Well, my oldest daughter is now officially a high school graduate! We are so proud of her and excited for her to start on her new adventure next fall. She has worked very hard to get to where she is at and hard work paid off with a full ride scholarship.
So, as many of you know I LOVE to decorate and believe I was a decorator in another lifetime so I took the opportunity for a "party" which our family enjoys to do...and we created a FUN night of friends and food in our beautiful barn.
This is a picture as the beautiful sun started to set that night.
Here are some more pictures and then I will share with you how I made it all happen.
This is the front of the barn. I had a chalkboard sign that I use at my barn sales that I put out. It was made from the ends of a baby crib!
The cooler my dad made me. I quickly put together some signs from some old table leafs that I had from a table that I am not sure where it is at!
AND our benches came from good old SmartLic tubs! I power washed 16 of those things...I was covered in cow manure and molasses! We used boards that we had around the place to make benches.
I bought two beautiful potted plants at our local Norma's Greenery to set outside the doors.
The pillars that I had on both sides I had purchased earlier to make a headboard out of (on my to do list)!
I strung lights around them for fun.
The round wreath with a red bow is actually a $3 Family Dollar hula hoop with wide burlap ribbon wrapped around it.
Here you can see more of the benches that we made.
I happen to have some beautiful wood shelves I had made for our local fabric store and when it closed I took them out.
This was our graduate corner.
The old doors are ones that I have collected or people have given me over the years.
I just lined them along the far wall and strung star lights across them.
I then hung art work our daughter had done on some burlap twine with cute clothespins I had gotten from Michaels.
The stars above were fun scrap wood pieces I had and put together.
The Congrats large sign was made form a $10 rummage sale canvas picture I had bought. It had scenery of mountains and a gold frame. I sanded it down, painted with chalkboard paint, and whitewashed the frame!
It turned out beautifully!
For pictures we hinged two old windows together and strung twine and used colored clothespins to hang pictures.
The tables and chairs are ones I have had from different barn sales I have had or furniture I have made.
I put burlap or off white fabric on the tables, burlap runners in red and turquoise, and added blue ball mason jars to the tables with tea lights in them.
I had these cute chalkboards for tables and used them to write on and put on the tables.
You can see the ladder we used to display all of her plaques so it wouldn't take up so much table space.
She also picked out a cute box at Hobby Lobby and we found letters at Michaels and glued CARDS on the inside of it!
The CONGRATS banner we stenciled on to a red felt banner we found.
A picture form the back of the barn looking outside.
Here is a picture of the outside.
Benches on both sides.
Each tub also has a white solar lantern on it and we had 4 solar lights on each side of the doors.
Here is the other pillar, and hula hoop wreath with turquoise ribbon!
A view from the outside looking in.
We put the tables towards the back where the food and drinks were and left space at the front for standing and visiting, or dancing:)
Here is the "feast" table.
I made the burlap sign with stencils and red yarn.
Put the napkins and forks in a metal fruit display we had and put a lace table cloth on an old desk.
The "sweets" tables were two old dressers with the drawers removed and covered with burlap.
We had a smores bar with 3 glass jars, skewers in a jar, and some candy.
I made the wooden box from some old pallets to put the little burners we used. I found them at the Dollar Tree.
This is our "drinks" bar.
The two old galvanized tubs I had and we cut garbage bags apart and put in the bottom, filled them with ice and added pop and water.
We put out paper cups with some fun straws and then filled two large glass drinking dispensers with lemonade and iced tea.
Another picture of the ladders.
Fun picture of a table with some extra treats we had for our guest!
Now for a few details...
To begin with we cleaned out as much as we could and swept..a lot and I mean a lot of dirt out. We pushed things, or my husband did, to the sides..he thought that would be just fine...BUT we have lots of little hands that were coming and machine oil, tools, nuts, bolts, you name it..was not going to be just "left out". That is where the idea of the poles came into play. I created the poles so that they can be moved to our new front deck and back deck to be used as "light poles" during the summer months.
To make these my daughters and I went to Lowes and picked up 14 medium size planting pots and Quickrete. Once home we went to the local lumber yard and picked up 14 2x2 8 ft long. Next I mixed the Quickrete, had my little guy hold the 2X2 in the pot while I poured about 3 inches of cement in. I then used Gorilla Tape to hold the poles up. However, these were not weighted enough to not tip so I added potting soil to it and filled them once everything was dry. Once on our deck, I will fill with some beautiful flowers!
Now I started this about 2 weeks in advance knowing I would do a little in the morning and a little in the evenings! The next thing I did was add eye hooks to the top of each pole on two sides. I pre drilled the holes and then screwed them in.
Next I put the pots where I thought they would work to cover everything up that needed to be. I then strung some heavy twine rope from each eye hook. I just looped through and tied them.
Next I strung lights from each eye hook (I stapled the lights to the back of the poles as I didn't want to weight any more than needed on the twine.
I bought $.98 table cloths for the back drops. We did some white, white lace, a little red, and a few turquoise. I hung them to the twine with little wooden laundry clips. I used small ones so it would not have to much weight.
The white and turquoise tissue balls I happen to already have on hand. I had purchased them in a party store last summer while our daughter was at a basketball tourney in Minnesota. Not sure why I bought them then, but now I know why:)
Well, I think that pretty much summarizes most everything up! We served roast beef sandwiches, corn salad, fresh watermelon, strawberries, and grapes, with all our great sweets.
Thanks for stopping by and we are excited for our daughter to begin her new adventure! She will be heading off to college to play basketball and right not plans on taking up Criminal Psychology.
