If you have to decorate a tree

When I was a kid, I loved decorating the Christmas tree. And by decorating, I mean hanging every last bulb and bauble on that poor tree then topping it off with a box or 2 of tinsel.

But, I'm all grown up now, allegedly. And, um, I still do the same exact thing hee heee.  Well, actually, this year my personal tree was quite grown up, thank you.

However, every year we have decorated a tree at a local metro park. These trees are always themed & the decorations are sometimes handmade - or, some of them are anyway.

Our tree is usually the most full and ..... umm..... interesting.

& yes, it's January. But xmas is an insane season. & honesty, i don't know if anyone actually sees the tree at the part. Allegedly, it's always very crowded and chaotic there during their holiday festivities.

So, these are tree ideas i thought i would share in case someone ever has to do a silly themed tree &, i don't know, because i have pictures of these trees and need to do something with them.

This year, the tree had an elf theme. This was a theme that had been used before. So, some of the elves were able to be reused. However, most of the other decorations had become scattered.

Anyway - pretty simple - Just took pictures of staff & residents and  print shopped the faces onto elf bodies. Time consuming but doable.

The other decorations were simply toys purchased from the dollar store.

(some elfin faces have been blurred d/t hippa)

 One of my favorite decorations on this tree was the jacks. And the super balls.

I kind of liked this tree this year. I thought it was kind of playful and happy. Of course, the other trees were way more mature and not nearly as full. But...... screw it. 

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Last year, the theme was "pearls of wisdom." This was an idea given to me by another activity director. 

She had scoured thrifts and gotten pearl necklaces and such throughout the year. I tend to live more "spontaneously". There was a lot of stringing of beads going on. Eventually I found cheap pearl-like garland at Marc's. Shew! At first I thought - hey, let's make our own pearls. I & "M" "A" & "K" gave and great college try. But..... no. We did end up with 

cute -ish little pearly decorations though.

Some of these we hot glued pipe cleaners to and then made that curly-q thing w/a pencil, you know?

Basically, the tree consisted of pearls and stuff.

We also cut hearts out of poster board, decoupaged wrapping paper on them.  Then we asked the residents to share some "words of wisdom." And put them on the hearts. The project was a bit larger than I would have liked it to be.

& oh, yes - there was a crap load of bow making. Thank goddess for you tube.

 Oh, yeah. We also made these sparkly things with glitter and Pledge.

 The tree was a bit loppy. But .... meh.

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The year before that we did a woodland theme. Same concept as the elves, but turned people into little animals and used pine cones and birds and such for decorations. 

Can't find those pictures though. 

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave constructive comments or questions. 

In case you want to go a-Maying

I was going through my photos and came across the pics from last year's Maypole "dance" at work.
A Maypole dance was one of those things that i always thought would be cool to do; then last year finally did, and will probably never do again.

Making the May pole was pretty simple.  There was a piece of some kind of heavy plastic-y piping left from some work that was being done. The magnificent maintenance director cut it down to size that i wanted.

All i did was wrap it with brown duck tape, tape strands of crepe paper to the top of it and stuck some artificial flowers on top. Voila.

Rocks in a beach pail in another pail thing worked to get to stand upright. 

And that was it. 

The whole thing as actually rather successful simple because members of departments were in  good moods (or just curious) that day and helped push people in their wheelchairs around the Maypole. 

We ended up with a rather large number of people who wanted to participate. I ended up adding more strands of paper to the pole. 

So, there ya go. Happy Maying. 

spin the bottle

So, here is an idea that most activity directors etc. have probably already done. However, I am going to share it anyway.

Many years ago i put together this game for Valentine's day. And every now and again we try to play it.

This year we had students from a neighboring school visit on Valentine's day. So, I drug the bottles out of the basement & gave it a go again. & this time it went quite well. So, I would say that it's a good game to play when you have plenty of help.


This is just a simple version of spin the bottle. I decorated my bottles, but that certainly isn't a must do.

We use candy kisses of course. The cards are from a reminiscing game, Shake Loose a Memory, I think. The cards have things like "keep this card if you've ever baked a cake from scratch" on them.
With spin the bottle, we just changed the verb-age - "Get a kiss if you've ever ...."

You could make up your own cards for continuity of the game if you wanted. I've just never been that motivated. 

You could also use trivia cards or you could do something like a name 3 game - where the person has to name 3 types of pie or whatever. You could also have the person roll dice and name ... i don't know... 5 types of birds or whatever. Then she could get 5 candy kisses. Your residents would like that. 

They usually like candy. And again if you feel motivated, you could make up cards for that. 

Anyway - the bottles took a long time and a bit of decoupage for me to make. So, I guess I just wanted to show them off. ;)

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave suggestions, questions &/or comments.

Cheapie balloon bags

Hey. Happy New Year.

The first year I had to do the New Year's eve party I invested in balloon bag kits. They were kind of expensive, hung too low from the ceiling and really didn't work very well.

So, the next year I had to think of something else.

I am sure that this was not an original idea. Probably a thousand and one activity directors are rolling their eyes saying "DUHHH".

But anyway - you can make a kind of o.k. balloon bag out of a cheap, plastic, dollar store  tablecloth.

Here we go: Get yourself a plastic tablecloth. Unfold it until it is halved. Then put one or two little slits in it.

Lay it out

Then bunch the ends and tie w/ribbon

Then put in balloons ( the balloons were 20 for a dollar at Dollar General). How many balloons you need depends on how much you blow them up. Usually a 100 - 150 balloons will make 3 balloon bags. I was lazy blowing them up this year, so the bags are not as plentiful as in past years. But that just means there will be a little less waste. 

I like to throw in some serpentines b/c ... well, I like serpentines. 

I kind of stopped taking photos here b/c ... I just wanted to get it done. 

But I tend to staple the bag closed as I fill it. It ends up looking kind of like a body bag. (Well, it does.) 

The first year I made it like a hammock and filled it after I hung the 2 sides. It looked pretty hanging, but it was a pain in the butt to hang and fill. 

If it's all closed up, it's easier to hang from the ceiling. 

I add extra long strands of curly ribbon from the ends so and throw serpentines over it to dress it up a bit when it's hanging. 

If I think of it, I will take a photo of the finished work of "art" and post it later. 

Of course the efficiency of the bag depends on how low your ceiling is. Someone has to stand underneath of it and rip it open. 

You could probably devise some kind of something with ribbon or string to rip it open if the bag is out of reach. Like if you made, like, small slits down the length of the bag then stapled ribbon or twine or i don't know something to an end. Maybe you could pull it open. Or if you put 2 bunches of strong ribbon or something in the middle, maybe you could pull it apart like a curtain. I don't know. I've never had to worry about that. 

So, anyway. There you go. 

Happy new year.