Da Silva reclaims ‘Best lit house’ title

Olivia Da Silva, whose Cane End residence is the winner of the 2011 ‘Best Lit” house competition, says she lights up her house because the lights remind her that Jesus Christ is the light of the world and because the children and other persons in the community look forward to it.{{more}}

She maintains that it has very little to do with competition, but that she takes great pleasure in doing it for the good of the community.

“I do this because I enjoy doing it,” she told SEARCHLIGHT.

Da Silva’s creation of lights took top honours in this year’s competition beating out Jimmy Samuel’s residence in Rilland Hill into the second spot.

This year’s win makes it three for Da Silva, who won the competition in 2007 and 2008.

She had to settle for the second spot in her first year of competitive lighting back in 2006, and also had to settle for the runner up spot in 2009 and 2010, when Samuel took the top spot.

While she remained modest, she said that it was a good feeling to sit on top once more.

Her creation took her all of a month to put together, and that was simply because she takes credit for putting the entire display together herself, doing a bit of work each day, beginning about mid-November, she explained.

“If it was to be done on a day to day basis, I would probably say that it took about two weeks to put together, but because I did it when I had little time it would have gone through to the entire month,” Da Silva said.

Not only does she take credit for putting the display together, but she says that she is solely responsible for the maintenance as well.

“Anytime a bulb blows, I can go and do the maintenance work,” she said, adding that she has been referred to as the “light doctor.”

She is overall grateful to good weather, except for the few instances when heavy winds and rain prevailed.

“Other than that, the weather did not cause much damage,” she said.

This year, Da Silva said that she tried something different – that is in years gone by, she said that she would usually select a theme and plan ahead what her display would look like.

“I noticed that persons would just string up lights anywhere, so I did the same this year,” Da Silva explained.

She further explained that she improvised as she went along, utilizing her artistic ability.

But persons can expect more of the same for some time to come, as Da Silva said that she intends to maintain the lighting tradition.

She said that she has picked up where the community has left off and will continue to make the villagers of Cane End and surrounding areas proud.

Meanwhile, the ‘Ces for West’ Garden at Arnos Vale took first position in the ‘Best Garden’ competition with Richmond Hill Gardens placing second. (DD)