Valentine Banquet

            Just finished decorating for our latest event at church last week.  I figure event-planning goes really well with my personality.  It is something I can plan and dream about for weeks, prepare for days and spend literally 10+ hours setting up.  Usually something goes wrong or a plan doesn’t work, so I have to spend a senseless number of hours trying to figure it out with the rest of the team get it worked out, ooh and ahh over the results and tear it down in about 20 minutes.  Now, three days later, I still am not finished washing the tablecloths!  Yes, it’s definitely a fitting area for a melancholy perfectionist to work.  As a matter of fact, our head decorator and my dear friend, Stacy and I have a motto that goes something like this, “we take a good plan and make it harder.”

            However, I really do get a joy out of seeing a plan come together.  I especially get a joy out of seeing others enjoy themselves in an atmosphere our team was able to create.  This last one was a true sense of accomplishment, because we tackled the ever-present dreaded gym lighting.  Yes, that lighting has been the bane of the decorating teams existence since moving into our new building…you know, the fluorescent kind that takes ten minutes to “warm” up.  It’s great when using a family life center for volleyball, but events? Well…not so much.  At our team meeting in January the ladies were discussing this issue.  We were considering our options for investing in up lights or something.  We’ve even tried to come up with ideas to cover the gigantic ceiling with draped fabric. 

However, we came up with something even better (at least that’s what the men of the church should think since they now do not have to set up scaffolding to drape fabric at every event).  Actually Stacy came up with it.  While walking through our teen classroom a few weeks ago she spotted a lamp we have in there.  It’s a simple Wal-Mart column lamp with a rice paper shade.  She brought it downstairs and tried it out and wa-la!  It gave off a beautiful dim glow in the family life center. 

So, a plan was born and we set out to hit every Wal-Mart in Oklahoma to collect our lamps.  (It was going to take too long to order online, if you were wondering).  We hit up about seven or so stores in three or four different cities.  Then we hit the dollar store for plastic tablecloths.  Yes, you read it right $1.00 plastic tablecloths in pink to cover our shade and we had instant mood lighting for our Valentine Banquet.  I was so excited over it that I just wanted to sit in there for as long as possible basking in the pink glow.  This was one of our greatest decorating successes as it landed in the category of cheap and easy…something in which we do not excel.

The centerpieces were a different story.  We were just as pleased at the results, but since they were my Pinterest idea I’ll take full responsibility for how complicated they were.  It started out looking so cute on pinterest.  Just a few cupcake liners pinned into a foam ball and placed on a candlestick…how hard could it be?  

Well, considering that only four of us showed up to put them together and the pins didn’t exactly do the trick it wasn’t the greatest feet.  I’ve got the glue gun burns to show for it.  I was happy with the result, but no event can go by without some complicated mountain to climb.  Thanks to the dim lights any imperfections were hidden and I think everyone who came had a good time.