First of all, thanks to FuseNova for pointing me to the bay and thus got lotsa LED strip for dirt cheap!
Now that I do have 'em, our house is not lit up like a Christmas tree. However I did do some neat work at my mother-in-law's ranch. Their house had an additional wing built a few years back and they left the old windows in place because they look nice. So now they have windows inside the house between two rooms. And now the windows are lined with LED strip...it looks nice as you cant see the LEDs themselves but the windows just glow. They live way out in the woods and just had a 2 week blackout after a storm so for good measure the lights can be switched to battery power if needed.
For DarthGM's question about the flexibility, had a thought here. I have not tested it, so its merely an idea. Thomas is right about the flexibility, it is rather flexible but might be a bit stiff in a hood, though that depends greatly on the material of the hood. But as you can cut this stuff every 3 LEDs apart you could probably connect several 3 LED strips together-just solder some thin wire between them so you can run them all on one battery. This way you can have the light units as far apart as you like, in case an entire strip would be too much.
As for diffusing the light, there are diffusing gels for stage lighting (gel as in a see-thru sheet, not a thick liquid!) available in many colors (Rosco and Lee Filters make them, as do many others), so they might work for you as well. You can cut them to shape and can control the amount of diffusion by adding layers. You can just roll the gel around the LED strip and tape it.
