I actually started setup about a month ago when I raided my mom's basement (yes, I still do that... way more than I care to admit) for camping supplies to set up a Base Camp in the Narthex. This became our main advertisement on Sunday mornings. You'll see we had a hammock, a tent and sleeping bag (which was a HUGE hit with the little kids - I was routinely finding several kids curled up in there between services!), two backpacking backpacks, a camp kitchen setup with pots, pans, and a traveling stove, and other random camping accessories. I printed out some of the camping paraphernalia clipart that wasn't very accessible to us physically from the Everest CD and hung them up - an oxygen tank, boots, rope, and a pickax. Next to the "Base Camp" I hung a banner (which I FINALLY figured out how to make.... but still can't figure out how to print... Oops!) under which we stood during services to pass out flyers and registration forms.
All that setup actually became SUPER handy when it came time to set up for week! We held our Opening and Closing in the family center, so most of my decorating attempts were focused in there. We started by just moving the entire Base Camp set to the front of the gym, and it looked really great! It was missing some mountains, though, so this is where I got my helpers involved.
I read the decoration guide from Group and I even went so far as to watch the Decoration video, but when I went to Joann's and was asked to shell out $40 for each sheet of foam (and you need, like, 6!), I balked. I could not imagine spending over a hundred bucks on decorations! What!! So instead, I went the cheap (but admittedly, not as pretty) route and rolled out the paper. We drew a mountain on two big pieces of white paper and stuck it up on the wall. Then, my middle school helpers worked VERY diligently to build what they called a "glacier" out of posterboard and foam, and it even stood up by itself! Maybe it didn't look a TON like a glacier, but it was something white anyway :-)
That made up the entirety of our Base Camp decorations! I had two other decorating forays:
To signify which rooms were part of VBS, I taped poster border up on the doorways, facing backward so the white part was showing. It ended up looking a lot like snow or icicles hanging down!
By the registration desk, we worked VERY hard to make an "Ice Tunnel." I had seen tons of super cool-looking examples online, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make one! So, I ended up taking the easy way out and covering a toddler play tunnel with white plastic tablecloths. Maybe it didn't look AWESOME, but the kids sure liked it :-)
That's it! That's the extent of our decorations, for the most part. Fingers crossed for a good and accident-free week!
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