Where are your favorite holiday decorations?

• Christmas lights

Lowell Anderson | Echo Press Colorful displays of lights, such as these on a house along 11th Avenue West near Lincoln Elementary School, are a sure sign of the Christmas season.

Talk about it

They twinkle. They shine. They dazzle.

It’s show time for Christmas lights and decorations in the area.

For many families, driving around the Douglas County area oohing and aahing over the brightly lit homes is a holiday tradition.

Where are your favorite spots? The newspaper wants to know.

The Echo Press plans to print a story during Christmas week that lists the most impressive holiday displays in Douglas County.

If you know of a residence that’s ablaze with lights or creative displays, please take note of the actual address, or get as specific as you can with the location, and e-mail it to editor@echopress.com.

Also include a brief description of the display or why you liked it.

You can also jot down the information and drop it off at the Echo Press office at 225 7th Avenue East, Alexandria.

If you’re proud of your own display, don’t be shy. Let the newspaper know about it.

Please hurry. The newspaper needs the information by noon on Friday, December 17 to meet holiday deadlines.

Here's how to save money with holiday lights

The prospect of a higher-than-usual electric bill can cause even the jolliest of decorators to pull the plug on their holiday lighting display.

This year, the Minnesota Department of Commerce, Office of Energy Security (OES) is reminding homeowners and businesses that they can reduce their electric bill by using ultra-efficient light emitting diode (LED) holiday lights.

Decorating for the holidays can be expensive. According to OES, lighting a string of 500 standard incandescent bulbs for five hours a day for 30 days (at 11 cents per kWh) would cost a homeowner $33.

Swap out the standard bulbs and go with mini-lights and the cost drops to $3.30.

Using 500 LED lights, meanwhile, would cost only 33 cents to run for the same period of time.

LEDs come in strings of up to 240 bulbs and up to 100 strings can be attached together.

In addition to saving money, here are the key reasons to use LED lighting technology versus the standard incandescent lighting:

• Long life. Life span is up to 100,000 hours (indoor) and up to 50,000 hours (outdoor) and most manufacturers guarantee them for 20 years.

• Efficiency. LEDs use about 100 times less energy than the standard (C-7) incandescent bulbs and 10 times less than mini-lights. To save even more, use a programmable timer to limit the lighting of the display to selected hours and days.

Old holiday lights should be recycled. In Alexandria, lights my be dropped off at Ace Hardware, Discovery Middle School, Jefferson High School, Lincoln Elementary School, New Testament Christian School, Runestone Electric Association, St. Mary’s School, Voyager Elementary School and Woodland Elementary School.

Tags: local news, news, christmas, holiday, decorations