..... SQUIRREL !!!! Who are we kidding here? Its crunch time and as always its OMG ... "we will never get this done" .. and.. as always .. it does..
Actually we built the new train base for the Mega-Tree. After 2 years of .. "well it basically worked for the season .. but its scrap now..", I decided to try something a little different. We always built the base out of wood. This year we transitioned over to 10mm Coroplast Its already white very stiff and basically has no adverse issue with weather. It has a support under it and its not supporting dancing reindeer... Also mounted the new Pixel-Tree controller and the new 8 port switch. With the addition of the Pixel-Tree, we ran out of network connections to run all the DMX stuff. We are good now... Also managed to get all the sequencing done (yeah right)... but for the most part, the show will run. Have the show computer already set, the FM transmitter, show scheduled etc. ... tested and ready to go .. Will spend time after work this week doing the initial setup of the porch. Weather has already turned chilly.. Since we live in East TX, I wont EVEN say its turned cold... as to not offend our readers up in say .... CASPER WY.... where is -19 ... ARE YOU KIDDING ME ??? Bobbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb (sorry .. I was cold and stuttered.. ) I was looking at the archive dates on the blog and realized that last year, I think I posted at least once a month and kept very active and up to date. This year .... MARCH was the last update? BAD decorator .. BAD BAD... Truth be known, I almost wanted to bow out for a year, but I finally got my mind right and we are back on track.
We have built the pixel tree to replace the 10 year old MegaTree. We have programmed it and actually set it up a couple of times to just see what it all looks like . Its going to be fun !!! Odd that I decided to FINALLY post again on the blog on Halloween .. but "CRUNCH" time has begun. We have a ton of work to do for a Thanksgiving night light up. We will try to post some pics and keep the updates flowing . Sandra and I have already talked about next year and hopefully... we will take January to recover and start fresh and new in Feb 2015 charging to another great year. Happy Halloween... Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas ... stay tuned .. Believe it or not .. this blog does help keep me focused ... Bob Well I know its been awhile since we posted, but.......we are working on 2014. We ordered 13 strings of 8mm pixels to build a pixel tree. I am working on the design to merge it in to hay ring/train base. They should be in middle of May so that gives is time to work out the details and figure out the programming. More as the project develops......
For those that follow our display (and our ramblings) here is a quick update. Sandra and I have already started the planning and design for 2014. We are hoping for a few new items this year.
On a side note, all of the 2013 videos are online. You can watch them directly from our website HERE or you can go to vimeo.com and see them there. We have received a lot of comments on the display and the video editing we did this year. We hope you enjoy them. We also added a facebook page. Not sure of the impact this will have on the website and/or or display but we decided that we should go ahead and toss one out there. And .. as soon I figure it out .. I will post our Facebook page info .. Best I can tell you now is to search for Moody Christmas. Keep watching.. we will be updating the FB page, the web page and the How-To pages shortly ... Bob and Sandra |
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May 2016
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