ANNA MARIA – The city’s Bright Holiday Lights decorating contest produced a repeat winner and a first-time winner.
For the second year in a row, Andrea and Jim Stepan won the residential category for the elaborate decorations gracing their home and yard at 602 Gladiolus St. Luann Marshall also entered the residential category and her decorations at 708 Gladiolus St. include a wide array of inflatable characters.
The Shiny Fish Emporium at 306 Pine Ave .won the business category, which also included the Anna Maria General Store (winners of the previous two business category contests), AMI Beach Hut, Anna Maria Life, Duncan Real Estate, Once Upon a Beach and Pizza Social.
The winners were announced on Dec. 20 with Deputy Clerk Fran Berrios and Administrative Assistant Barbara Jeffries paying visits to each entry and delivering the winners’ trophies.
Rebecca Preston owns the Shiny Fish Emporium and her husband, Dan Novi, did most of the holiday decorating, which features a lighted swinging porch chair, lighted globes and balls, white lights, some colored lights, yard ornaments, nautical-themed window decorations and more.
Regarding their first-time win, Novi said, “I was shocked. Winning was a surprise. Rebecca gave me some suggestions and said it was pretty much up to me to do what I wanted to do. We love decorating because Christmas time is so special on the Island. We wanted to be thematically consistent. We like sparkle and twinkle and we like it to feel like you’re under a snowy night sky. We have only one thing with color and the color is very subtle. Everything else is white light. I just kept putting lights up because we were having fun doing it.”
Novi said he was inspired in part by the positive responses he continually received from women who live above the emporium.
Seeking a repeat win, the Stepans took their decorating efforts to a new level by using a coastal theme that includes a river of blue lights, lighted marine creatures, a gingerbread couple, a shark eating a gingerbread man, oversized Christmas ornaments, lawn ornaments, rooftop decorations, a digital display in the carport and more.
Working at night, the Stepans began decorating soon after Thanksgiving, and they had to redo some of the decorations due to the heavy rains and flooding that occurred on Dec. 16 and 17.
“We were so excited,” Andrea Stepan said. “We had so many people come up and ask what we were going to do this year. We do it for fun. Winning again means a lot to us and it means a lot when people stop by and tell us how great it looks. We changed it up from last year. I wanted to do a coastal theme because we live in Florida and Jim executed it. He did a great job. We have a lot of color and my favorite is the water feature.”
“We changed it up this year,” Jim said. “We put The Grinch on the roof. Last year we had Santa on the roof. We thought we’d make a water theme in the yard winding around the agave plants with lights in them. We have an alligator, a crab, a walrus, a dolphin and a flamingo to make it more beachy this year.”
See more of contest entries below.
