Announcing the 2013 Lighted Christmas Ball Party and Workshop

If you have been wanting to make these crazy things - or to learn how to do it to take to your neighborhood, we have some spots open at the workshop.  

Sunday afternoon November 24th from 2-5 

Cost: canned food for the  The Shine the Light on Hunger Food Drive 

+ 1.25 for chicken wire for each ball you want to make.  

You also bring 200 mini lights any color for each ball.  

Optional: Bring a snack & adult or child's beverage to share....

+ a can of veggies for Stone Soup we will all enjoy

We will have LCB Demos - how to make, how to wire, how to launch. 

Questions - make a reservation email lightedchristmasballs@gmail.com with your name and how many you want to make - 1-2 per person is average.  You can make more depending on how may people come & how much wire we have.  

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Wonderful Note from California

I just love love love getting these letters(see below) from 'new friends' who have stumbled onto us via the internet.  It just makes my heart happy to see community time and know that they will bring much joy there.  I wish I could go see every Lighted Christmas Ball in the world.  At least I sure would like to have a push pin of all the places we know they exist.  

Thanks Denice, I can wait to see the Main Street photos.  

Anne & Jonathan 

Hi,

My name is Denice Cull, I am a realtor in Sebastopol California. I came across your video of the lighted balls when searching prices on the store bought version. Our city needed help badly and I sent an e-mail to our mayor and within a week a small committee of people from our downtown association and chamber of commerce met to hear my idea. Three months and 108 balls later, we have just started hanging them on our Main St. and plan on making a bunch more in the next week. THANK YOU! I consider myself a highly experienced light ball assembly-person now, as well as having to figure out all the technical glitches of extension cords and connectors!

The pics below are my favorite color combinations which I have in my own trees at home, we chose multi-colored strands for the ones downtown and I haven't taken pics of those yet.

We also started late in the year and would like to eventually incorporate the hunger charity cause in the future.

Denice Cull

Realtor-Sales Associate

CPS Real Estate

5925 Fredricks Rd.

Sebastopol, CA  95472

Kim and Gary have taken the pumpkins down and decked out for Christmas in PA. LOVELY.

These are updated photos from Kim and Gary in Pennsylvania - wow those are gorgeous.  All sized lighted Christmas balls and snowflakes.  Beautiful - Thanks for sharing.  Merry Christmas

Lovely letter from West Virginia

A couple of weeks ago we received a lovely letter from Rebecca who lives in West Virginia.  Her husband is from Greensboro and introduced her to the beauty and the good of the lighted Christmas balls.  Her words let me know that she really 'got it' - that the lights are more than just a pretty magical thing. Her words were so sweet, sharing how she introduced them to friends, neighbors, family and church. She is inspired by the wide collection of colors and shapes and the possibilities to light up the cold cold dark dark nights of late fall and winter in the hills of WVA.  Here are a few of her fall balls.  She promises to send more along at Christmastime.

Please send me your photos and stories.  It is one of the best parts of this crazy tradition.

Thanks Rebecca.  Come to see us this year when you head south for the holidays.
Anne and Jonathan 

Early Show in PA - read and see how Kim and Gary have transformed the Lighted Christmas Balls into Pumpkins

Hi There!!

 

I seen on your blog where you would like to see photos of houses where they have used your lighted ball idea, well here it is.  The Halloween photos with the pumpkins on the side of my house are in fact your ball idea only they are much larger, I used 60 inch and 48 inch chicken wire and doubled my length, THAT WAS A CHALLENGE, hehe!, and in case you are wondering the eyes are coffee cans with red Christmas lights stuffed in them, the neighbors like them, hehe!  our house sits on a hill 90 feet above the highway, kinda far off the road so I wanted them to be seen from the road, just cant sit a lighted deer up here, would just look like a blob, haha! I just make a little cylinder for the top and wrap with green lights for the stem and just pipe cleaner attach the to the balls.  Then at Christmas I put white lights on them for the regular balls, I do plan to make more this year and put them kinda rolling down the hill, this idea fits our house perfectly!! The snow flakes on the side of the deck are made from PVC pipe, I made a design and my dear hubby helped my with cutting everything and all the elbows, they are about 48” in diameter.  I get compliments all the time on the balls and pumpkins, thanks so much for the idea, nothing worked as well up here in the years past, but I think it works now!!

 

Thank You so much!!

 

Kim & Gary Marshall

239 DuBois Rockton Rd.

Rockton, PA  15856

LIghted Christmas Ball Note Cards available now

Daughter Alison(original designer of the lighted Christmas balls) has been drawing and coloring and designing since her earliest days at the Infant Care Center at UNCG.  Every holiday occasion, her father and I have opened cards and projects she has crafted so it was no surprise last Christmas when I unwrapped kitchen towels with a drawing of a lighted Christmas balls.  I really loved it, so she submitted that image to the personalized stationary online business where she is a designer.  I really love how they turned out.  They are Crane quality note cards with envelopes and you can order yours by clicking the link below the card.  
They are lovely to do business with and have a terrific line of kids stationary and calling cards and tags.  There are plenty of other designs which I have given to friends and family.  She has just released one I really like with a bow tie for the guys.  Her designer name is Charlotte Vail so if you see that artist name when you open any of the other designs you will know it is her work. 

  Lighted Christmas Balls Note Cards

For all our friends in Salisbury NC - an opportunity!

Lighted Christmas Ball Workshop at John Calvin Presbyterian Church, 1620 Brenner Ave. Salisbury NC 28146

10:00 AM Saturday December 7, 2013

The fourth annual Salisbury N.C. Christmas Ball Workshop will be held in the Fellowship Hall at John Calvin Presbyterian Church at 10:00 AM, Saturday, December 7, 2013.  The lighted Christmas balls are easily made and are designed to bring Christmas cheer to local neighborhoods.  Pictures of the balls illuminating neighborhoods in Salisbury, Greensboro and Charlotte can be seen at Lighted Christmas Ball Blog.

For each ball you wish to make, please bring 200 mini-lights.  All other materials will be supplied by JCPC.  Please also bring a donation of canned food to donate to Rowan Helping Ministries.  In 2012, over 10,000 pounds of food was collected in North Carolina to support area food banks.

Further information is also available from the Charlotte Observer story and the Salisbury Post’s coverage of the 2012 workshop.

Photo Credit  - http://lightedchristmasballs.blogspot.com

Photo from Frederick Maryland

This from one of our dearest friends - Bill Humphrey.  He and his family made lighted Christmas balls for his daughter Ginger Humphrey Wiley and her family who just moved into a new home the week before Christmas (Oh my goodness)  We love to put up photos from other places in addition to Greensboro.  If you have some photos - send them to us - we will put them up.  
Happy New Year!