Life's A Stage

Last night was the annual Senior Adult Fall Banquet at our church and I was asked to come up with a way to decorate the stage.  It's kind-of difficult to think of ideas for something like this - it's a big space, tall ceilings, low budget, etc.  I hunted around on the web and Pinterest a little but didn't come up with anything too inspiring.  Just not a lot out there for decorating at a church!


A few weeks ago I attended a local holiday craft-type sale.  The sponsors did a good job of decorating the common areas, and one thing I noticed was that they hung big thick branches horizontally along a curtained wall and dangled ornaments from the sticks.  That got me thinking about the sticks, and as that stewed in my brain for a few days I decided to do big clusters of sticks all around the stage and fill in around them.  It was free, big and dramatic, and filled up the space well.  


I cleared everything off of my front porch and added those things in, and a friend brought up a park bench to use as well.  I went outside my back fence and gathered branches from what my husband had trimmed off of our trees sometime earlier in the summer.  Free, free, free!  The only cost for the stage set up was $6.00 for the tissue paper for the poms.  Pretty good!  


Here's the result...the pictures are never as good as real life.  It's hard to take good pictures in a room with no windows and fluorescent lights!

I used some thick burlap-type fabric pieces that I had to wrap around all of the branch containers to unify them.  Some of them are just trash cans and vases!

I followed this very simple tutorial for the poms.  I love them.  (The dark one is really chocolate brown.  It looks plum-colored here!)

The table decorations were done by a friend who organized the event.  They were beautiful.  Table centerpieces can be difficult because I always want something big and showy, but one has to remember that everyone seated at the table should be able to see around it.  

She used styrofoam pumpkins and covered them with faux mums.  I've seen this done with a real pumpkin and fresh flowers, but this is a great alternative if you want to be able to reuse year after year.

Lanterns were purchased at Ikea and will be used for many church functions in the future.  For the event the candles were lit and placed inside.

This arrangement was on the grand piano.  

I've already been recruited to help with decorations at our Women's Retreat in January (Thanks D!).  We're racking our brains for ideas now and I'll share pics after that event.  If you have any ideas to share, I'd love to hear them!  The theme is "Life's A Trip" and we'll be going with a "trip" theme...vintage suitcases, maps, etc.  Suggestions?