African Garden + work

A Festival of Lights: OOTS

In honor of the Winter Solstice, here are some lights shining out in the darkness. As promised in my last OOTS post, my family and I ventured out of our town to nearby Arlington Heights, IL, for displays with a bit more zing. The house above, on Dun Lo Drive, is featured in both a book and a newspaper article on Christmas decorations. There is a lighted Christmas tree in every window, and an inflatable snowman and Santa, which is synchronized to music. Around the corner of the house, there's even a large, inflatable Tigger.

On North Windsor Drive is a new display which made the local paper's list of the best in the area this year.

We were just driving through the neighborhood when we spotted it. (Which wasn't hard to do.) It also has music. Most houses don't have quite this many lights, but they are well lit in this, the darkest part of the year.

These houses are typical of those in my area.

Squirrelhaven's modest display. One strand of solar lights on the tree is not working, but more on that in a later post.
I feared that the kids might be getting too old to enjoy the light display at North School Park. We haven't been there in a couple of years. I'm happy to say that I was mistaken. I didn't get to take many photos there because I was being pelted by snowballs.

That's the boy, heading for the wagon at the entrance. Long camera exposures at night are so interesting.

If you look carefully, you can see the headlights and tail lights of passing traffic behind the moving display of the rocking horse. My favorite part North School Park was the different colored lighted Christmas Trees.

I can't decide which color I like the best.
For more holiday decorations, check out OOTS at Veg Plotting. And remember, from now on, the nights get shorter, and we're one more day closer to spring. Happy Solstice!