To decorate a large hall...namely a multipurpose room (cultural hall) that is huge with basketball hoops and wood floors on a tiny tiny budget takes creativity and a whole lot of help! My friend Val and her sweet husband along with many other friends put this together for our youth conference! First off Val's husband wanted to hang lights and a create a balloon drop for the dance!
He looked online and figured out how to make a "net" to hold the balloons he used plastic..like painters drop cloth and a machine that melts or seals edges together to create this balloon holder. (I don't know what that machine is called)
It was so cool because he was able to make seams down each side where string could be fed through on each side and then hung from one end of the room to the other and when it was time to pull one side ....the balloons fell gently down on all the dancers...they LOVED it!
Next he hung the lights...he strung a large wire from one basketball hoop to the other...going down the center of the room...then he strung lights across the other direction from large eye bolts in the walls. Once the lights were strung he made the basketball hoops fold up out of the way which pulled the center wire up and the lights went up in the center and it created a nice sway.
Adding large pops of color makes all the difference in the world as it makes your eyes focus on that instead of boring walls. Val made these adorable truffula trees from the Lorax movie. She made them out of grey foam from Lowes that is normally used to cover pipes! Then added some bright colored tissue paper flowers! The added touch is the yellow duct tape all down the trunks of the trees. Val used yellow duct tape to tape them to the walls. They are very light weight so they stayed up perfectly!
On the stage a very talented friend Jacinda painted this huge backdrop for us using two king sized sheets! Yep...sheets! Val's hubby built two wooden frames with stands for the sheets to be pinned onto. Jacinda painted these in her garage. First she rolled each sheet with white paint to make them stiff and then began her creativity drawing this out with pencil and then painting it all in bright colors! Sheesh she is amazing!!!
Val's hubby once again got busy and created these wooden signs to be placed around the cultural hall. He even found wood that was crooked to use as the posts! He then hand painted all the letters!
Do you recognize this elephant? Yes it is Horton but my daughter made it out of cardboard and painted it for a baby shower..HERE. Another talented Young Woman..Brook made all the rest of the Dr. Suess characters that were hung all along the walls. The brown paper underneath was cut into "hills" to look like the characters were moving toward the stage where the big backdrop was.
More of Val's Truffula trees were added in to bring in more pops of color.
We also had a photo booth. Val's hubby made these wood frames and Val painted them and cut out funny mustaches for the kids to take pics with.
This is me "Thing 1" (far right) and my stake Young Women presidency "Thing 2,3 and 4) with the stake YM president (the Lorax) his amazing wife made him his entire costume!!,
We had a blast and so did all the youth! We were all totally exhausted by the end of the youth conference but it was totally worth it!
More to come...the activities and games we played and the the snack table and food we served!
Karin
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