Oh, the holidays....

We hope everyone had a great Easter, full of way to much running around hunting eggs with quarters and candy in them and one to many chocolate bunnies. I know that when any holiday that traditionally involves candy is going to end up with me being sick for the following week because I overload my system with sugar and lack of real food.

If you are wondering when some of our Mini lights are going to be back in stock the answer is...not soon. We are still waiting on the our major orders and our 20s and 35s should be in around June. It takes a while to get everything during this time of the year.

--
Zach Broyles
All American Christmas Co.

LED light burnout

A common concern with LED lights is if they have a lot of issues with burning out. LEDs generally last longer than any other bulbs on the market, on average our standard bulb sets last 200,000 hours! So if theres 365 days in a year, and each day lasts 24 hours, then a year is only 8,760 hours. So, in theory LED bulbs should last 22.83 years...That's a long time. If a LED does happen to burn out on a string the rest of the lights stay lit.

We often tell customers about the LED lights we have in our warehouse that light up the building in the dark. We're not a high tech operation, but that doesn't mean we aren't crafty. In the rear half of our building we strung up 4 or 5 sets of blue C6 led light strings along the ceiling to give a little light when its dark. These lights were put up whenever we first starting getting LED lights (maybe around 4 years ago), they only turn off when the power goes out, and they are still burning. These early LED Christmas strings are not half as good as these new sets, the technology is better and the bulbs just plain look better.

If you are thinking of making the switch to LED the benefits definitely trump the up front cost. Less electricity costs, longer bulbs life, more vibrant bulb colors.

Click here to check our LED lights

--
Zach Broyles
All American Christmas Co.

Lighting Glass blocks

It seems like every day we get calls about people looking for lights to go inside Glass blocks, like the one shown above (image from www.homedepot.com). These glass blocks are usually used to make a wall or some sort of divider in a bathroom and can be found at places like The Home Depot. The way people put lights in these is really simple.

1. Get a pack of Glass Blocks
2. Get a Drill bit for drilling glass (1/2 inch is a good size)
3. Get some mini lights that DO NOT have a end plug. 35 light count is what we recommend.
   
4. Drill a hole into the block where you would like to insert the lights.
5. Carefully push the lights into the block through the hole.
6. Plug them up to make sure you didn't loosen any bulbs during the install
7. If the lights work, you're done. Unless you want to wrap the block in ribbon , which is also popular.

These have been a very popular craft lately, we get a lot of calls and email asking about it. People use them for center pieces, gifts, and whatever else strikes their fancy.

Click here to see our selection of mini lights

--
Zach Broyles
All American Christmas Co.

Wedding Lights...

One of the most popular uses for Christmas mini lights during the off seasons is using a white wire set to decorate for a wedding. Using mini lights for a wedding is a great way to accent windows and tables, but the uses don't stop there. Anywhere you want to set the mood or give some soft lighting will look great strung up with lights for your wedding. My sister just recent got married and she wanted arches lit with rice lights, Dad got some PVC pipe, painted it, made some brackets to go around (and protect) the pew, and we strung it up with lights. Here's a picture of what it looked like, we also used LED Net lights on the stage underneath some nice fabric. This picture was, obviously, taken during the day and the effect isn't as breathtaking as it was during the ceremony.


Many people use curtain lights during a wedding for the reception, this is a great way to make a simple doorway more interesting. The number of ways you can add a little bit of mood lighting to any ceremony is limited only to your imagination. Check out all our wedding and christmas products at our website

Wedding Section
Mini Light Section
LED Section

--
Zach Broyles
All American Christmas Co.

Spring Cleaning...

It's that time of year again, time to buckle down, reorganize, and clean up our warehouse. We try to keep a well organized warehouse for two reasons; To make less mistakes and allow orders to get pulled and shipped faster. Though we've been online for many years and have one of the web's premier Christmas Light stores we are a very small operation. Having a small number of employees and a big warehouse that needs all the shelves reorganized can be a little intimidating, but it's one of those jobs you have to do whether you like it or not (like cleaning the gutters).

By the time our shipments of products arrive we hope to have a clean, well put together warehouse that's just waiting to get messed up again by a truck load of products.