Thank you all for your well-wishes about my big news! I have to admit that I have had a difficult time being really excited about being pregnant this time around. I don't know if I truly was more sick this time or if it just seemed that way, but June and July were pretty rough for me. Having to deal with my father-in-law's sudden illness and death, my dog's sudden illness and death, being on the road (and therefore sleeping poorly) for nearly three weeks total in a four week period and my kids being out of school and home all day was not made any easier by feeling nauseated and exhausted 80% of the time. Feeling like poo didn't make me thrilled to be pregnant--it only made me wonder why on earth I'd done this to myself when I clearly knew better?
However, sharing the news and having my first ultrasound last week and seeing a photo of my little guy have really helped, as have all of the well-wishes from all of you and my other friends and family. I think I'm finally pulling out of the queasiness and not a moment too soon because The Mister had to go out of town for work and he won't be home until late September. I am definitely looking forward to the start of school for my kids next week! Even though Porter will only be in preschool two days a week for a few hours each time, it will be a small break from kids and I'm looking forward to it.
I haven't done a whole lot this summer that's worth blogging about but I do have a few things that I'd like to share. Back in the first week of June, I got to decorate for the opening night of a multi-day conference put on by my church for 200 or so teenagers.
We decided on a carnival/fair sort of theme, and I had fun sketching and dreaming up ideas for how I could decorate a huge church gym on a budget. This was my first sketch and it was fun to see that many of the things I made actually turned out like my initial ideas!
I sewed miles of garlands from pink and yellow tickets. In the end, we decided to cut them and hang them vertically and I love how it filled up the space and contrasted with the pennant banners. I also sewed all of the miles of pennant banners--they are made of red, yellow, turquoise and white plastic tablecloths from the dollar store. I know that you can purchase pre-made plastic banners from the party store but they wouldn't have fit my color scheme so I was willing to do it myself. It really wasn't difficult at all and you'd be surprised how many triangles you can get out of just a few tablecloths!
I ordered a large roll of red and white striped plastic from Oriental Trading Company. My initial idea was to use it to drape the doorway to the gym to look like curtains, but logistically it just wouldn't work because of the way the doors open. Instead, I had my helpers use it to make bunting across the bottom of the stage. It didn't swag quite the way I had hoped but I think it looked fine in the end. I did use some of the brightly-colored Christmas lights that I borrowed to light up the front of the stage.
The giant arrow was a DIY project. The theme for the entire event was "Know It, Live It, Love It" and my original plan was to make
these marquee letters spelling out the theme in lights to place across the stage. While I still believe that would have looked really cool, it would have been an immense amount of work to make all of those letters and expense to purchase enough strands of lights to light them all. Because I was using church funds for my budget, I felt a responsibility to only purchase materials that could be used again or that were so inexpensive (ie, dollar store tablecloths) that it wouldn't matter if they were thrown away.
In the end, I made only the arrow and used my own two strings of lights for it. It really wasn't difficult either and it looked really cool when it was plugged in! (I will say for anyone wanting to make these letters--with all those bulbs so close together, it got HOT quickly and I was a little nervous about the hot light bulbs up next to the foam core, posterboard and paint. We actually put it on a metal cookie sheet from the kitchen because I was anxious about it sitting on the carpet.)
My signs even looked similar to the ones I originally sketched! I used sheets of foam core from the dollar store. I cut each in half and used a piece of posterboard to make a mortise mask so that I was making a border. I used the same red spray paint from the arrow project and sprayed around the edges of the mask, then traced around the inside edge with a Sharpie to add definition. I even made the side lines wavy to simulate the torn edge on a ticket. My friend Angie used her Silhouette to cut the letters from black cardstock. The font was from the Silhouette online store and it was exactly the look I wanted!
After I made all of the pennant banners, I still had tablecloth leftover so I cut it into strips and made ruffles with my sewing machine. To make the ruffles I just pulled gently on the plastic as I fed it into the machine and it ruffled itself. We used some of them to swag on the fronts of the tables.
I even snuck in a few of my vintage treasures like this old blue canning jar full of pinwheels (made by my mom for my birthday a few years ago, but the perfect colors/motifs)
and I dug out a few of my vintage boxes and baskets to be used to hold bags of popcorn.
There was a fun photo booth set up as well. I specified red and white stripes and they used dollar store tablecloths for it as well, and it looked fantastic! I made another banner to hang across the backdrop.
My very favorite decorations were at the front of the room. I had two big empty wall spaces on either side of the stage that I needed to fill and when I saw them, I knew just what to do!
I found scrapbook paper at Michael's in various patterns in the color scheme of red, turquoise and yellow with touches of royal blue and pink. I couldn't have done this without my sweet friend Angie, who graciously made one million paper lollies for me over a weekend.
For the backing, I taped together two more sheets of dollar store foam core to make a nice, large surface. Then I simply arranged the paper lollies to my liking and used a hot glue gun to attach them to the base and each other. I absolutely LOVE how they turned out and they were a nice way to make a big impact without spending much money (especially if you can catch the paper when it is 5/$1 at Michael's!)
I ended up spending about $125 on all the materials. It was actually a bit less than that, as there were some materials that I didn't end up using but wasn't able to return (a can of spray paint, a few more sheets of posterboard/foam board/tablecloths from the dollar store). The largest expense was the roll of red and white striped plastic (around $25) but we used it on the stage and then cut the rest of the roll into shorter lengths and used it as table runners on all of the many tables around the room so we certainly got our money's worth out of it. Also, a friend who is in charge of another church activity this fall took nearly all of the decorations home with her and she plans to reuse them then, so they will do double-duty!
In the end, I'm very pleased with how it all turned out. Our church gyms are notoriously difficult places to decorate because they're huge, have harsh fluorescent lighting (hence the bad color in all of my photos), giant tall ceilings, and a basketball court painted on the floor. I knew I couldn't turn it into a wonderland on $125 with just a few helpers, but I do think that my decorations made it look happier and more festive and hopefully made the atmosphere more fun for the kids that attended that night. I'm thankful that I had this opportunity to use my creative talents and thankful that I have friends who had the confidence in me to entrust me with the responsibility for doing it. It was fun!
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