Toy Story hall decorations

I haven't blogged in a while and I apologize for that! I've been sooo busy with R.A. training and starting classes!  I thought that because this is my last semester, I wouldn't be so busy or my course load wouldn't be so hard but I feel like it's the hardest it's ever been.  I'm trying not to let the stress get to me because I know that I just need to get done what needs to get done. 

For RA training, we had about 5 days of training- just basically going over all of our procedures again, having some fun, and doing hall decorations!  Overall, I think my co-RA and I spent a good 26 hours working on hall decorations in total!  So crazy but we decided to go all out on hall decorations this semester because we knew it'd be both of our last times being able to do so.  In my previous blog, I gave you a little hint as to what the theme was.  Figure it out?  If not no big deal- the theme was Toy Story!  Toy Story is a movie that everyone has seen at least once so we thought that our residents would like it.  We started with the common room and made it "Sunny Side Day Care" from Toy Story 3.  We cut out rattles, toy blocks, a big tree and made a sign outside of the common room saying "Sunny Side"

 

 

 

Sunny Side sign outside the common room

Also on the first floor, we had a hard time picking what the theme would be for the floor because there aren't really any flat walls on the first floor.  Due to the fact that the building is so old, many of the walls are ornate and have designs on them.  We decided to go with something simple and put cowboy boots, stars that said "Deputy" on them (for Woody) and put planets on the walls as well (for Buzz.)  We also put quotes from the movie around the walls.

Going up the stairs, we cut out clouds because in the movie, Andy's room has clouds all over the wall.  Leading up to the second floor, we cut out a big sign and wrote "Pizza Planet" on it just like the first movie.  We decided to make the second floor alien themed.  We cut out stars, space ships, and I made aliens (which took me at least 5 hours to make only 15!)  We also made a huge claw machine.

Claw Machine

On the third floor, we made it Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head themed.  We made and cut out huge Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads and also cut out eyes, noses, ears, and shoes and put them all along the wall. 

We also had to cover the two bulletin boards that we have in our building.  We made the second floor one a toy soldier themed one that has Albertus facts on it and made the first floor one an upcoming events bulletin board.

Upcoming events bulletin board

Toy Soldier bulletin board

We also had to make door tags for each of the residents.  For this, we just printed out pictures of characters from the movie and glued them on construction paper and put their names on it.  There was enough characters for everyone to have their own door tag and we didn't have to repeat any characters.  It was A LOT of work but it was fun to bond with my co-RA and once we got into it, we kept thinking of great ideas.  Most nights we stayed up until 1 am making things and on the last night we stayed up until nearly 2:30 am putting everything up!  Even though it was time consuming, everything turned out great & we will find out next week if we won the competition for best overall theme!