OUR DISPLAYS
Lake Myra Christmas has numberous displays and 99% of them are homemade. Here we will show you day time pictures as well as what they look like at night amd also how to build some of them.
1. Our SANTA SLEIGH
The Santa Sleigh was donated to us from the ENFORCERS MOTORCYCLE CLUB. No one has ever done this before for me and really brought tears to my eyes. Most of the members are public officials and they have done a lot of good things for the community. Thank You guys and also to their wifes for helping on this project. Click HERE to see their web site.
2. Our Super Mega Tree
This is one of my favorite displays. We introduce this tree in 2006 and it stands 28' tall. The center mast is a 30' telescoping pole with 8 steel guys supporting it. The base sits in a socket that is concreted in the ground. You would think this tree would have 15,000 lights on it but we selected to use less, but use 32 channels for control . We use 16 slices of red and 16 slices of clear lights. Our future plans is to add another 4000 green lights and another 16 channel control.
Here is another picture.
Another Looking from inside the tree ! An awsome sight !
3. This the Sphere Tree. This was built by my neighbor Joe and he has really perfected the process on how to build these. In fact he has 2 of these constructed . It is simple and they are beautiful. Below is step by step instructions on how to construct the spheres.
This is a Day Time picture
The spheres were constructed from 9 oz. clear SOLO drinking cups (TP9). The only tool you need is a tapered point soldering iron. Each sphere has 48 cups which makes it ideal for a 50 light string.
1. Take the soldering iron and melt one or two holes in the bottom of cup. Two holes if you are planning to use 2-50 light strings of same or different color. The hole should be large enough for the light socket to fit in. For each 50 light string you will have 2 lights left over just dangling inside each completed sphere.
2, When putting the sphere together, take 2 cups , placing them against each other and melt 1/2 inch slit in both cups at once to join them together. This should be done near lower part of 2 cups. This will make 1 pair of cups. Repeat this step until you have created 12 pairs of cups.
3. Next step is to take 2 pair of cups placing next to each other so all 4 cups aretouching one another, melt 1 pair to the second pair so when finished you now have 4 cups melted together. Continue adding the 2 pairs until you have used 12 pairs which will form a circle or donut.
4. Next step take 1 donut and start adding a cup at the time placing the one cup so you can melt this cup to 2 cups on the donut. add another cup beside this cup. Continue and add a total of 9 cups on this row around the donut. Fill in remainer of opening with 4 cups being careful to melt these together making sure top of cups are close to the same height.
5. The final step, you add 1 cup at a time on the opposite side untill 9 cups have been added. This makes 46 cups in the sphere. Keep 2 remaining cups separate until you finish putting the lights into the cups. This allows more working room for your hands to install lights in the cups. After lights has been placed in the cups melt remaining 2 cups and place lights into these cups to complete sphere. Make sure male plug end is last used so plug in is near opening in sphere.
The below picture shows our fireworks display and our shooting stars.
4. Our 16' MEGA TREE
This is our Center piece of attraction and takes longer to install then any other display. Take notice "it is a tree within a tree" .
5. This is our Santa Train and the Jack In The Box plus a portion of the Deer pond. The train is 24' long and stands 8' tall and is constructed out of coroplast . It has 6600 lights mounted on to the coroplast. This one of the favorites among the kids !
This is day time shot from the rear of the train
Below is our very special display name "The Four Candles of Light" Each year in our private community showing we dedicate this display to someone special or someone that has been called to be in Gods holy land. It means a lot to all of us.
And the story goes like this:
Below are the people that Lake Myra Christmas has dedicated the
Four Candles of Light display during our Community show.
Ricky Williams Beth Earp
George Denton
The Snow Machines
Out of all of our displays the snow machines brings maybe the most attention of any, especially among the children. It took a lot of experimenting to perfect this special effect. The machine we use is called a Flurry and it can really produce a great deal of fake snow. But we found if you use it with out any other equipment we could not get the coverage we wanted plus it just did not show up well enough. We knew we needed to get some height on the machine so we designed a pully system to hoist the machine 30 feet into the air. We mounted this system into a large tree that was at the front of the display. You must use such a system because each night we use almost 5 liters of snow fluid and you must lower the unit down to re-load the machine for the next night show. This system has really worked well for us. Then we begin working on the coverage of snow. The machine itself will shoot snow like maybe 10-12 feet but we needed to cover at least 30 feet. The answer was a high volicity fan mounted just below the snow machine. I found this fan , which came out of a whole house furnace and I just built a housing out of wood to cover it. I was a little worried about the rain but the motor was covered enough where rain did not bother it. The weather was another issue with the snow machine because it is not designed for outdoor use. What we did here is that we used a large plastic box that is about 3 or 4 inches wider and about 6 inches longer . We then drilled holes in the bottom and used large tie straps to fasten it to the bottom of the box. We also drilled other holes in the bottom for air and drain in case of spillage. Then we took the top and mounted a piece of angle iron using about 6 -1/4 20 bolts and a eye hook at the balance point when full of fluid. To secure the top to the box we used 2 cargo straps that goes completely around the box. When loading the fluid you lower it, losen the straps, open the box , reload , close the cover and hoist it back up !! WORKS GREAT!
After we completed the design we found that the snow was hard to see. Then we installed five 50 watt floods on the ground pointed straight up and some at a slight angle. You need to have reflection for the snow to really show up well and this did the trick. The snow machines, blowers and the floods are all controlled by the computer so we have program them to come on at specific times during the musical sequence.
You may have read about our snow fluid in the question and answer page but using 5 liters per night could get a little on the expensive side. So we went on a mission to develope the solution ourselfs. What we use was plain old Wal-Mart bubble bath !!! Some of the surfactants used in these baths do differ and some worked better then others plus we used a few other ingredients to acheive larger flakes. Trust me we get a lot of visitors asking what is that great smelling aroma ! We have a lot of fun with this!! Some nights when their is a slight north wind we will fill the complete front street up with snow. This brings a lot of excitement.
Below is a picture of our snow machine set-up.
This is another picture with the snow machine running(slow shutter speed)
THE DRIVE WAY ARCH
This is Joe's Creation
We have 2 Nativity scenes
This one is located in Joe's Yard
We have a few more we will be posting but for now we are going to relax after a hard day. I am on the left and Joe is on the right.
Merry Christmas Everyone !
