As they have every year since 2009, John and Brenda Blackett have gone to considerable expense to transform their home on Sydney St in tiny Takapau into a large-scale Christmas lighting display, this year using 30,000 individual lights to decorate their home.
"The colour theme for the house this year is white, red and green, while the gardens and decks are trimmed in different various pops of colour," said Brenda.
"It takes us around six or seven weeks of planning and checking, and double checking. The weather can delay the process, but we get there in the end," she said.
But this year was a tall order, John said.
"Like many other Christmas folk, we found that when you get your lights back out for the festive season, your lights just give up going - even though they were fine when we put them away last Christmas. It's a never-ending cycle of repair or replace."