Go for an Ardino Uno or Mega, for fully programmable light display. All you will need is to build a driver board.

Seriously, it not hard. The diver board is just a transistor and a resistor for each lamp or lamps that you want to control. The programming is simple and fun. The cost is all up <$40 for cpu and drivers. Take you couple of hours to make, with no experience. If you have just a few LEDs to run you can go directly from the CPU no need for the driver.
As far as programming, once all connected, you just tell the I/O on the CPU to be high or low (on or off). Here is an example for one lamp turning on and off for 1 second intervals. then you can make it random or follow a sequence.

void setup() {
// initialize digital pin 13 as an output.
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
digitalWrite(13, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(13, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000); // wait for a second
}

Have look here https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products

and we will help you to get started, after all this is Pinside!!