The Dancing Christmas Shrubs

I think Mrs. Smoot is getting increasingly concerned about my plans for our outdoor holiday illumination this year. I haven't really given her a lot of details about my plans, and she keeps coming home to find more and more extension cords, along with more electronics filling the garage.

I don't plan on going fully crazy in the Clark Griswold "Christmas Vacation" spirit of the season or anything like that (the house in the picture is actually a mile down the road from us... I have no intent on blinding people with something like that). But I do have some fun things in mind this year.

Since I spent many years as a disc jockey, I happen to have all of my old light show stuff stashed away in the attic. The light show was designed to react to music. Seems like a waste to have this sort of ability stuck in the attic, eh?

So I spent a recent warm afternoon disassembling some stuff from the regular light show, and attaching it to Christmas lights, which adorn the shrubs in our front of our house and along the driveway. I'm calling this year's display "The Dancing Christmas Shrubs." I've gotten things to the point where there's an amplifier and CD player attached to the lights, and the shrubs will now light to the beat of the music.

At this point I have only tested it with Halloween music since that's what was in the CD player. The lights are pretty dramatic to watch during "The Monster Mash," although that's not going to get too many people into the Christmas spirit.

Once I'm done, I'll have it set up so that people can tune their car radios to a FM station where I'll broadcast the music that will be simulcast with the dancing shrubs. Our neighbors are just going to love me! Stay tuned. I'm sure I'll create my first ever "blog video" on the subject before too long.