The inflatables invasion began 10 years ago with a trio of blow-up witches for Halloween. Looming over the lawn of Doreen and Guy Haarlammert’s house on Dorothy Lane, the fan-powered broomstick riders were followed by a jumbo Santa balloon for Christmas.

Then Doreen caught inflatable fever. The symptoms were mild at first. For Valentine’s Day, she displayed a few king-size hearts.

“Then I thought: I’m going to do all the holidays,” she says. By 2017, she had collected air-filled decorations for everything from Cinco de Mayo to St. Patrick’s Day.

Today, with a rotating cast of more than 100 inflatables, the Haarlammert front yard is slathered with electric-powered creatures almost year-round. The only big gap is between July 4 and Halloween. To fill it, Doreen tried to find Yom Kippur inflatables, but came up empty. “I’m still searching,” she says.

But she has tracked down a handful of holiday-themed French bulldog blow-ups, a tribute to her household pets.

The Haarlammerts’ pop-up potpourri has attracted many compliments over the years, but it also has drawbacks. The home’s electricity bill runs about $200 a month, Guy says, even with solar panels on the roof. And windy days can wreak havoc. Doreen once chased three inflatables down the street in her pajamas, she says. Another time, Santa’s head sailed off in a gust.

Also, because the blow-ups run from 7 am to 9 pm daily over several weeks, they typically break down after three to five years, she says. Some cost as much as $600 to replace, Guy notes.
But seeing the joy on passers-by’s faces is worth it, says Doreen, a Fullerton High grad whose father – Dennis Murphy – co-founded the American Basketball Association.

“Every time I drive by, it puts a smile on my face,” says Dan Harrison, whose family uses Dorothy Lane as a shortcut to Placentia. “It’s kinda sad between holidays, because it’s just an empty lawn.”
Other fans include Rosary High School, which Doreen says once borrowed a few inflatables for a dance, and the scores of families who show up around Christmas.

On Friday evenings in December, the inflatables extravaganza expands to include free hot cocoa, cookies and photos with Santa and Mrs. Claus (played by Doreen’s nephew-in-law and niece, Mike and Debbie Williams of Brea). The costumed Claus visits debuted during Covid-19, when kids weren’t able to have their pictures taken with St. Nick at local malls, Doreen says. She asked Santa Mike to don a face shield, pose with the children, and send the snapshots to a Wi-Fi printer stationed in the yard. The tradition has continued every Yuletide since (minus the face shield).

Off-duty inflatables are stored in a Yorba Linda warehouse owned by a Haarlammert son-in-law. Or, if the blow-ups are on deck for the next holiday, they wait in a backyard outbuilding that also holds backup decorations in case any front yard balloons malfunction.

Normally, she buys a couple of new blow-ups for each season, but in 2025, she scaled back the number of inflatables on display after vandals kept cutting the string lights that circle her lawn.

“Maybe some people don’t like all this,” she frets. So she also reset the timers to turn everything off at 9 pm instead of 10:30.

She even considered dropping every holiday except Christmas and Halloween. “But I didn’t want to shut it down if it makes people happy,” Doreen says. “I love doing this for kids.”

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