Door Decoration Winners Announced

Every year, the organization that I work for holds several holiday events. Among the Christmas party and potluck lunches, we have a door decorating competition. You may remember my post from last year about my design based on a quote I found: "A single candle can light a thousand and not be diminished... Happiness never dwindles when it is shared." I created a cardboard cutout Christmas tree, poked Christmas lights through the back and made strands of little cutout people decorated with glitter hearts to use as garland for the tree.

This year was a little different because I'm no longer in a cubicle. My team and I have moved into an office together (formerly a conference room) so our door decoration was a 3-person effort. My friend Maxine found a huge cardboard Santa that we used as the central focus. We thought we'd incorporate all of our kids in the design and opted for using their faces peeking out of the window of a house nearby. We created a winter-wonderland snow scene and left cookies by the door.

The winners were announced at our holiday party and we were shocked to learn that we had won first prize! What an honor! (It must have been because of those adorable kids!)

Deck the Halls...

Every year, my office holds a door decorating contest (or cube-decorating contest for those of us in cubicles.) It creates quite a buzz with everyone discussing their new ideas for the year. This year was no different! We had Santas falling down chimneys, giant door-sized wrapped gifts, winter wonderlands, crackling fireplaces, lots of Christmas trees and plenty of festive wreaths.

I based my decorations on a quote I found several weeks ago and modified it slightly:
"A single candle can light a thousand and not be diminished... Happiness never dwindles when it is shared."

I got some large cardboard from the warehouse and cut out a giant Christmas tree. I hooked up the drill and punched about 150 holes in it to hold about 150 lights. I taped a candle light to the top and surrounded it with a golden cardboard halo drenched in glitter. I folded some bright red paper strips and made little cutout people joined by hand and foot with sparkling hearts on their chests. I used about 10 large paperclips folded inside-out to hook it to my cubicle fabric, hung some wrapping paper as my background and glued my lovely quote beside it. It turned out to be quite pretty!

This year, our judges were a group of volunteers that come every week. They are from a home of mentally challenged adults and are the sweetest, most loving people you've every met. Of course, we couldn't fraternize with the judges as they walked by, but I heard them and had to hold back the tears as they read the quote on my cube to their counselors. It was so touching! When they left, our receptionist found some t-shirts and pens to give them as a thank-you for their hard work and you would have thought she was handing out a million dollars to each of them. They were ecstatic! What a perfect group to judge such a fun and festive competition!

Anyway, we had our Christmas party a few days later and I was shocked to hear that I had won first prize this year! What an honor!

Here is a sample of some of my amazingly creative co-workers... Kudos to everyone!