“It’s nonstop. From the day we start putting it up until the day I take it down, there are people stopping.”
Her home was just one of many recommended to see when the JournalNews asked its
readers for input on homes with awesome decorations. Many have become holiday traditions, such as the home at 55 Van Buren Court in Hamilton.
“I have taken my kids there for years,” Sara Harrison posted. “The whole court is lit up. It’s absolutely spectacular!”
Just about all the homes in the court are decorated.
Another highly recommended stop was the farm at 3120 Cotton Run Road in St. Clair Twp. Steve and Cathy Shaw have been decorating their family farm for more than 20 years. They use more 16,000 lights to trim the house, barns, trees and long driveway.
Since there are no homes or other businesses near the home and grain farm, it can be seen from a long distance, including Ohio 127.
“(It’s) especially beautiful just after it snows. Picture perfect,” posted Seven Mile Mayor Vivian Gorsuch.
The Shaws say visitors are more than welcome to pull in the driveway.
“We get notes in the mailbox, including one saying, ‘We drive an hour each way to see your lights every year,’ ” Cathy Shaw said.
The Shaws’ three daughters come home from college during November weekends to help set up the lights, which take a couple weeks to complete.
Most of the family pitches in to set up the Elam display at 2900 Eaton Road in St. Clair Twp.
Chris Elam is an electrician, and his business, Cougar Electric, is right off the house. His sister, Kim Stout, was the one behind the large light display that began in 2006.
“She worked for him, and during Christmas we get slow,” said Chris Elam’s wife, Rae. “He thought, ‘How about just doing some Christmas lights?’ We gave her the Lowe’s card, and this is what happened.”
The Elams also encourage people to pull in their driveway or onto Warwick Road to view the lights. Eaton Road comes down a curvy hill at their house, and often people speed down the hill — not the safest place to stop a car.
The advantage to seeing Jay Sutton’s home at the corner of Hatherly Drive and Stahlheber Road in Hamilton is the traffic is fairly light with plenty of room to pull up by the house.
Sutton was inspired by the Mason home put to music by Carson Williams in 2004 that ended up in a national commercial.
“I thought, I can get pretty close to that,” said Sutton, whose light show has been featured on Local 12 WKRC. “I’ve been doing it since 2005. I just keep getting bigger and adding more.”
Sutton’s home features music, but it’s not the high-tech show that at least three homes in Butler County display.
Tim Bateson is in his third year of putting on a show at his home at 7873 Royal Fern Court in Liberty Twp. He starts planning the music and computer programming in the spring.
“I’ve got 112 independently programmed computer channels,” he said. “So for every single one of those channels, every single beat of every song, for 112 times, I have to decide is it off, is it on, is it fading up, is it fading down, is it blinking.”
The music can be heard on FM 95.9.
His effort pays off, he says, when he sees visitors watching his show.
“We welcome people out,” Bateson said. “When it’s busy, my wife and I dress up as Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and we go out and hand out candy canes. We enjoy that.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 483-5245 or Ted.Cox@coxinc.com.
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