I wanted this office party to be an "Italian Cruise" themed one.  I created this three window wide cruise ship (each panel was 37" x 72").  These windows are right by the office check-in desk.  Party goers were each issued a games card to record their scores.  I have several stand-alone sign posts to give directions for various things.

                                     Here is an example of the one by check-in.

This opening into the conference room was the "gangplank" leading into the buffet area. I ordered Italian food from a local catering company, and it included waiters and waittresses.

I always have MANY Christmas trees in the office.  The one in this room is not shown in the photo.

I used red and white bows with silver and gold balls to accent my tree. Here by the seating area were four panels of the Almalphi coast I created.  My hubby says these were his all-time favorite ones.  I will post the actual posters below.

                 The ship needs a pool deck, so we used the building's lobby space to do this. If you follow me, you've seen my river rugs many times.  Here they are as a pool.  I placed a shark in the pool and a net.  Each of my beach chairs had a nerf gun and balls to try to shoot at the shark.  Yes, the large nerf balls went through the net.  Notice the umbrella and life guard chair.  We added the life guard's sweatshirt to the back of the chair.

Behind the pool, in the hall running 90 degrees, was a mamma flammingo.  I put 6 small

stuffed baby flamingos in a 12" square painting canvas. I velcroed this to a gym scooter.

With a mop handle and the soft side of velco to save the floor, the object was to push the babies to the mom under three pvc stands like the one above.  You got three chances to

get all six babies to their mom.  If one or two fell off, you could put them back on a start

again.  This was VERY popular.

Across from Flamingo Game was Tante's Farm Game.  A wolf was trying to get at her

border collie and farm goat.  Here was target practice to get at the wolf. The target was

a poster stand I bought on Amazon.  I bought wooden hoops and hook and looped them to the stand.

An easy fishing game.  I bought a child's wooden fishing pole on Etsy.  It has a hook at the end.  I bought half circle metal rings on Amazon and sewed them to about a dozen

stuffed fish.  This was a timed event.  Any simple game timed makes it fun for adults.

I made a kitchen stove out of black foam core from Michael's.  I found metal food warmers at a discount store and used them as burners.  I bought two big pots, heating pads, salt and pepper, even a paper towel holder, and two sets of tongs.  The object was to get the lobsters, and/or veggies into the pots.  The winner won the whole game.

 

 Since it was Italy, I brought out my precious hand crafted with that hangs on a broom (not pictured).  She played La Befana.  She had turned something into frogs.  It was a basic toss, but very popular.  The frogs and targets ended up in an employees' wife's pre-school. The targets were cheap wooden disks I painted green.

Above are enlarged chefs by the tossing game.

There is usually a game just for employees the week before the party. Since the Almalphi Coast grows a LOT of lemons, I had LOTS of lemons in all eight of the office ficus trees.  I also bought a TON of soft white large lemons on AMAZON.  The adult trikes came out of storage. I added baskets.  The employees had to race down the "coast" and back tossing lemons at targets.  Much fun ensued.

Here is the office kitchen area they raced towards.  I placed a small thin tree for them to go around on their trikes. ( Not my first time doing this). You can see more of the coast villages on the back windows.  You can also see Grandma's (Nana's) blown-up poster with the wolf.

She is in her garden.  I enlarged garden items and pests as targets for the disc guns you see in the photo above on the bar.  These shot disks RAPIDLY, so I had a broom and dust pan there to sweep them up for the next contestants.  I head a LOT of laughter at this game.

Here is sample of another one of the signs with directions for the game that was up by the pool.

Here are the babies in their "sled." You can also see the mop handles and my collection of "shooters."

Finally, we also had a dessert competition.  The partners and their wives all gathered in another of the conference rooms (with Christmas Italian decorations) and read and tasted all of the entrees.  Yes, I said read.  Part of the competition was to describe your Italian themed desserts.  You got points for doing so.  You got points for theme.  You got points for presentations.  You got points for taste.  With ten judges, we had a great time with the FABULOUS desserts these talents architects in interior designers presented. The top prize was $500, so they go out in their efforts.

 

 

Christmas Office Party French Theme

I chose this first photo to show you how I set the scene for this Christmas office party.

Below are the graphics that are on the windows.  Normally I have each panel placed side by side in pairs on the windows, but above, this was how the staff placed them.  

I set the tables up in cafe style with umbrellas. The greenery that went around the candles hadn't arrived when I took this shot.

I bought the office two adult sized trikes years ago.  We have used them for many parties.

For this theme, I attached baskets to the fronts of them.  The Tour de France ride included items to toss along the way.

One of the stops was to throw bones to Santa's dog. Do you see Santa on his bike?  On

the right, you can see one of the lamp posts with ribbons and directions for the game.

Another stop along the way was a recycling station for your water bottle.

The route when down the long main hall, through the office kitchen/party area, and back to the front of the office.  I thought it was appropriate to have Ratatouie cooking frogs' legs.  You were given two frogs in your basket to toss into the pot.

If there is a rat, then there must be a cat.  Here is the Restaurant "Le Chat."  See the stuffed mice on the shelf.  The object of game was to toss the mice into the cat house.

The race traveled through PROVENCE, or my idea of it anyway.  Here is a French farmer with his heard.  You tossed balls into their feeding bucket.  You also had the option of

tossing rings around the french geese's neck. 

Below are the panels I created to add to the French ambiance theme.  Keep reading after the panels for more photos.

I wanted to set the scene for beginning our Tour de France office party with downtown Paris.  I set up the office lobby as a Paris cafe with small tables and chairs, fresh greenery and candle centerpieces, large checked black and white tablecloths. All this was under two green market umbrellas I got on sale on Amazon at the end of the summer.  It was
hard getting Paris down to eight panels.  Here are the first four.  I have evolved to the idea to now make the panels into sets of two.  It looks better as two large murals instead of four individual ideas.  You will see the difference in my next blog about the Grand Canyon for our chili contest this year.  You can see in the Provence Panels below how the
first two line up.  In the holiday crush, I didn't notice that the road for the third panel
did not line up with the first two. If you want to see photos of the party go  here

The idea of the party was a bike race on the two adult sized trikes the office owns.  We have used them over and over again over the years, so I needed a new twist.  So we started the race in Paris, and it wound its way to Provence (where games and desserts were located) and back to Paris again. 

You can see above the last three panels make a better scene  There are mullions on the windows that are 8 inches between windows, so lining up the panels to match is difficult.
I am working and practicing on this process, but in the printing of these the measurements get thrown off.  I will blog with the photos of the party and game details in the next post.


The conference rooms were set up as the ride ending in a French Casino.  I cut out TONS
of three different colors of cardstock circles for gambling chips.  I made placemat roulette boards that worked for up to four people at a time.  They were in laminate clear envelopes, so that if people were gambling and eating at the same time, no problem.  I used my ipad spinner app.  

I bought this dice game on Amazon.  It comes with six different sets of dice/die. Someone in the group yells a number.  The first person to have all of their die thrown to that number wins.  Of course, we had betting on who was going to win.  This turned out to be a very popular spot.

My dessert bars always match my theme.  On the monitors you can see that the bike riders are going by a pastry shop.  I carried out the black and white color scheme with the cardstock boats I made for serving pie.

I usually have sugar cookies of some kind at each party.  At holiday time, it is easier for me to buy instead of bake.  I usually do a combination.  The empty board at bottom of photo held cake pops.

The live band is set up in the front of the office.  I put the office red chairs there in couch formation, for a lounge like effect, along with our big Santa and tree.

Guests are always given coupon books with raffle tickets.  If they win a game, they put

their name on the ticket and it goes into a raffle box.  At the close of the party, we have

a big gathering in the conference room.  On the wall, we have taped tons of envelopes.

In the envelopes is MONEY in different denominations.  If your name is called, you pick an envelope off the wall.  It could hold $5.  It could hold $25.  It could even hold $400.

No one seems disappointed.  Okay, maybe a child or two.

I am re-posting this from two years ago.  The photos were dark because I took them late the night before the party after setting up. Now, two years later, we have a marketing gal who takes fabulous photos.