Business Excellence Awards

Shortly before I left for my trip to Scotland I attended the Business Excellence awards in my town.  I was on the committee and Royal Ribbons was nominated for an award.  It was a very stressful time as the Civic Awards ceremony was only 10 days before this event and the workload to make all of this happen was enormous!  Well, maybe not...but I find it impossible to get anything done when I am home alone with the Little Prince.  I'm sure all the moms of small children know what I'm talking about!  Anyhoo to make matters worse, this event was held in the gymnasium of our local rec centre...not pretty at all!  We had to figure out how to make an ugly gym look like a gala on a budget of 500.00!

Fortunately we have a good relationship with the people who put on the hospital gala (Hermes Scarf Friend sits on that board and I know the uncle of the chair of the hospital committee - small town life!) so we were able to use decor from their event this past autumn.  Knowing this little detail I strongly suggested we run with a 'I love NY' style theme so everything would be black, white, and red...the same colours the hospital used six months ago.

We raided the hospital's storage unit for anything we could find to pretty up the place and this is what I came up with for the dessert table I designed and assembled....

Yes we moved the stuff out from under the tables. The silver backdrop is sheets of silver streamer type stuff....we had to put up 4 layers to make it look solid - thank goodness for tall people!  The lampshades are on huge martini glasses...I could've used a drink about that big by the time this photo was taken!

One of my cardinal rules was broken here - the table cloth isnt ironed.  It bothered me all night.  But I was in heels, a dress, and didn't have my iron with me.  If this had been at my house the table cloth would've been ironed. 

Feather boas fill up a lot of space!  Inexpensive and effective!

Everything was red, white or black (dark brown)!

I found red and white striped paper bags so people could take candy home with them.  For some reason we didn't have dessert plates (it was assumed people would use a napkin but I felt if they didn't have a plate they would treat the table like a trough and never leave it....so I went out and got a stack of red paper plates).

Making the best of what little we had to work with.  We had a few extra flower centerpieces so I commandeered them for my dessert table.  The bowls on stands are assembled from pieces found at the dollar store.  I bought white dishes and plates, martini and champagne glasses and epoxied them together to make an inexpensive cake/candy stand!

Our local chocolatier was also our caterer and he donated all these yummy chocolates.  And when I say yummy I mean I assume they were...the guests at the event seriously demolished the dessert table...not a scrap was left and I didn't get one of these chocolates!  He was kind enough to make them red on the top to go with our theme!

I had one of our local bakeries make us chocolate cupcakes with buttercream and red pearls to stay in the colour scheme!

I found all kinds of red, white, and black candy at the bulk store.  Jelly beans, licorice cigars, chocolate covered pretzels, yoghurt covered raisins...

Mini tarts filled with raspberry jam! At least I didn't have to cart any of it home!

The next day was the Little Prince's 4th birthday party so it was a hectic weekend full of cake!

Oh...and I didn't win.  The guy who did win was a shoe-in...but he can't win next year so there's the playing field will be more level!


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Have a fabulous day!