Christmas Comes to Light in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, NY!

Some of the most extravagant Christmas light displays in Brooklyn, New York are in the Dyker Heights neighborhood. The spectacle draws onlookers from around the world,and there is even a professional tour of the neighborhood each season called the "Christmas Lights and Cannoli" tour! Your can watch a segment of this tour from a news segment on Youtube at this link, It's lots of fun!

The photos I am showing were basically houses around 84th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues. The photo mosaic above is of Lucy's house. She is credited with beginning the trend many years ago because she got her "over the top" love of Christmas decorations from her Mother, and each year would add on more and more lights until almost every inch of the inside and outside of her home was decorated. She is so proud of her home that after Christmas she actually opens her door to allow visitors to peek inside!

Directly across the street from Lucy is this house, and they really go all out with giant decorations!

The toy soldiers are 30 feet tall!

Santa is even larger!

They call their decorative display "Toy Land"

It has giant moving carousels and rocking horses....

....and larger than life size reindeer and elves waving to you from their upper veranda!

Other homes in the area have wonderful displays best seen up close...

...this one had an international theme.

This home had giant candy canes and a lighted snowman. They also had a lovely life size nativity scene but it was not lighted as yet...I took these photos in early December and perhaps it is illuminated closer to Christmas?

It is fun to walk around and see all the lights!

If you look closely you can see a sign under the red tree advertising that this home was professionally lit by a company, as are many of the other homes.

I liked this home's "simplicity" of lighting just the tree in front.

I took some more photos from my car as I drove around, and as you can see there is a great variety of styles of lights and decorations, as well as unique house designs.

Conan O'Brien filmed a remote tv show for Late Night with Conan O'Brien in Dyker Heights in 2000, and PBS televised a documentary called "Dyker Lights" in 2001 which told the story of the neighborhood's annual tradition, so publicity has made this neighborhood a "must see" for many in New York City, and hundreds of cars slowly drive down the block each night. I'm happy to have brought a small portion of it to you all!

Merry Christmas!

I'm linking to Mary at The Little Red House for Mosaic Monday. Visit Mary's blog today to see many blog links with wonderful seasonal mosaics.

Views of Denver, C0, and an Apology

When my husband and I arrived in Denver International Airport a few weeks ago, to visit my son and daughter-in-law and to attend our grandson's first birthday, there was this beautiful floral display at the main arrival terminal to greet the airport arrivals .... poinsettias galore!

There were even large potted poinsettias on every luggage carousel. They were a wonderful and festive decoration and, along with the holiday music playing over the airport speakers, made everyone smile.

The next sight we were greeted by in Denver was snow! We happened to arrive on one of the coldest weeks the city has had this year. It was five degrees Fahrenheit on the coldest day, but just as Arizona has their "dry heat," Colorado has it's "dry cold," and it honestly seemed a little less stinging and freezing than what we are used to here in NYC when it is that cold.

This was the view from my son's home's front porch for much of the time of our visit.
When Denver has a snowstorm the bright hot sun usually warms the air and melts the snow in a day or two, but the unusually overcast skies and cold air prevented that from happening this time. I thought it added a pretty winter appearance and was Christmas card perfect!

The Colorado State Capital building in Denver. The capitol building was built in the 1890's. In 1908 they used 24 karat gold to plate the dome to commemorate the Colorado's Gold Rush days. The Colorado capitol has the distinction of being the only state capitol situated exactly one mile above sea level -- and there is a step in front of the building which is marked at exactly 5,280 feet high.

Denver City and County Building. The buildings are beautifully lighted at night for the holiday season

The Denver Post newspaper building and the Pioneer Monument Fountain.

The Denver Public Library The 540,000-square-foot structure was designed by architect Michael Graves. The library holds a large western history and genealogy collection as well as a large African American research library.

The Denver Art Museum is known for its collection of American Indian art, and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world. We were able to visit one day and I'll show you some of their exquisite collection in a future blog post.

A view of Invesco Field in Denver -- home of the Denver Broncos football team.

I believe this is Longs Peak in the distance -- one of the 54 "fourteeners" in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, meaning it is over 14,000 feet high.

A couple of views of the beautiful Rocky Mountains in the distance in Denver.

Now for my sincere apology. It has been an unusual month for me. In the middle of traveling, dealing with the inconvenience of my foot stress fracture and treatment, and trying to do Christmas shopping and decorating, another event occurred recently which had terrible timing ----my computer decided to go haywire after I updated my browser and virus program. I lost my settings, my favorites files. Eventually I lost all normal operation of almost everything on my computer. It was a total disaster! I now realize how much of my life revolves around my computer and I really felt lost without it.

Luckily Santa Claus rewarded me with a brand new lap top computer for Christmas a little early, and I have been setting it up and learning how to use it the past few days. I apologize that I haven't been responding to e-mails or blog comments as much as I'd like this past few weeks, but I promise to try to catch up as soon as I am able -- please be patient with me just a little longer.

Thanks so much! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season and I look forward to visiting your blogs.