Another year, another New Year’s Eve bash! This year’s theme was a beach theme. We had a lot of decorations to re-use from the summer’s vacation Bible camp, which also was a beach theme, but we still did plenty of work to put everything together!
Here’s what the stage looked like – a beach scene, complete with a dock coming off the stage (our church’s handyman built it!):
The back four panels were reused from vacation Bible camp. They actually had six panels, with an airplane and banner starting on the fourth panel and going off to the right, so we covered up the airplane with the “2012” sign and painted over the last two panels to use for our side wings.
The left side wing was painted simply with some rocks, ocean, and sky. We had paper surfboards left over from VBC, as well as a tall lifeguard chair from VBC, which we reused.
For the right wing, I painted ocean, sky, and a lighthouse. I used cardboard for the top part of the lighthouse and we jury-rigged it to the panels with an actual light that went around and around! We just happened to have those “siren” type lights in the attic — we pried off the red light cover and used yellow tissue paper in the window of the cardboard lighthouse top to help mute the effect. It really looked awesome!
Just cardboard wasn’t really providing enough support, so we added some random stakes that we found on-site for more support.
The right side of the room was decorated with the remaining paper surfboards and butcher paper palm trees that I cut out in advance and had volunteers put up.
We edged the ping pong table with a grass skirt (compliments of Oriental Trading Company).
A volunteer used my sketch to draw and cut out large hibiscus flowers and we put them up against the back wall.
On the left wall, we had the kitchen area edged in grass skirts, burlap netting, and lights. The sign was from VBC as well.
I worked on the entryway, cutting out waves from long rolls of butcher paper and pinning them to the wall. We had rather flimsy cardboard piers from VBC which we reused as well.
More grass skirts for the table and entryway!
The final touch was the annual balloon drop — except we used beach balls instead! (Sadly, the entire net came off the ceiling instead of opening up as it should have, so the effect was ruined.)
And another mishap was that the 2012 sign, made out of heavy cardboard, fell down and needed a bad duct-tape patch job.
One more mishap – although we tested all the Christmas lights in the morning when we were putting them up, by evening a whole strand had gone dark.
In another room, we set up a beach drink area with virgin margaritas and pina coladas, which were very popular!
Some of the leaders and volunteers came dressed for the theme, as well!
Activities that night included an outdoor fire pit for intimate hanging out (complete with s’mores components):
A velcro wall:
… and we spent the last several hours all together in the main room for the annual lip sync contest, a new “talentless contest,” and lots of games and prizes!
Corrie Haffly 