Friday, December 19, 2008

English Dept Christmas Party

So, some of you may know that the English Department is mildly (I use this term loosely) dysfunctional.

We've had a few incidents recently that have brought home how wacked out we are capable of being.

It was really bothering me, so I decided that I would be Pollyanna Positive and start working on it since it upset me so. This is in part because I have accepted the fact that I am doomed to remain in the English department for all time, so I might as well get withe program as it were.
At any rate, my solution was to have a Christmas party. Strangely enough, THIS I was not going to do half-assed. I totally threw myself (and my unfortunate students) into it.

I borrowed furniture from the the Theater department so that we would all have comfortable chairs in which to sit. I placed them in a circle with chairs so that we couldn't group up and just face/talk to the usual crowd. I wanted to engender a let's all be friends atmosphere (or at least a "let's not all talk about each other while we are in the same room" - my expectations weren't THAT high.)

I found all of my grandmother's table clothes that I could lay my hands on to make it look even more cheerful. None of them matched, and they all need to be cleaned now (grrrr), but it did make it look nicer. I got nutcrackers and candles to decorate. I went all out. In fact, I even made the kids help me go all out. I have a tons of Christmas songs on my Ipod, so we played Christmas music to keep everyone in the mood and worked away.

Please note the snowflakes all over the room. I had them making snowflakes for days. Every time they thought that they were done, I'd start screetching for more snowflakes. One of the kids actually suggested the paper chain (ah, you can't beat a good paper chain!)


We got cotton balls, a lot of cotton balls as it turns out so that we could have "snow" on all of the window sills. Tell me it isn't beautiful. It is. I never even managed to get the lights out of my attic to add to the festive atmosphere, but I don't think we needed them. It looked great, if I do say so myself.


I even went to town on the food. We had breakfast from Jason's deli and lots of other little treaty foods too.

I made rum cake (it was the only way to get alcohol in the building legally, and I figured it couldn't hurt.

At it turns out, it was a morning party, so they weren't quite ready for the let's go crazy on super sweet rum cake idea.) I also made almond bark popcorn (Oh boy is it GOOD) for everyone to take with them back to their room's for snack's later in the day. I need to add that I just learned about the almond bark popcorn from my friend Helen. I can't decide if I owe her or need to kill her for telling me about this new, delicious and fabulous treat.

There I am looking pleased.

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