North, south, east, west: Area homes pull out all stops to make spirits bright

Since late November, homes in the Inland Northwest have been putting on their holiday finery. Some residences simply add a touch of lipstick – a row of lights along the roofline, a well-decorated tree in the window. Others go for the full makeover: figurines, thousands of lights, computer programs. The works.

The Spokesman-Review talked to four homeowners who go all out for the holiday season. Inside, you’ll find our annual list of decorated homes. Feel free to continue adding to the list at www.spokesman.com/holiday-lights, and use the map function to plan your holiday viewing.

North Side

4205 N. Elm St.

This was going to be the last year.

Richard Doughty is getting older, after all. He turns 79 in February and figured putting up Christmas lights is just getting to be too much work.

He also figured – and this realization came later, in increments – that if it’s going to be the last time he lights up his home for the holidays he might as well go all out.

All but two of the 11 faux trees in his front yard are new this year.

Doughty made several trips to Wal-Mart in the course of about three and a half weeks, picking up those plastic pine trees, “19 or 20” oversized ornaments and “10 or 12” strings of lights. Installing everything took hours. He guesses he spent six hours alone on the large, deciduous, not fake tree near the front walk.

A row of eight lighted candy canes is arranged at its base. So is a lone wagon wheel, wrapped with red lights and topped with a large, red ornament. Other ornaments hang from the branches. And, of course, lights adorn the eaves of his house and each of his 11 plastic trees.

“We’ve never done this as big as we’ve done this year,” said Doughty, who estimates he spent about $1,000 on all of the decorations.

He’s been hitting the switch around 4 p.m. every day and feels particularly proud when people driving by slow down to take a look.

“Some people come by and honk the horn and they stop and they say, ‘We love it so much,’ ” Doughty said. “They all thought this was probably the prettiest in Spokane.”

He certainly thinks so.

“The darker it gets, the more beautiful it gets. At 6 or 7, it is gorgeous,” said Doughty, who’s lived at this location with his wife Diane, 67, for nearly seven years.

As for next year, he said, “It depends on my wife. If she wants to help me, then we’ll do it again.”

If she doesn’t, who knows? He just might do it anyway, if he’s able.

This season, he leaves the lights on until about 8:30 p.m. nightly and said he plans to keep them up until Jan. 1 or thereabouts.

It might take a week, he said, to take everything down.

Meantime, he asked, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

And, then, he answered himself.

“It’s all beautiful.”

Adriana Janovich

South Hill

3107 S. Glenrose Road

A donkey named Dominick and other lighted farm characters frolic each Christmastime for an animated musical show at a South Hill barn.

For 12 years now, Gary Kuhn, 72, has held his light-sequenced arrangements synced to several Christmas songs. The music broadcasts over a short-distance FM radio signal. In drive-in theater fashion, people park facing a fence line and tune in vehicle radios.

“There are six running pigs, and one pig I call Porky Pig,” Kuhn said. “He sings ‘Blue Christmas.’ ”

You’ll find snowmen throwing snowballs, several Santas, and a kaleidoscope of colors on Christmas trees. Also on hand are three chicks and rooster favorite, Foghorn Leghorn. “Dominick the Donkey” appears annually for a song by that name as the “Italian Christmas donkey.”

Kuhn spends about seven days on display setup, although a grandson and a friend now help. Nightly shows start the Sunday after Thanksgiving and run through Jan. 1, with lights beginning 4:30 p.m. until about 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.

He uses a computer and software to control when different pixels spark to life. Programming so a character opens a mouth or moves to lyrics takes about 30 hours per minute of music when first set up.

“I used to know how many lights … I’ve got well over 1,000 computer channels that control the lights.”

A retired accountant, Kuhn estimates he has 40 songs programmed, but selects about eight to run each year with a few new ones included.

The display draws tour buses and shuttles from retirement homes. Some people get out of vehicles to dance. As a 15-year resident along Glenrose, Kuhn had the barn built originally for a workshop. He also once raised a few pigs on the acreage.

His brother-in-law taught him some welding skills to help shape steel frames for his farm characters. Rope lights are attached, and light patterns make characters appear to move like an animated cartoon.

Kuhn long ago joined a group of other like-minded display owners, called Pacific Northwest CLAP, an acronym for Christmas Light Addiction Problem. He slowly adds features, including a 1944 windmill once on his uncle’s farm in Benge, Washington.

Why he still does the display is simple. He’s always enjoyed Christmas, and people tell him how much they look forward to it. “I’ll have people come up and say, ‘We go there every year; it’s our family tradition.’ ”

Treva Lind

West

6114 S. Brookhaven St.

Her husband helps with the lights under the eaves and snowflake above the garage. But, Angela Womach Williams said, “Everything else is me.”

The 51-year-old stay-at-home mom estimated “everything” includes some 35 strands of lights, eight wreaths, too many bows and balls to count, a pair of white wooden reindeer, a couple of lighted-up red cardinals on the ground near the front walk and a sled pulled by two dogs that resemble her own pets.

“We have Siberian huskies, so I thought the sled was really cute and kind of honored my dogs,” she said. “It was too cute to pass up.”

So was a Santa figurine near the front door and the small wooden church set up nearby, a sign declaring “Joy,” holiday-themed pillows on the two-top on the porch and a blow-up resminiscent of a snowglobe on the lawn. It plugs in and showers snow on the snowman inside.

“I have a blow-up for every season,” Womach Williams said. “This was probably one of the first.”

She’s put it up every year for the past 10 – “at least.” She and her family – husband Chris and two children, 20 and 16 – have lived here, atop this hillside in southwest Spokane, for “going on 12 years.” Their collection of Christmas stuff has been growing ever since.

New this year: a faux tree on the front porch and two smaller ones on pedastals bookending the garage. Look, also, for signs announcing “Santa Claus Lane” at the start of the front walk and garlands – dotted with lights, ornaments and bows – trimming the trellis as well as the front windows, front door, porch railing and garage doors.

“I really like the garlands,” Womach Williams said. “They look so pretty in the snow.”

She leaves up the decorations well past Christmas, swapping out some of them – such as the Santa on the front porch. “He’ll change out to a snowman on January first,” she said.

She shops after-Christmas sales, accumulating decorations for this and other holidays. “We go all-out for Halloween,” she said.

“I love how it makes me feel. And I hope it puts a smile on people’s faces. If it makes people smile, then I’m all in.”

Adriana Janovich

East

4316 N. Center Road, Spokane Valley

David Sani knew he was doing something right when he got a call from a MedStar pilot. Sani lives with his wife, Pamela Sani, just north of the river across from Felts Field, and he puts up 27,000 lights every Christmas.

“MedStar flies out of Felts Field and they called and said they’d taken pictures of the lights from the air,” Sani said. “I guess they watched me every year.”

From the air, the Spokane River or Upriver Drive, Sani’s light show sure is difficult to miss.

Artfully choreographed to contemporary Christmas tunes, lights dance and jump and flicker from small trees in the front yard, over glowing arches to larger trees and strings on the house.

A sign tells you which radio station to tune in to for the full effect of lights and music playing together, and the pitch black front yard off Upriver Drive is the perfect background.

“We have done this for about four years,” Sani said.

He works on the display all year long, programming computers and the 2,000 different channels that run the lights.

“Think of it as having 2,000 light dimmers that you can program to go on and off,” Sani said. “I have a computer network in my front yard.”

Installation begins in early October, and Sani sneaks in a few test runs here and there to make sure everything is programmed just right.

“Every note in the music matches a light, one note at a time,” Sani said.

The big switch is flipped on a day Pamela Sani named a few years back.

It’s the Saturday after Black Friday, when the Thanksgiving dinner is over and the shopping has been done.

“She calls it ‘Bright Saturday’ – that’s when we turn on the lights,” Sani said.

Pia Hallenberg