Suzy Says

I survived the office holiday party!

It was a marathon, though, with days of planning and decorating and blasting down the Ridge in the early morning darkness. This may well be the perfect song to listen to when driving winding roads under a blanket of stars and beside the moonlit ocean.

This year, the person who used to do the decorating moved away, so that left me to do it. You know, the person whose present-wrapping skills are on par with a particularly inept and possibly thumbless five year old. Which makes it even more amusing that I Christo-ed up the tables in the conference room for the party. I regretted this decision at more than one stage in the process, but it looked great when it was done:

My vision was to wrap the tables in brown paper and have centerpieces of freshly cut greenery. My dream came true with holly, cedar, eucalyptus, bay and mystery red berries which were probably poisonous, but whatever! I added glittery pine cones and sparkly mini succulents:

It wouldn’t be Me if it wasn’t sparkly. I also found an unopened box of glittery snowflakes in the store room, so I borrowed an industrial size box of dental floss from the dental clinic and hung them from the ceiling, as you can see in the first photo. I added white lights around the whole room, and it looked warm and welcoming when the room was lit only by those lights:

I was later told that there had never been Christmas lights in the room before, an egregious omission and one that will not recur during my sparkly reign.

I somehow managed to squeeze seating for 85 people in a room whose official capacity is 68 (all that practice making and hosting Thanksgiving for 14 people in my undersized residence came in handy), and I was pleased to note that people hung out and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Most years, they eat and run, since they get paid for the rest of the day, so it was especially nice to see the party continue.

Unfortunately for me, though, I had a Board meeting to set up and take minutes at, so I had to leave the festivities. But I was delighted to receive nothing but compliments, a couple of the doctors going so far as to email all the staff about how great the party was and how well I did, both embarrassing and delightful at the same time.

A YEAR AGO: At the Candlelight Shopping Night.