Saturday, May 8, 2010

Teacher Appreciation Week: Decorated Lunch Room

I decorated the lunch room for the teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week (take a look here to see what I did to the lunch room last year). I try to spend as little as possible on this since it's money from the kids.
When I subbed as an assistant in the gifted class last year, the kids made Icosahedron Christmas Card Ornaments (The Quilted Turtle has a tutorial on this). Heather Bailey took it one step further and made a topiary out of it (she calls it a Paper Globe), and she offers a free, down loadable pattern (To see her topiaries go here, and to see her Valentine's Day globes, go here). Basically, you cut out 20 circles, score triangles in the middle, and glue them together in a certain order. To make my life easier, I bought a 2, 3/4" circle paper punch which worked almost perfectly with the triangle in Heather Bailey's pattern. Since I had a lot of circles to score, I cut a triangle out of a plastic butter lid to guide me. I got the bright pots at Ikea for $.99 each.
I like to use paper lanterns because they really fill the space and make an impact. I got the idea to put butterflies on them from Martha Stewart. She has a template for the butterflies. I cut a few out while waiting on soccer and archery practice.
At the end of the week, we give away the pots and topiaries to the teachers. Last year, we gave away the sunflower arrangements.
The blue scrapbook paper I used had a white swirly pattern on it, so I copied that with pipe cleaners and glued butterflies at the end.
I got these cheap trellises from Ikea ($3.99 I think), painted them white and glued butterflies flying up and around them.
I stuck a few of these leftover pots on the food buffet table. The only thing that disappointed me was the flowers. For some reason the flower selection in town this year is pretty lame. And after cutting out 50,000 butterflies and circles, the room felt to me a bit like a scrapbook threw up on it. But really, I think it turned out well.

9 comments:

Dawn said...

That looks great!!! What a nice thing to do and it looks beautiful!! We had our teacher luncheon yesterday but I didn't decorate at all-just table cloths-I'm going to remember this next year!!!

Kristy said...

Hi Heather! Looks great!! You must be very busy because you haven't posted anything in awhile. Hope all is well! I was thinking of you on Cinco de Mayo...remember the Coconut Flan?

Trish @TheOldPostRoad said...

I am impressed! That looked so cute!
-Trish

Tammy @ she wears flowers said...

Another "Amazing"--I am definitely adding your blog to my reader!

Thanks for stopping by my blog and for your sweet comments!

simply brookes: said...

Great to see you "back" again. Love the decorations. Perfect!
Looking forward to book club and see you again.

Amber said...

Super cute! I love how cheery the colors you chose were, and the whimsical butterflies. Oh, how I can't wait for Ikea to be in Denver. They broke ground last week. Ikea is SUCH a great source for items like these. The bright pots are so fun!

Kim said...

I love it! So cute & the teachers must have been blown away!

Let'sMakeADifference said...

Just found your blog. You are SO creative! The decorations are beautiful!

Liz said...

Everything looks beautiful! Thanks for linking back to my tutorial.

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