A New Year's Eve Spectacular

Our family took a trip to New York a few years ago and I believe a part of that city somehow attached itself to my daughter H. She is in love with the city and everything that goes with it. For that reason, the New Year's Eve ball drop is a big event in our house. This year may have been one of the best! Our family decided to plan and execute "A New Year's Eve Spectacular". (Said in your best announcer voice) We shopped, gathered supplies, crafted, settled disputes, crafted some more, used scissors a ton, settled a few more disputes, ate, played games, and crafted and came up with a great evening.

We started our evening off by designing our very own balloon drop. We used balloons, craft supplies we dug out of the abyss that is know as the closet, rings from canning jars, yarn and a bit of duct tape.  

Blow up your balloon and begin to decorate. We used glitter, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, pom poms, sequins, buttons, and anything else we could round up.

To help stabilize the balloons while they were being decorated and give them a nice perch to dry on, we wrapped pipe cleaners around the knot on the balloon. We then threaded beads onto the pipe cleaners and folded the ends over to hold the beads on. We then put the pipe cleaners into large glasses and jars. They weighted the balloons down just enough to keep them in the jars and allow us to decorate.

We tied yarn around the knot on the balloon and cut the tail really long (almost 16 feet). Taping canning jar rings to the ceiling and then treading the yarn through the rings worked as a great way to set up our balloons. We pulled the balloons up to the ceiling and then taped the bottom of the yarn off until it was time to drop the balloons. The weighted pipe cleaners were perfect to help the balloons drop.

Balloons decorated, hung and ready for the "balloon drop" at midnight!