Amazing techno Christmas light show, set to equally amazing Christmas music.
This display was the work of Carson Williams, a Mason, Ohio, electrical engineer who spent about three hours sequencing the 88 Light-O-Rama channels that controlled the 16,000 Christmas lights in his annual holiday exterior lighting show. Enjoy!
Filed under Christmas Videos by on Oct 17th, 2009. 
Making your own Christmas candles is fun and economical. You can create candles for your own home or as gifts for friends and family.
Here are two projects for making homemade candles or candle holders. One is an easy project for kids. The other makes elegant and fragrant beeswax honeycomb rolled candles.
Stained Glass Candle Holders:
For the kids candle holder project, you will need the following:
1. Small water glasses or baby food jars, big enough to hold tea candles.
2. Scissors, liquid starch, and glue
3. Different colors of tissue paper, especially red and green
4. Glitter, ribbons, lace, small artificial flowers
To get a stained glass effect:
1. Cut the tissue paper into small shapes.
2. Dip them in the liquid starch and apply them, overlapping, onto the side of the glass or jar.
3. Sprinkle them with glitter while the starch is wet, and let them dry completely.
4. Glue any other decorations you want onto the outside of the container.
5. Put the tea candle inside, attaching it to the bottom with a little bit of melted wax.
Now you have a great candle for your home or for gifts!
Beeswax Honeycomb Rolled Christmas Candles:
For the beeswax honeycomb rolled candles, you will need the following:
1. Sheets of pure honeycomb beeswax, from craft's stores or online. Pick a size that matches the height you want your finished candles to be.
2. Wick. If your candles will be small, choose a 18-ply flat braided wick. If you are going to make big pillars, chose a 24-ply flat braided wick. Cut the wick 1/2" longer than the height of the candle, leaving 1/4" sticking out of each end.
3. Decorative items such as petite flowers or pine cones, glitter, and little bows.
To make the candles:
1. Cut the sheet of beeswax to the height you want. If you want to make tapered candles, cut the sheet of beeswax on the diagonal.
2. Press the wick into the side of the sheet of beeswax that will be the height. Tightly roll the beeswax over the wick. It's best to be working in a warm room so the wax doesn't crack.
3. Trim the bottom wick and rub the bottom of the candle over a warmed skillet. This will give your candles a nice, flat bottom.
4. For the tapered candles, you can very gently flute the edge that runs up the side of the candle and stick little flowers into the edge.
Have fun making your own holiday candles for your home or for your friends and family!
Filed under Christmas, Christmas Crafts by on Oct 30th, 2009.
You may wonder why we put tinsel on the Christmas tree each year, and legend says that it may be due in part to spiders. Yes, you read that right - spiders might be responsible for the little slivers of silver and gold we hang from the tree's branches.
As the legend goes, a woman cleaned her home for the holidays and was careful to get rid of as many spiders as possible. The remaining spiders hid up in the attic, but really wanted to be there when the home was to be blessed by the Christ child. The spiders decided to sneak into the main room at night and get closer to the Christmas tree.
That night, the spiders climbed all over the Christmas tree and checked out the ornaments and all of the beautiful branches. They were delighted at its beauty, and left spider webs everywhere they went. The next day the Christ child was worried the woman would be disappointed over the spider webs, so he reached out and touched all of the spider webs. When he did this, they suddenly turned into beautiful strands of silver and gold, and this is the legend of how Christmas tree tinsel first began.
If you'd like to make your own Christmas spider ornaments, it's a very fun and simple process. You will need crystals of several different sizes (you can choose the color), a glue gun, metallic thread, and 26-gauge wire. First, glue the two largest beads together hole to hole with the glue gun. This is basically the body and head of the spider. Cut four wires and string the smaller beads along them to make the legs. Bend the end of the wire so the beads do not fall off.
Once you've added the beads to all four of the wires, twist them together to create the legs. Then, hot glue them to the bottom of the larger beads so that it takes the shape and form of a spider. Next, using about ten inches of the metallic thread, place it through the two holes in the biggest beads (the body), and you're ready to go! You now have a beautiful crystal bead spider ornament, just like the legend of the Christmas spider. Make as many as you want and decorate your tree with them this year.
Filed under Christmas by on Oct 28th, 2009.
