Light It Up Concessions, LLC

Our story starts in December of 2014 when our 1 year old daughter Savannah was captivated by the lights on our family Christmas Tree. She loved the dancing lights and the little music box that played along with the lights as they swirled around the tree each night. My wife Diane and I decided that the following year we would decorate the outside of the house with more then just a few hanging icicle lights and christmas wreaths.

So to pepare for Christmas 2015 we hit up Walmart and Home Depot in South Hill, VA to get the best deal on the traditional LED Christmas lights. We stocked up on 3 cart loads and decided that we would have more then enough to accomplish our mission for the next year. Boy were we wrong.......

To give you a bit of background about myself, I am an techie by trade and I am never really satisifed with doing things the way everyone else does them. In all honesty, I wanted to do something different, something spectacular that both my little family and the community could enjoy. Secretly, I wanted to surprise my wife, who loves Christmas lights by the way, with something she had never seen or experienced before. I was also after that same look from Savannah but multiplied several times over.

To prepare for Christmas 2015, I watched ALOT of youtube videos and read ALOT of articles on Christmas lights. I was blown away at what you could really do and the technology that was available to really put on an awesome light show. I had heard about Light O Rama, which is a company that manufacturers controllers and software that synchronizes lights to music. Thats were I started and I soon discovered that there was a new type of Christmas light out called RGB lights. Basically these lights can be any one of 16 million colors! They cost about the same as a string of regular lights, but require a fairly expensive controller to run them.

Once I saw the videos and the capability, I was hooked! Not just snagged, but sucked in to the vortex that is known as Holiday lighting. I LOVED it, the challenge, the creativity, the thrill of knowing that come December, South Hill, VA was going to have something to see that the area had never seen before. I will say that I have probably the most patient wife on the east coast of the United States. Our house was christmas central starting at the beginning of October. I had lights everywhere, and she has since been gracious enough to give me my own Christmas Light space in the house! There was programming, soldering, organizing, designing, troubleshooting, and a bunch of figuring stuff out that had to be done. It took me a solid month and a half to get everything hung, sequenced, tested, and ready to go. I actually finished hooking up the last big tree 10 minutes before the show was scheduled to run for the public for the first time.

I will give you a little tidbit of info since you have made it this far. I start testing the show about 2 weeks in advance at night. You may see an interupted show or maybe not the full range of features, but if you want to get a preview, mid November is a good time to drop by.

Now that we have that little juicy tidbit out of the way, I will tell you that Christmas 2015 as many of you already know was a resounding success. We had way more cars and people then I thought would venture out to see my little show. We made the paper and gave interviews on several local radio stations. So many people wrote us Thank You cards or stopped us around town to tell us how much they enjoyed the show. We really felt like we had done something great and the community and our daughters enjoyed it immensely.

Now on to 2016! My wonderful wife who keeps me very much on the straight and narrow, informed me that she loved by show, and everything I did, but my plans are bigger then my wallet and I should promptly find a way to support my little hobby. So I played the lottery for the billion dollars! You can guess where that got me.....So plan B, I like to eat and cook, and the last time I checked, food was still essential to human survival so I ran the idea of doing a food truck by my wife and she actually agreed that it would be a good idea. We had ALOT of requests for concessions at the 2015 show so it kind of made sense to take this route for 2016.

Here we are in 2016 and a new business were 100% of the money goes to support the free light show we do for the community. So we started Light It Up Concessions, LLC to do local events, farmers markets, and festivals, in order to raise enough money to cover the capital and operating costs of our light show. We will of course be offering a great selection of dinner and snack items during our light show four nights a week!

Not to mention this year we are doing a Halloween show and we have DOUBLED the size of the Christmas show. We are also building a parking lot to accomodate alot more cars and a few other surprises. Oh, one more thing, we are going to have a different show for each night of the week! Thats right you have to come back seven times to see the full 2.5 hour show, unless of course you attend our Grand Illumination Event!

Last but certainly not least, this year we will be sponsoring a very special little girl who is battling a very serious disease. Her name is Emberlyn Wray, and she has a smile that could light up the darkest night all on its own. Her and her family have been through a lot and this year 100% of all of donations we collect in our donation box will go to her and her family as they continue to kick cancers butt!

As always, there are many things I have not shared that will remain a surprise! If you see us serving somewhere, come over say hello, and buy something to support my light addiction!