The story behind the Christmas Display’s evolution
In December of 2004, I decided to decorate our yard. I found the sleigh at the Glendive K-Mart store. During the Summer I had bought the little reindeer at a yard sale, I placed a red bulb in his nose so he would be Rudolph. He turned out to be smaller than I had thought, so I decided that he could not pull the big 30+ inch sleigh.
I then proceeded to cover a Flathead Cherry box with green mylar tissue paper. And I tied string around the box. Then I cable tied the box to the bed of the sleigh and cable tied little Rudy to the string around the box. I used four red clay bricks as weight to keep the sleigh from traveling in the wind.
Well, that’s all fine and good, but what or who is pull the sleigh?
I then mad a mad rush trip to Glendive at 3:30 PM in the middle of December. I stopped at every store that was selling Christmas decorations. At my last stop, The True Value Hard ware store I found the lighted out-line of the waving Santa and a 3ft plant stake to brace the old Gent.
In Circle, Larson’s True Value had a discounted red, white and blue string of lights that I used as reins.
In early November of2005, I saw the five Santa stake lights in sale circular from the Menards hardware and appliances chain. Unfortunately, Menards is a North Dakota based company. So I went online and found the phone number for the Minot store and called. They were willing to ship the Santas to me. Of course the shipping was more than the cost of the stake lights.
I started shopping online for reindeer for the display and thought I found a great deal on three animated deer. Well, it was only one deer and apparently the company thought that 3 dimensional shapes equals animated. When it arrived it was a gold painted Feeding Buck. Sure looked pretty standing in our living room
I mentioned to my brother, Hal, that I was looking for an animated deer that moved its head from side-to-side as if saying, "No". He found a white one in Missoula, MT where he lives and took a chance that it was what I wanted. And it WAS. He also got me two 18 foot garland strings of lights to outline the display
Thanks a MILLION, Bro!!
I decided that with the stake lights I would really need a display platform to raise everything out of any possible snow. Sort of hoping that making a platform would cause it to not snow (more on that later). I then designed the platform with 2x4s and plywood. It has a pitched base for the decorations. It is 68 inches long and 29 inches high and 24 inches across. Just before I went to the lumber yard I decided I could use 2x2s. A good decision as the stand is not very heavy by itself. I was able to purchase a sheet of Mahogany plywood as the roof/base.
I used the tablesaw shown in the Santa’s Outdoor Workshop page to do all the cutting except for the plywood, that was too awkward to use the tablesaw, so I use a circular saw. The GOOD NEWS is that after all the cutting, I still had the same number of fingers I started out with.
On Thanksgiving weekend I started the painting of the platform. Did one side of each sheet of plywood on Friday along with most of the framework. On Saturday Morning I painted the second side of the plywood and the remain portions of the frame.
I finished about 1 PM Saturday afternoon and by 4 PM it had started raining. The rain turned to snow during the evening and night. We proceeded to receive 6-8 inches of snow. So much for my hopes that my construction work would prevent snow until after the holidays.
On Monday, November 28th, I started installing the decorations onto the platform. I got the sleigh mounted and just about froze my fingers as I couldn’t wear my gloves a lot. On Tuesday I decided that I had to get it done. I started mounting the Santa stake lights and got two placed with little trouble. The third stake broke as did the 4th and 5th ones. Not willing to give up, I cable tied the Santas and their broken stakes to the platform. The cable ties do not show up very well. A lucky break for me. It took exactly one 18 foot garland light string to outline the base where the sleigh and Santas are mounted.
After getting all the stuff mounted, I backed my pick-up by my outdoor workshop. That’s when I discovered that my choice of the lighter 2x2s was a good one as the sleigh seems to weigh as much as the finished platform. I huffed and puffed loading the finished platform into the bed of the pick-up. I then decided that the local law could give me a ticket for parking on the sidewalk, but I was going to park there for five minutes to unload the display come Hell, High Water or Snow. I placed the display, plugged in the white one and discovered that the cord on the Golden one was too short, so it was off to the hardware store to buy another extension cord.
What became of the old Santa you might be wondering? Well, he got mounted between our American Flag and the front door.
The pretty little blonde angel was bought in September during Circle’s Town and Country days at Larson’s during there Backdoor Sale for $1.00.
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