Christmas Office Door Decorating Contest

Christmas Office Door Decorating Contest

The following conversation gets repeated in our household a few times a year:

Branelle:  "Hey, there's this contest at work...."
Me:  "No"
Branelle:  "You haven't even heard what it is yet"
Me:  "No"
Branelle:  "Well I'm going to sign up for it anyway"
Me:  "Cool, but I'm not helping"
Branelle:  "Fine!  I don't need no man's help anyway"

Okay, I made that last line up, but you get the idea.  This conversation usually takes place weeks or even a month before the contest judging date.  Inevitably, it doesn't get brought up again until about a day or two before the aforementioned date.  

What happens next is basically the same drill, just with different contests.  My wife is smart - she knows exactly what she's doing.  She'll subtly mention her plan for the contest by asking me a simple question.  "Do you think I can get a foam star to stick to a door with velcro?"  She knows my curiosity will get the best of me and I'll ask for more details.  She will then tell me a simple, almost lame plan that she knows will drive me crazy, thus forcing me to come up with an elaborate and complicated one that should take a week to complete - then she walks away while I go build it.  Brilliant!

This office door contest was back in 2012, and was actually pretty simple compared to some.  Here's what "we" did:

I decided that I wanted to cover the entire door for effect and I wanted it to be 3D.  Nel's office door at the time was metal so I figured we had to hang our design.  I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of large sheets of insulation.  They're really light weight and easy to cut.  I cut the back piece to the size of the door and mounted three wreath hangers on the top.   I also painted the front a flat black color.

I cut the other piece in the shape of a tree and painted it green.  I even used brown textured paint for the trunk.  So far so good - and pretty simple.

We then went to Hobby Lobby and bought a bunch of Styrofoam ornaments and squares.  I painted them as well as a star I cut out from leftover insulation.  

I taped the candy canes prior to painting them so they'd be striped.  

Here I'm mounting battery powered LED lights on the back.  I used the squares to make the tree float off of the back piece and poked each little light through the tree and taped everything down.

 

Nel "helping".  When I had all the lights rigged up I mounted the tree on the base.

Branelle did actually print off and cut out pictures of coworkers and projects to glue to the ornaments.

We went up late at night and set it up.  I wanted to rig it up so when anyone opened the door it would actually snow on them but Nel thought it would be too messy.  "They" actually won some award.  I told Nel "Never again".  

A few months later I was motorizing a cake.