Trees for Toys 2009

This past Saturday, our office and company held our annual Trees for Toys open house.  This event has become an absolutely fantastic event for so many reasons. We get a chance to reconnect with our past clients, friends, and family; we share a little holiday spirit while enjoying some goodies; and we collect toys for Toys for Tots which benefit children, teens, and families in need.

So how does it work you might ask? Each agent in the office has the opportunity to purchase a tree or wreath for their past clients or anyone they would like. The agent then invites the client to pick up the tree or wreath and join us for a holiday open house complete with goodies, Santa, face painting, temporary tattoos, plus much more. We ask everyone to bring a toy to be donated to Toys for Tots if they are so inclined.








This year we were able to add a new element to our party which was the addition of two Marines who joined us on behalf of the Marine's Toys for Tots program.

 My wife Jessi took the photos of all of the kids who sat on Santa's lap including my troop.

She also got to snap a few photos of big kids as well.  My dad got in on the action on this one!

Our day was another huge success.  In the end we collected 252 toys between 10am-2pm this past Saturday. Santa even took a photo with our collection.

If you are in the Shakopee area next year on the first Saturday of December, please stop by and join us for the party. I would like to thank everyone who joined us this past Saturday for your generous toy donations.

Don't forget, we are collecting toys right up until December 20th so if you would like to donate, stop by my office anytime.  We are located at 8170 Old Carriage Court in Shakopee.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christmas In May

This past Saturday our office had the opportunity to participate in the 13th annual Christmas In May event in Chaska. For the past 13 years the community has come together in the form of volunteers who work together to help make needed repairs on homes where the homeowner does not have the financial or physical ability to complete them on their own.

The repairs can be anything from landscaping to electrical and anything in between. This year between 40-50 volunteers joined together on our project which was just one of 5 projects going on that day in Chaska. Our project consisted of fixing a rotting wooden swing set, removing and replacing edging and rock around the entire home, cutting down tree limbs, and cleaning up a large lilac hedge among other items.

It was amazing to see about 50 people come together on Saturday morning to complete the majority of the work in about 2 1/2 hours. We started out removing old edging and sod, we then dug part of the trench for the new edging, we laid new weed barrier, and finished up by scooping rock into wheel barrows and pushing them around the back side of the home.

The day was extremely rewarding and it felt good to give back to one of the communities that gives us so much. An event like this truly shows what community is really all about. It also was great to use some muscles that do not normally get used throughout the work day!

If you would like more information on volunteering you can call 952.361.5350, if you know of someone who may need assistance with their home they can call 952.448.7715, or if you would like to make a financial or materials contribution you can call 952.556.1317.

Happy Mother's Day!

Exterior Illumination: Phase III

Well, phase III is complete! I have both roof lines and the garage doors done which was my goal to have completed before Thanksgiving.

The fourth and final phase will have to wait until a week from Saturday. Every year I place a fresh cut Christmas tree on our front porch and we hang a swag of garland on the front railing.

The boy scouts dropped off the garland a few days ago but the tree will not arrive until December 6th.

Once I have finished decorating the porch I will post the fourth and final exterior illumination entry for your viewing pleasure.

One quick hint that I came up with this year involves the garage door lights. The "Light Tacker" worked great for the garage door lights by the way! Of course, the light string length never works out perfectly for the door frames and because of this there has to be a partial string of lights on the ground that goes between the big garage door and the little one. My old C7's used to allow me to remove bulbs without affecting the rest of the lights in the string. These new LED lights do not allow me to pull bulbs without knocking the whole string out. Because of this, I came up with the idea to wrap black electrician's tape around the 10 bulbs that I needed to hide. It worked perfectly!

Once again I have attached a link to a classic clip of Clark W. Griswold's light display in one of my favorite movies "Christmas Vacation" which you can access by clicking on the title above.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Exterior Illumination: Phase II

If there is one thing I have learned over the years it is that when it comes to exterior illumination you have to be flexible. Now I am not talking about my particular athleticism either.

I originally thought I would be writing about "Phase II: The lower level roof line" but I had to complete a blended phase II over the weekend. Because I purchased all new lights this year, that meant I also had to re-clip all of the lights where in the past I could simply pull out the lights from the previous year and get at it. I realized in a hurry that I was going to run out of clips and still had lights that I could hang. Solution: put up as many of the lower roof lights as possible and then shift gears to hang garage door lights.

You will see from my photo that I made it to the peak of the garage before running out of clips. I then started to hang the garage door lights with my new toy the "Light Tacker" (see below). I have to black out some lights with electrician's tape that run along the ground to the 3rd garage stall but will do that in phase III on Wednesday of this week.

I thought I would briefly talk about equipment as a good set of tools is key to a successful light display. Last year I purchased a high quality Werner extension ladder which is probably the single most important tool in my arsenal.

I'm a little higher than you may think!

I also made a small purchase this year to add to the excitement! The "Light Tacker 3000" (okay it is really called the "Light Tacker" but I thought I would add "3000" to spice it up a bit) has been a very nice addition so far. This is not your ordinary staple gun. The little white pieces shown directly below the staple gun are placed between the light strand and the staple to prevent a staple from entering the strand directly and thus shorting out the lights. Pretty slick!



I also use the universal light clips shown above to attach the lights to both the shingles and the gutters. It is a great all purpose clip that works on several different surfaces as well as with several different types of lights.

I should be done with phase III of my display by Wednesday night and will post another blog entry early next week. Phase IV involves a fresh cut Christmas tree which won't be available until December 6th.

As an added bonus, click the title above to view a classic clip of Clark W. Griswold's light display in one of my favorite movies "Christmas Vacation".

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Exterior Illumination: Phase I

The holidays are fast approaching so I thought I would write about a Newman family tradition that started when I was a kid and has continued on as Jessi and I started our own household.

Clark W. Griswold has been an idol of mine for many years and in fact, I like to think I have a little "Clark" in my blood. From lights to Christmas music to all kinds of other holiday traditions, we like to celebrate the holidays to the fullest. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not quite as aggressive as some of the local radio stations who started playing holiday music earlier this month but nevertheless I like to try to take it to the extreme. Thankfully, Jessi has the common sense to hold me back and keep me from going too overboard!

Our tradition has included decorating the interior of our home during the weekend after Thanksgiving but I like to have my "exterior illumination" completed and ready to hit the "on" switch the day after Thanksgiving. This past weekend I started on phase I of my project. As you can see from the photo above, I like to get my upper roof line completed as early as possible before the snow, ice, and frost settle onto the roof for the winter season.

I also decided to go to LED lights which meant I had to replace all of my lights this year. The downside is the initial cost of new lights while the upside is the energy savings that we will see over the next several years. Another bonus of these fantastic lights is that they rarely burn out. Every year it seemed like I would get the upper roof line up and within an hour or less I would have to climb back up to replace burnt out or broken bulbs. Not the case this year!

Besides the initial cost, the only other downside I can see so far is that the lights are not quite as bright. Jessi also thinks they are a little more blue than white and I will have to agree as they are a little less white/yellow than I thought they would be. Maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing though because as I was crawling around my roof after dark the other night, my neighbor across the street came out of his garage to let me know he liked them better than last year's lights.

I think we just may officially have a great start to the holiday season! I can't wait to share with you the next 3 phases of my project coming to a blog near you. It sounds like this weekend's weather should be prime for some light hanging and roof crawling so be sure to check back soon!