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