1998 was the year when changed a lot in our house. It was my first son's first Christmas and we had only been in our house a year. This was the year my wife said I should put some ilghts on the house. That was the last time she told me to do that(Insert evil laugh). We didn't have a lot of money..I guess we still don't... We did the best we could with what we had. This first year was simple and clean looking and looked great with the snow. I don't remember the light cout but I guess it was around
3,000 minilights.
This is a video of our house in 2002. We had about 5,000 lights and the Flying Santa.
In 2003, 12,500 lights were put on the house for Christmas. It took about 65 hours to put up the lights. It was a major project. After it was done there was a lighting ceremony with my eldest son flipping the switch.
Everyone loved it, and everyone that drove by stopped to see the flying Santa. (Movie) The stripe on the roof is Santa's landing strip which is two strings of blue lights with a white chaser string between the two for a guide.
There were about 5,000 lights on the roof, 300 on each of 7 bushes, post light, porch post, and 4,300 lights on the windows, trim, fence, and misc. decorations. For discussion on specifics check out the Tech page
1998 was the year when changed a lot in our house. It was my first son's first Christmas and we had only been in our house a year. This was the year my wife said I should put some ilghts on the house. That was the last time she told me to do that(Insert evil laugh). We didn't have a lot of money..I guess we still don't... We did the best we could with what we had. This first year was simple and clean looking and looked great with the snow. I don't remember the light cout but I guess it was around
3,000 minilights. 
