Decorating the Office With Style for the Holidays on a Strict Budget

Every year I decorate the space at my office for the staff holiday season.  More fun is to decorate the sterile employee lunch room that, between the pale linoleum on the floor and the florescent lights in the ceiling, is bright enough for a doctor to remove a kidney right there on any of the tables.  So I faced a challenge.  Over the last few years I have perfected my ability to complete the task for pennies on the dollar and have the end result rival a  fancy expensive ballroom.

I start with the color scheme.  Last year and the year prior I came up with the red and green colors.  So I purchased the supplies I needed in those colors focusing on the centerpieces and the room decorations.  It seemed like making centerpieces for this room would be so expensive.  There are ten round tables and then there are the room decorations that would be required to warm up the space. 

I used to be a professional gift wrapper. I started out at J.L. Hudson's, which is now Macy's.  I became adept at making beautiful fanciful packages wrapped for any occasion using wires ribbons, grosgrain and other types of ribbons adorned with "tie-ons" designed to create a package that no one would want to open.  By that I mean that the packages became so pretty to look at that pretty soon I found myself doing this to my own packages. It was about this time that  I observed that the  dollar stores had great pricing on pretty wired silks and sparkly ribbons in a variety of prints and widths.  Tie-on's that used to cost an arm and a leg at the craft store could now be found at the dollar store too. 

Putting my expertise to work I decided to make the centerpieces for our employee holiday party out of a wrapped present and the dollar store red faux silk runners.  All the wrapped packages are the same size box.  The wrapping paper was purchased from the dollar store too. In all the cost of the packages wrapped ran about 1.85 per box!  You can see the results here. 



The dollar store table runners combined with
the festively wrapped packages

Each individual package looked like a million
dollars but cost under $2 to create



Each package had a different tie on, as I purchased them as I could find them.  The big box craft stores were a bit pricey so I tried to use materials only from the cheaper resource.  The wire ribbon was fun to find and I found I had to visit several of the same store and clean them out of their wired ribbon to make sure I had all the same. Of course I could have used different on each package.  That's an option after all.

So next I was faced with how to warm up this big room space.  I think you can see what I have had to work with over the last two years.  This room is so plain, bright and lifeless. There is  no dimmer switch, no switch to even turn the lights down.  I could resort to flameless candles to create atmosphere but obviously that is not an option. The atmosphere is not festive to me at all as it was no matter how nice I decorate the tables and so I came up with a couple of ways to get past that.

I had our facilities manager remove one florescent wand from each of the ceiling light fixtures.  
Next, I decided to use the Christmas bulbs I purchased from Sam's Club for $29.99 per box and suspend them from the ceiling on fishing line.  Since the ceiling tiles are perfect for stick pin usage, that was the best way to hold the hanging bulbs in place. The final product looks like the bulbs are hanging in mid air and filled up the space nicely. 

Next, I created a chandelier of shorts from two different sizes of wreath.  The room size meant I would have to have a pretty large wreath and then a little smalled one for the second tier.  Now for this I did not  have to buy at a craft store because my budget was small. I had to be resourceful. I did have smaller ones to bring from home and I think I actually did end up purchasing the larger one from a thrift store.  I used the wire ribbon from the packages to bind them together and then added the same bulbs as the ones suspended from the ceiling to decorate the underside (the side everyone would see looking up) and then connected a very strong hanging wire to hang it from the ceiling.  Last year I added a string of lights and worked the extension cord through the ceiling down to the edge of the wall and then down to another extension cord into an outlet for extra ambiance.  You can see the results of the entire ceiling decorating project and I am certain you will agree that it turned out beautiful!   

My first attemtp at creating a "chandelier" holiday light fixture.
  And the bulbs appear to float in mid air.

The view from the front of the room Notice how the color
 scheme warms up the space.
 

The completed job took very little money.  Everyone seemed to be in awe of the final product. I know I can wow everyone again this year. I am changing the color scheme to bright white, silver, red and light blue. I will let you know how the changes work out. Photos to follow after the 19th of this month.  So I will be adding to this post.  for now...enjoy this short presentation. 

I work at an automotive supplier in the human resources/administrative area.  Over the years I have been the one to coordinate the corporate activities for the employees.  It is a fun job and I have enjoyed the oohs and aahha from the employees....especially when it comes to preparing for the holiday party.

I love to decorate my own place. So every year I have gladly decorated the lobby for the holiday and most importantly, the employee lounge where the holiday party is held each year.  So I devise a color scheme and get to work on creating a mood in a very otherwise sterile environment and centerpieces for each of the tables.



The view of the room from the doorway

Living the Dream......in a Small Tourist Town

Remember when you visited that cute little tourist town with you family as a child? It was on or within a bike ride's distance of a lake, had a cozy in-town diner, maybe a cute beach side park with very few parking spaces, a church in white woodboard siding with a tall steeple, and perhaps a great little thrift store. The only proof of being with the 21st century was the post office, a library, a town hall and the street light and of course lots of bike traffic. I enjoyed many such trips with my family as a child and as an adult with my three children. Their father and I loved the small town flavor and friendly demeanor of the people we bumped into there. I remember wishing to have the means to have either a family cottage or just retire there someday.  I even wondered if it would ever be possible to live in a place like that before retiring and have the means to do so, or working for a company that had a small town near it that had all he comforts of the small town life but everything I needed of a big city just a few miles away.

I lived 23 miles from my work on a busy expressway. It was a madhouse every morning and as I drove to work I listened to the traffic reports like my life depended on it...and it did. There was at least one accident every day on this road on either the westbound side or the eastbound side. It was the sacrifice I was making to live in the town in which I grew up with my five sisters and one brother. A cute bedroom community  Berkley boasted streets that went across and down instead of like a subdivision where a newcomer could get lost for months learning how to get in and out quickly.   Until recently it had an in town grocery store that was very much looked to as the place to shop with the best meats, produce and charm.  However, it closed.  My dream of riding my bike to the grocery store was quickly relegated to a non-choice.  So while I was happy to return there and enjoy living across the street from my old Catholic grade school and nearer  all of my friends, the quaint downtown and all its summertime and holiday festivities, I was beginning to find the trek to the office every morning even more tiresome. But I was in a lease agreement that had just auto-renewed due to my diligence in trying to save $15 more per month on a future rent increases. However, the thought of remaining in my present situation nagged at me relentlessly every day and practically every night. I had to make a change, but what were my options? I had some serious homework to do.

I had been checking out the real estate close to work for a while and was even looking into housing in Berkley. I was living in a small 660 square foot apartment and  I began to resent that the smaller inexpensive bungalows I someday hoped to buy were being snatched up rather quickly by builders who were coming in and replacing them with huge two story homes that I could never afford pricing me right out of the community. Neighboring communities didn't have the same charm. I was forced to look elsewhere.

Fast forward to March 2014. I was minding my own business driving over to the Salvation Army thrift store on my lunch hour from work and used a road that ran alongside a small lakeside community called Walled Lake.



Remembering the happy history of Walled Lake

It was a beautiful sunny day and it struck me...why had I not checked into housing around here?  I had come here as a child to the amusement park that used to be here. That is long gone...but the small town flavor remained.  I began looking on the ads to find a place for me to live. I checked out Craigslist and Apartment.com and did so almost every day for the next few months.

Long story short, I found a townhouse for rent for only $10 more per month than I was paying now, and it had two bedrooms instead of one and twice the square footage of the Berkley place! I looked into several housing choices, but this one particular community fit the bill, seemed friendly and bonus....only a short bike ride away from the beach, downtown weekend events, and small specialty shops like the ones I  had enjoyed on my family vacations all those years in my life! Best of all my income would support living here!

I have an actual front porch now!  Bonus!

 

Another view

I am now enjoying Walled Lake Michigan! This community's public beach is without the riff raff because it is so small. There is a lovely dockside restaurant/bar that have live bands on the weekends and is lit up like a holiday tree all year long.   When I ride my bike to the downtown area, which I have done on many occasions since I moved here, I see the little shops such as the ice cream shop and a drive-in restaurant that mimics the A & W style, but is painted bright pink and is called The Corner Carhop. It has wonderful summertime charm and even has deep fried oreos on the menu!  The place is right across fromt the lake and on a sunny day and all summertime nights it is abuzz with a young clientele that keeps the place hopping and fun.
 

Summertime in downtown Walled lake means lots of wonderful events. Of course they have their own fourth of July fireworks display and events. There are picnics at the beach and a nearby lakeside restaurant called Bayside Grill that lights up the summer evenings with live music and outdoor tables for dining on what I consider to be a great menu.

 

The other thing that attracted me to Walled Lake is that  I can enjoy a bike ride around the entire lake using the trail traced out on the road.  The beach houses and scenery on a pretty summer day are pretty distracting though, it is all so beautiful and fun and  rival waht  I have seen in the little finger area of the state of Michigan.  the water is blue and there are ducks and swans that inhabit the beach and are quite plentiful despite the many familes that visit there.  There are people who paddle board across the lake and two vendors that supply the board and paddles if you care to venture out!

There is a restaurant there called Bayside Grille where you can sit out on the patio and enjoy the sounds and sights of a lakeside summer day.  It is quite a popular place especially in the warmer months. There I can hear families talking about their last summer vacation day there and go on and on about how much they love the lake.

 

 

I cannot forget to mention the cozy diner, Woody's on the Trail that I discovered one morning wehn I decided to venture out for some breakfast.  Recently they had a 50th Anniversary of their opening in 1954 and featured a menu of all their

menu items being offered at prices reflecting thier menu from that year. A friend and I enjoyed an Original Woody's Burger, fries and a strawberry shake for a song.  And their breakfast? Don't get me started!  Just the ambiance and the clientele there bring me back to the neighborhood diner days and I just ..well, eat it up every time I am there.



Woody's on the Trail

The history behind many of the houses that I pass on my bike ride..well, let's just say if they could talk I bet they have a story to tell! There are stone pillars at the entrance to several of the homes front walkways and wonderful gingerbread that is original to the homes. The sidewalks are a bit narrow, but that is because they are old. I can just see what life was like years ago when this town was in its infancy. I can still see the

families pouring out of the old steeple church that mimics those found in the new England states, and I can visualize others crowding into the Masonic Hall. I can see people enjoying the beach and can still see through the updated houses lining the bike trail that used to be summer cottages for the families that were fortunate enough to enjoy summertime get away spot. 

Walled Lake Masonic Temple

I can see myself becoming part of the Optimist's Club or the Lions Club or the DDA and volunteering to find sponsors for the summer boat races on the lake that didn't happen this past summer for lack of sponsors. I am going to see if I can be included in the group that wants to change that.

Living in this small town community with all its historical significance and cute houses and a beach too gets me so excited. I am feeling so happy. I wake up to sunny days and rainy days but it is never a bad day.  I am so lucky that I can move to where I wanted to live, albeit with some significant cost (lease break fees, and the like) but it was well worth it. I love my place. I am beginning to give apartment/townhouse living a second look. Maybe if I want to be happy and still have the means to enjoy everything life has to offer I don't have to have a mortgage payment and lawn cutting to do on the summer weekends. Maybe I just need the peace and quiet I have achieved by making this move.

I cannot wait to see what this town looks like all dressed up for the holidays. The events calendar for Walled Lake reads like a listing that rivals those of most larger towns, but they smack of small town charm.  I know that in the summer they have a mega Memorial Day Parade as well as celebration for the Fourth of July. Right now as I write this it is November and I am just starting to see the ice forming on the lake. The houses surrounding it in all thier festive lighting must be a sign to behold..not so much for those who lived here a long time, but for me, the newcomer, who revels in the holidays with the lights and garland and the shimmering reflections that will most certainly show themselves from now forward. I just took a photograph of the beach the other day.  It looks dreary now as one can expect, but hey..the holiday season is just getting underway.

Recently I joined the Walled Lake Civic Fund and look forward to a fundraiser where I will make more new friends in the area and show off my bowling skills.  I have also gotten my library card and connected with the Downtown Development Association hoping to lend a hand with all the events.  It is my goal to immerse myself in this community and keep it the cool fun place to live that I do now. 
 

Ask yourself this question:  Are you happy?  Where do you live? Does where you live just create a lot of stress? My advice is to try to fulfill that dream about where you want to live. For me it has made all the difference in the world to my quality of life and I wish the same for you!