I noticed there is virtually no activity on the board w/ respect to Thanksgiving (this is my first year attempting it, myself). Canadian Thanksgiving has already passed. They don't do a whole lot, anyway--it's just a day off. And then later they'll watch the NFL games from work on Thursday.... But U.S. Thanksgiving bridges the gap from Halloween to Christmas, and a lot of us just tear down Halloween and go directly to setting up Christmas by Thanksgiving weekend.
I don't claim to be a pro at it; just helping the board as I can. I found that if you just set aside a few man-hours and identify the stuff that can be re-purposed for Thanksgiving, you can set that up first. A little Thanksgiving mini-show can distract passersby from the construction zone that is your house.
A little bit that I learned:
- I noticed you can just re-purpose your audio, your power, and some of your props from Halloween, to Thanksgiving, to Christmas.
- Pixels are very easily re-purposed. My observation is if you set your pixels to Red=255 and then tweak Green from 0 to 127, that is your color palette. Simple as that. Which interestingly enough, is probably exactly how nature does it: as chlorophyll fades away for autumn, so does the green.
- Quick-and-dirty sequences are the name of the game. The aim is not to be perfect: it's to beat having nothing at all on November 10th.
- It's no big deal to set up the mega tree and candy canes early. Just don't connect them to the show until it's time.
- Other props are just not Christmas-specific. Just switch up the pixels from red+greens to red+yellows(with a lot less red) in the software and you're done.
I know everybody's in a hurry to get Christmas up, and it's not like attempting Thanksgiving, too, is no distraction at all from that. I've got neighbors who are already set up for Christmas. I just set aside a little thought and planning, and now I'm pretty much the only Thanksgiving setup in town, as I go on about Christmas.
If other people have other ideas they do, maybe I'll throw that into my setup, too.
I don't claim to be a pro at it; just helping the board as I can. I found that if you just set aside a few man-hours and identify the stuff that can be re-purposed for Thanksgiving, you can set that up first. A little Thanksgiving mini-show can distract passersby from the construction zone that is your house.
A little bit that I learned:
- I noticed you can just re-purpose your audio, your power, and some of your props from Halloween, to Thanksgiving, to Christmas.
- Pixels are very easily re-purposed. My observation is if you set your pixels to Red=255 and then tweak Green from 0 to 127, that is your color palette. Simple as that. Which interestingly enough, is probably exactly how nature does it: as chlorophyll fades away for autumn, so does the green.
- Quick-and-dirty sequences are the name of the game. The aim is not to be perfect: it's to beat having nothing at all on November 10th.
- It's no big deal to set up the mega tree and candy canes early. Just don't connect them to the show until it's time.
- Other props are just not Christmas-specific. Just switch up the pixels from red+greens to red+yellows(with a lot less red) in the software and you're done.
I know everybody's in a hurry to get Christmas up, and it's not like attempting Thanksgiving, too, is no distraction at all from that. I've got neighbors who are already set up for Christmas. I just set aside a little thought and planning, and now I'm pretty much the only Thanksgiving setup in town, as I go on about Christmas.
If other people have other ideas they do, maybe I'll throw that into my setup, too.
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