Sleigh Ride

The weather this past week has been exceptionally hot and humid as many of you know. I thought about this song, Sleigh Ride. I knew that it had it's beginnings during a heat wave in July. I love to watch the Boston Pops Christmas concerts and this is how I heard that it was written in the middle of a heat wave.  I did some checking and it was in July of 1946 that the original idea for the piece came about.  It was composed by Leroy Anderson and finished in  February of 1948. The orchestral version, my favorite, was recorded in 1949 by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. I first saw this performed by John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra on television years ago. I absolutely loved it!! This song became a hit record on RCA Victor Red Seal which is a classical music label and is now part of Sony Masterworks. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers named Sleigh Ride the most popular piece of Christmas music in the USA in 2010.

Source: sunsurfer.tumblr.com via Dorothy on Pinterest

So that's a little history of one of my all time favorite Christmas songs. Here's a video from You Tube, the artist is Arthur Fiedler. If you like, watch and enjoy. The light display is pretty amazing! Pause player in left side bar if you watch. THINK COOL!!




Wikipedia

Faucher Family Christmas Lights

HGTV

The Faucher family of Delaware loves to decorate for Christmas. There are over a million lights decorating the house! WOW!! I can see the glistening in Clark Griswold's eyes!  :)  The electric bill totals more than $82,000 a month...oh my gosh...hard to believe! Now this is a lot of "exterior illumination" as Griswold would say!

Rich Faucher

Image from http://www2.ljworld.com/photos/2002/dec/01/

Light Displays-Disney World

I have never been to Disney World, but a friend of mine told me that they really put on spectacular Christmas light displays. I decided to check it out and was amazed. It must be such a magical moment to actually be there to see these displays!  WOW! I would love it...but don't know if I would love the crowds, because I'm sure there are loads of people who want to see these spectacular lighting displays. I found some pictures to share and if they are copyrighted I will remove them. Enjoy!

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Image from Google

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Bluegreen Colorful Places

Related articles

• Top 10 holiday sights to see at Walt Disney World (gadling.com)

More wonderful images from Disney at Christmas found Here. Just click on thumbnail to enlarge picture. 

More images Here. Again, click on thumbnail to enlarge. 

Images from Google

Christmas Light Displays

I'm always in awe of a beautiful light display! It's magical to me. I'm always looking for pictures of those magical displays and have found a few that I thought were great. I can't imagine the amount of time it takes to set these displays up for the holidays, but I'm sure they must start really early to get them done and just think about replacing burned out bulbs! But these days they have the LED bulbs which last much longer than a regular bulb. Every year I'm always having bad luck with lights!! Enjoy the pictures. If any of these images are copyrighted, I will gladly remove them.



 

Rockefeller Center

Mormon Temple

And of course, the Christmas Vacation house!





Luberto Home

Hunter Valley Gardens, Australia

Luberto Home in Boston, Mass.


  

Related articles

• Dazzling holiday light displays (cnn.com)

Glass Tidings and Joy

Making of a Glass Christmas Tree from Richard Holdman on Vimeo.


This video is about 19 minutes long but really very interesting. The end result is a beautiful hand blown glass Christmas tree they made for the Festival of Trees in Salt Lake City, Utah. The tree is called Glass Tidings and Joy. It has thousands of small pieces of glass melted together at 2000 degrees and hand blown to create 60 branches, the star, and around 150 ornaments. It was created by three brothers, Tom, Treavor, and Richard Holdman whose father taught them art at an early age. The blown glass tree was sold within hours of the festival opening and 100 % of the money went to support the Primary Children's Medical Center. I think that was a wonderful thing to do. Here is a link to their main site. http://www.holdmanstudios.com/

Clifton Mill




Clifton Mill in Clifton, Ohio is the site of this
 Christmas display with over 3.5 million lights.
 The water source is the Little Miami River.

Oh my gosh!!! I thought this was so
 beautiful to
 share with everyone.
I would love to see this!
 Found it at
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clifton_Mill_Christmas_2005.JPG

 

Amazing Grace Christmas Light Show

This is truly the best light show I have ever seen! Enjoy.

The Amazing Grace Christmas House. Designed and programmed by Richard Holdman in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

You can find out more information about this display at http://www.holdman.com/
The display has 50,000 lights and is computer controlled by 180 channels.

Wizards in Winter

http://www.friscochristmas.com/  The song is Wizards in Winter by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  Light show by Jeff Trykoski.

Awesome!!