Tips to Photograph Holiday Lights

Capturing Christmas lights on your camera can be a challenge. Get some tips. Photograph your lights. You could win $100,000.

Are you one of those lovers of the holidays that puts up sparkly ights to see how pretty they look when it gets dark? If so, we know you want to capture those lights on your camera. However, getting those lights to look right in your pictures can be more of a challenge than you bargained for. Professional photographers have lot of experience and cameras with all sorts of settings that most of us wouldn’t know what to do with. Here are three tips for the amateur photographers out there.   Use these tips to take a picture of your holiday lights. Post the picture to one of the Lilburn-Mountain Park Patches' Deck the Halls contest page and you could win $100,000 for your school district. Want to get more technical than that? Here are some …

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Local Homes in Tacky Lights Tour

Lilburn-area homes land on Tacky Lights Tour, and the homeowners could win awards.

Several Lilburn homes are part of the annual Tacky Light Tour, a Georgia-based competition that showcases homes with the most lights and holiday displays. The Tacky Light Tour site allows users, known as Tacky Tourists, to preview festive Christmas displays of 10,000 lights or more. (If you have a display, don't forget that Patch is hosting a contest for the most/best decorated homes, as well. See details by clicking here.) In the Lilburn area this year, those Tacky Light Tour homes are (within ten miles on ZIPcode 30047): The Tack Lights Tour website includes ratings, pictures and videos. Dates and times for each display along with interesting information help users decide where to go. Registration on the site is free and enables …

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Enter Patch's “Deck the House” Contest For a Chance to Win $100,000

Did you decorate your house for the holidays this year? Enter our "Deck the House" contest and you could win $100,000 for your local school district and $500 to pay your electric bills!

We’re launching our annual Deck the House Contest to find the most over-the-top holiday decorations in America—the best “decked” house in the country—the one home so spectacularly decorated that everyone in town jokes your holiday decorations could rival Rockefeller Center’s. If this sounds like your house, upload a photo or video of your home to our contest page from Nov. 26 to Dec. 16. Here is the link to the contest page. Only residents of Patch towns are eligible to enter. We’ll select 24 regional finalists, and from them, pick one grand prize winner. Patch will pay up to $500 of the utility bill for each finalist, while our national winner will have $100,000 donated to his or her local school district. Our contest is right around the …

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Bringing Christmas to the Neighborhood

A home on Vista Heights Way brings bright lights to the neighborhood and Christmas cheer to all.

Keith and Stephanie Self started stepping up their Christmas decorations a few years ago with just a small goal in mind: To do something nice for their home. But, it quickly turned into something else. "Our neighbor, he put up a bunch of Christmas lights, and he said you all ought to put up a bunch," Keith Self said. "And, I put up a bunch of Christmas lights, and one night there was a car out in the street, and (it) was out there for a while. "So, me, being a concerned person, I went out -- wanted to make sure they were OK. It was two ladies, a lady in her late 40s and her mother probably in her late 60s. And, they were crying. "I said, 'Is everything OK?'" The lady looked at me, and she said, 'You just don't know how bad we needed to see…

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Living in Lilburn

The Nutcracker: A Timeless Symbol of Christmas

Decorative nutcrackers have been traced back to the 13th century.

With his pristine uniform, giant jaws, and friendly expression, the nutcracker soldier has become a timeless symbol of Christmas. I always love to unwrap my storage container of nutcrackers and wooden smokers that we’ve collected over the years in order to create a fun display that kicks off the Christmas decorating season.  Although usually associated with the woodcarvers from Germany's Erzgebirge -- the Ore Mountains bordering the Czech Republic --  the history of the nutcracker spans many cultures and countries.  The first appearance of a decorative nutcracker can be traced back to the 13th century where they were fashioned out of poured brass and were usually of fairly simple tool construction. So why have nutcrackers been so popular …

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