Sunday, December 12, 2010

Christmas decorating contest at work

My hospital gives out annual prizes for the best-decorated department, and for the best-decorated department door. It's not much, maybe $50 to spend on a pizza party for the department, but it's still a ton of fun to waste a day or two gluing sparkles to your door instead of working. Everyone gets really into it, gluing all kinds of things to their doors - last year the blood bank had a cardboard chimney on the door with stuffed Santa legs sticking out. This year, the Transport department is allegedly showing off a 3-D carousel with flamingoes, bears, and penguins... I have not yet confirmed this rumor but I'll head down there Monday to see it with my own eyes.

The deadline was getting close and nobody was feeling into it this year, so I went to the bosslady with a cute and lame idea, and she told me to go for it. She gave me the bottom half of the door, because she wanted the top half to do something else she was thinking about. I bought a giant roll of shiny silver wrapping paper to wrap the entire door, so we could have a festive base to work from. That was the hardest part because you really need two people, preferably tall people, to hold up the paper and tape it in place - luckily there are some tall people on evening shift who I recruited through begging. Then I taped my wonderfully lame idea in place and called it a night. Actually, the taping took me about two hours. I kept poking my head into the blood bank to ask if I was needed for real work, but they kept telling me all was well, so I kept taping.

Here's the door:

See how I used the hospital's name for a subtle kiss-up effect? That's how you get points with the judges! Either make them go "awww" or poke them in their hospital pride. Like I said, cute and lame. I like it. Cutting out those letters was a ridiculous pain, and I had to stick them on by putting tiny little rolls of tape on their backs, so the tape wouldn't show. The big letters are cardboard cut outs, and I wrapped them with another metallic paper.

On top the writing says "we dedicate our work to the men and women of our armed forces and their families." Santa later acquired a small American flag to hold.

It's not much, but it was fun to do.

No comments:

Post a Comment