Setting Sail Party

So...where is time going? How has it been 3 weeks since I posted? And why am I just now posting about something that happened in August? Seriously, my life feels a little crazy right now, but I digress, let's move on.

In the summer I was tasked with the planning and decorating of our annual back to school "fun day" for our school staff. Every year we take one day of inservice, and for a few hours, do a team building activity and staff lunch. It is always fun to pick the theme and decide how we are going to pull off a fun time for our staff. However, it has its challenges, as budgets are tight and we have 50 staff members that attend. This year we took the theme of "Enjoying the Journey Together" and spun off the "fun day" activities and lunch to collaborate with the theme. For the activity we had the staff compete in an "Amazing Race". I unfortunately have no pictures of what I created for this :( It was a lot of work, but it was all made easy because of the fabulous blog chicaandjo. Seriously, from templates to clues to running the whole race- they have it all! This was a tremendous life saver and saved me hours upon hours of work. The race was fun...but we didn't leave enough time for it, so we unfortunately had to cut two legs of the race while in the midst of it. We learned to either have lunch first and then take the afternoon for the race or start earlier in the morning.

For the lunch theme we went with "Setting Sail." I first picked the colors of blue, green, and white and went from there. Here are some of things I was able to do with a tight budget using items I had around the house or from the dollar store. Keep in mind the room I had to decorate was less than ideal (a crowded stage with fluorescent lights) and the pictures are from my cell phone.

I purchased blue tablecloths from the dollar store and splurged on wrapping paper for the table runner. I felt so bad that the roll was $12.00 I actually bought it with my own money. I bought one roll which I cut in half to create enough to cover the tables. After the party, I rolled up any paper that was in good shape and it has already been reused to wrap gifts, etc...I am frugal like that :) The paper was from a local party store and it was the perfect shade of green and a modern stripe. I looked everywhere for a more modern paper and this was the best I could do, hence, I spent the money for it! One of my favorite projects were the place cards.

The paper boats were created out of kraft paper I already had at home. Surprisingly it did not take forever to make 50 of these. I followed several tutorials until I figured it out :) Here are the two main ones I used: Martha Stewart & You Tube. After I made the boats I looked around school and found some coffee stir sticks that I could use to hold the pendant name tag which was simply printed on regular printer paper. The silverware was inspired from www.craft-o-maniac.com
I used silverware and green napkins from the dollar store, wrapped them in twine from Walmart (hint: I found cheap twine in the paint/tool area for about a third of the cost as the twine in their craft section). And tied a lifesaver on the outside to look like a life preserver.

 The dessert table backdrop was made with blue kraft paper to cover the white board on the wall followed by some dollar store wrapping paper. The banner was made with burlap and fabric I had at home and my cricut machine to cut out the letters for me to stencil. We simply used small clothespins (again something I already had) to attach the banner to twine. The desserts followed the color them with blue m and m's, green and blue jelly beans, green gummy frogs, white powdered donuts, and the favorite, chocolate dipped oreos- found here: http://www.makoodle.com. The gaps were filled in with two metal planters had from Ikea and green tissue paper. 
Overall the room was nice and festive and didn't look like a school stage. I had fun decorating, just wish I hadn't taken on this task while also moving :) 
Shannon