CSS animations for Log Cabin Window Glow - css

Question

I am making a christmas themed site, I would like to make a log cabin style village. The main feature of this would be lights visible from the cabin windows.
I would just like to ask if anyone has an experience making realistic looking glow effects using CSS?
My current example simply fades an orange block in and out but I think this could to be made to look more atmospheric, i'm sure there is a cool trick for making nice glow effects that someone can share..
Example:
http://codepen.io/Jambob/pen/epMrBp
.animated {
-webkit-animation-duration: 7s;
animation-duration: 7s;
-webkit-animation-fill-mode: both;
animation-fill-mode: both;
-webkit-animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;
animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;
animation-iteration-count:infinite;
-webkit-animation-iteration-count:infinite;
}
#-webkit-keyframes flash {
0%, 50%, 100% {opacity: .80;}
25%, 75% {opacity: 0.25;}
}
#keyframes flash {
0%, 50%, 100% {opacity: .80;}
25%, 75% {opacity: 0.25;}
}
.flash {
-webkit-animation-name: flash;
animation-name: flash;
}
Example Of Lights:
http://www.netanimations.net/deer-stream-cabin-snow-winter-animation.gif

Answer 1

Posting a summation of our discussion above here as an answer as I think this achieves everything you want.
Animate box-shadow to create the initial flickering glow from the windows. For drawing the ray of light from the windows casting out onto the snow, you'll actually need two triangles, one extending from the bottom edge of the window, the other from the right edge, joining together to create one shape.
You can create these triangles using a zero-width/height div and assigning it a border on two sides (this is well documented elsewhere, give it a search or use a generator like http://triangle.designyourcode.io/).
CodePen: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ZbxRQy (I've done the first two-triangle ray for you, left the second window as an exercise so you can understand the technique yourself. I've also used ::before and ::after pseudo-elements for the triangles to keep the DOM small, though you could equally use divs)