It's About Time!

Welcome to your September 2007 edition of the PlanetChristmas newsletter! It is published regularly and covers relative topics for the Christmas decorating enthusiast.

Here's what you can read about in this September 2007 newsletter:

• Planning for 2007. Think About Themes.
• PlanetChristmas Interesting Product
• PlanetChristmas Vendors. Behind the Scenes.
• Tips of the Month
• Rudolph's Rumor Run
• Your PlanetChristmas Forums Signature
• PlanetChristmas Radio, a new sound!
• Newsletter Suggestions

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Planning for 2007. Think About Themes.

If you attended PLUS2007, with any luck you sat in on Cindy Miller's class about using themes to build a Christmas display. This really starts to make sense after your display has grown over the years. As fun as it is just to have a lot of lights in your yard, seeing a silhouette of Santa reclining on a beach chair next to Santa in a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer really is a little odd. Using one or more themes can bring order to the chaos and take you to the next level in grand Christmas displays.

One year I broke my display into three areas, each with a theme: vacationing Santa, Toyland and the North Pole. The casual observer saw the display and was most impressed because of all the lights. The observant saw the themes and went out of their way to tell others about how it all fit together. The obsessively observant would stand in front of the display and expertly tell others how it was all done and the reasoning behind everything (I'm not making this up.) It's the attention to details that many really appreciate and brag about to others, thus sending more people to see your work.

It's not too late to implement themes in the 2007 display. Look at your inventory and see how it can naturally break into themes. Now think about how it can be deployed in the area you have. You might consider making a few signs to help the observers. If your display is computerized, highlight only one theme at a time. If you synchronize your lights to music... well, let your imagination run wild!

You can also think of your display as individual scenes within a large theme. With automation, you direct the viewers eye to what is important and they will stay actively engaged following the action. You can even use this trick to control traffic. As soon as the viewer sees a small scene repeating, they know it's time to move on and let the car behind them get a better view.

Remember: you are in control of your Christmas display. Use themes to help focus the viewer and you'll make even more lifelong memories for them.

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PlanetChristmas Interesting Product

Looking for an out-of-the-ordinary inflatable for this year? Check out Hanukkah Harry at http://www.hanukkah-harry.com/. I'll admit it's the only Jewish snowman I've ever seen.

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PlanetChristmas Vendors. Behind the Scenes.

I've been spending the last few weeks driving/flying around the country and visiting some of the PlanetChristmas vendors. Their hospitality has been wonderful and I have learned so much about the Christmas business. There is a book to be written about the entrepreneurial spirit within the Christmas vendor community. This is a tough business. Over half of the sales are done during the last quarter of the year and while most people are enjoying the holidays, Christmas vendors are working seven days a week shipping products. Because the "season" is so short, they must anticipate what the hot items will be for the year and if they guess wrong, there's no time to build/order what they really need and they're stuck with a lot of inventory on January 1st. Almost every vendor has a story that includes something like "the first year we had a choice of going to Wal-mart and buying every string of 50 count mini-lights they had or buying food for the family... we went to Wal-mart." I'm so glad they did. PlanetChristmas vendors understand how they help us make lifelong memories in our communities. See a list of them at http://www.planetchristmas.com/vendors.htm

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PlanetChristmas Tips of the Month

What a wonderful time of year! The stores are starting to put out the Christmas merchandise and our decorating minds kick into high gear. If you see something brand new this year and it's a "gotta have" for your display, bite the bullet and buy it now. Hot new items are usually in short supply the first year and once they are sold out, no more can be found for this season.

Many of us turn on the Christmas displays right around Thanksgiving... less than a couple of months away. Now's the time to get a calendar and start working backwards from when the display turns on to when you start assembling your masterpiece. This really helps avoid the all-nighters and upset stomachs on Thanksgiving Day when you should be enjoying the time with family instead of worrying about the Christmas lights. Go ahead and factor in some "bad weather" days now and be pleasantly surprised when you don't get any rain, sleet or snow during setup. Pencil in on the calendar what days you anticipate getting individual projects done and use this as your master time line to assemble your display. Spending a few minutes now setting the calendar can save you days in the long run.

Work with rope light? One technique is to use clear rope light and paint it with Krylon "Plastic" paint or their Stained Glass paint. The biggest challenge is getting the paint to dry, especially using the Stained Glass stuff. Bill Foley figured out if you first wipe the rope light with acetone or lacquer thinner (available in most any store paint department), it makes a world of difference. He's right, it really does. I use acetone. Bill's technical explanation from the PlanetChristmas forums actually said: "Plastics exude a mixture of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) primarily alkalies and substituted benzenes along with a few aldehydes and ketones. This is the reason the paints are slow to dry. The lacquer thinner removes these from the surface of the rope light." Pretty obvious Bill did well in chemistry.

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Rudolph's Rumor Run

Heard about the "Desperate Decorators" story line being developed in the Penthouse section of the PlanetChristmas forums? Somehow PPF's have been linked to the Dark Lord. Come join the fun and help the story evolve. (There is a small fee to join the PlanetChristmas Penthouse forums. Go to "My Account/Subscriptions" to learn more.)

I've had the pleasure of visiting many PlanetChristmas vendors over the last few weeks and anticipate seeing more very soon. I've seen some "advanced" products that will knock our socks off when officially released. Unfortunately, I've had to take an oath of silence. In the meantime, remember to stimulate our vendor economy as you start getting ready for Christmas 2007.

Got any juicy bits of gossip you want to share with the PlanetChristmas community? Send a tip to csmith@PlanetChristmas.com

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Tips on your "Signature" in the PlanetChristmas Forums

Many of us have become very creative with our unique signature automatically added to the end of each post we make in the PlanetChristmas Forums (My Account/Edit Profile/Signature). You can have pictures, links, colored text and just all kinds of cool attention grabbers... but let's be careful. As we enter the busy Christmas season, the bigger/flashier your signature, the more irritating it becomes to others. Let's keep it simple and refrain from blatant advertising. My PlanetChristmas Forums signature is below as an example.

Chuck Smith at http://www.PlanetChristmas.com
Don't forget our three PlanetChristmas rules: [color=red][b]Positive, family friendly and Christmas centric[/b][/color]

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The PlanetChristmas community has experienced tremendous growth. Our three fundamental rules of family friendly, positive and Christmas centric guide what we say and do. The real key to our community is a willingness to exchange information so others can have better displays. Come join us!

Talking about a gold mine of information, this is the place! If you haven't found it yet, go to http://www.planetchristmas.com/talk.htm. We've recently added more forums and made it a little easier to get around. Once you're a member, feel free to change the look and feel of the forums by going to "My Account/Preferences/Board Theme." Don't forget to update your profile so others can learn about your display. Also remember the part of the forums you can see when not logged in is indexed by the Internet search engines, but once you're a registered member, many new forums open up but are invisible to the search engines. PlanetChristmas believes strongly in protecting your privacy.

The PlanetChristmas radio station is still on-line and available to anyone with a fast Internet connection to tap into. Thanks to The Demented Elf, PlanetChristmas Radio now has "a new sound" while not straying from it's mission of Christmas music 24x7... even in the middle of Autumn. How can you go wrong? Find the details at http://www.planetchristmas.com/PCRadio2007.htm

Newsletter Suggestion?

Have a suggestion for a main topic or want to write an article for a future PlanetChristmas newsletter? Send me an email: csmith@planetchristmas.com If you know someone that really should subscribe to your newsletter, send them to http://planetchristmas.com/lists/?p=subscribe

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Next time: look forward to more Christmas decorating tips.

Chuck Smith of PlanetChristmas