Wizard fo Oz Retirement party - Big Decoration Pieces

Last year our elementary school principal retired so we decided to throw her a Retirement Dinner at the school.  We came up with the theme of Wizard of Oz since there is NO PLACE LIKE HOME.  We had a great time decorating for the theme and she seemed to really enjoy it as well.  I will be posting several installments of this party so be sure to check out my other posts that will include food and table themes we had at the party.  We decorated with a lot of items that members of the PTO already had at their house so the cost was minimal for decor.  We used old rustic windows, scarecrows, tin cans, and all the wizard of oz items we could rustle up.   We started by creating our own yellow brick road that lead to a cardboard house that was supposed to look like a replica of her house (we made it work).  The yellow brick road was constructed of black bulletin board paper and yellow paper cut in brick shapes.  We had each student sign a brick during the last week of school.  We adhered all the bricks on the yellow brick road and it was one of the first things she noticed when she walked in.  Of course, we didn't tell the kids why they were signing the yellow papers because we were sure this would give away the suprise of the party. 

 The yellow brick road went right past the hot air ballon we constructed by using a big box, lunch bags weaved to look like a basket, parachute over the basketball hoop in the cafetera, and some string and white pieces of fabric formed to look like weights for the balloon.  We placed her present in the basket.

 We created her house with house #'s at the end of the yellow brick road.  We also constructed a rainbow to go from the house to the gift/card table.  The rainbow was made from tablecloths from the dollar store.  

I hope you will continue reading my next post to see how we decorated each table at the party in a different theme/character from the movie.  I hope you enjoy these ideas.