Candyland Father Daughter Dance

The Dance is over and I can FINALLY post all the things I have been doing over the past few months. I came up with this great theme for our dance (really I stole it from another Girl Scout Service Unit that did the same theme but we made it better).  The dance committee came together and each group chose a different part of the candyland dance theme. We had a Gingerbread house,   Cupcake Commons, Lollipop woods, Ice Cream River, Peppermint Forrest, Gumdrop Mountain, Plummy (the plum tree), Chocolate Mountain, & the Candyland Castle. Each leader chose a different part of the decorations and went to work. These women all worked very had to fill the space for the dance and make it a success.  Below you will find pictures of the decorations and the details on who made them and everything I know about what made these decorations AWESOME!

Here is where our dance begins.  Cristi Hahn & Jenny Hagans took over the gingerbread house.  Jenny provided us with a pop up tent (you know the kind you take to a tailgate party) which we converted into a Gingerbread house.  Jenny spent time cutting out pieces for the roof while Cristi took care of all the little decorations that we used to decorate the gingerbread house inside & out. Diana Wolfe also made the little game pieces for the gingerbread house (the little red man).   The decorations along the side were made using a variety of items.  The round candy & the jolly ranchers (square candy) were cut out of cardboard and painted (by me).  Dawn Kimberling made the candycane sticks out of paper towel rolls and red & white tissue paper. 

Dawn Tidd took care of creating our START to the game board.

Jenny also invited a balloon specialist in who made us some flowers for outside our house and a person to hang out inside the house.  The multicolored candy decorations were made using 2 different colored paper plates wrapped in cellophane. 

The balloon candies were made using water balloons wrapped in cellophane tied on both sides with ribbon.  We also made larger versions of these to hang from the ceiling.  Also notice our blue game piece by Diana.

Cristi Hahn painted 2 pictures for the inside of the Gingerbread house.  One window view painting and one Gingerbread family painting (for some reason I do not have a picture of this :/ )

The kids LOVED the gingerbread house they kept trying to hang out inside.

When the girls entered the gym they found the candyland path.  The first stop on that path was cupcake commons created by Diana Wolfe.  Diana made the large cupcakes using colorful buckets topped with foam insulation and decorated.  I think she made about 30 of those (which I am sure took a long time).   

The cupcakes on the call were mostly made by me I used an assortment of colored paper and my rotary cutter to cut out multiple cupcakes of the same size.  I then used tissue paper to decorate the top to look like frosting.  I used craft items around my home to decorate the cupcake wrapper including ribbon, pipe cleaners, foam stickers, & flower decorations.  Diana also made a few of these paper cupcakes and she used cotton to decorate the frosting. 

Diana did an AWESOME job making cupcake commons. 

After Cupcake Commons the Candyland path lead the girls to Lollipop Woods.  This section was created singlehandedly by Dawn Tidd.  She seriously created 200 + lollipops all by herself and they looked AMAZING.

I LOVED her sign.  It looked so AWESOME and creative.

The lollipops were made from paper plates or cardboard covered in fabric and the sticks were made from wrapping paper rolls, dowel rods, & PVC pipe.  She used white duct tape to cover the different items and make them look more like lollipop sticks.  Each lollipop was then wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon.  She also made mini lollipops using smaller plates and skewer sticks.  The base for the lollipops were cut up pallets covered with green tissue paper (this part was done by her husband). 

Her section looked amazing. 

Once the girls made it through the lollipop woods the reached the Candyland Castle (which we placed on the stage behind the DJ).  This castle was hand drawn by Jackie Hripto (one of my bff's who is an AMAZING artist) and painted by me and a small crew (including Melissa McClay, Doug McClay, and some of their neighbors who I do not actually know). 

My loving husband Kurt Thompson is the one who risked his life standing on the very top of an 8 ft ladder to hang the castle up (otherwise it would have been laying on the stage because I do not do heights unless I have something to cling too). 

We decorated the bottom of the stage with a string of assorted candy and hung some assorted candy around the castle.  It looked really nice

Once the girls got past the Candyland Castle they had to cross the ice cream river created by Kim King.  We borrowed a bridge from our local boy scout troop and they were even nice enough to drop it off and set it up.  The Ice Cream display consist of 4 washer/dryer boxes retrieved from Home Depot which were painted and decorated to look like different flavors of Ice Cream.  She also got some colorful fabric to use as the river. 

Notice the chocolate, vanilla, & strawberry ice cream flowing out of the Neopolitan box.

The Boy Scout Bridge worked really nice and the girls LOVED walking across it.  If you also notice the lights under the bridge they were Jenny's that she set up to give the river a little extra attraction. 

Notice the massive ice cream cones, they are round laundry hampers stuffed with brown paper (to look like the cone) and topped with foam insulation.  They looked AWESOME. 

Kim did an excellent job decorating her section of the gym. 

After crossing the bridge at the Ice Cream river we moved into the Peppermint Forrest which Dawn Kimberling took on as her project.  This section was probably the hardest to decorate and the most detailed.  I spent about a week on craigslist and freecycle (for anyone who does not know what freecycle is it is a wonderful website where you post the items you would like free and people in your area who have those items respond) getting fake Christmas trees donated to our cause and then spent a weekend driving all over PA to pick up the trees.  We did end up paying about $40 total and had 22 trees for our forest. The Christmas trees in the peppermint forest really made the forest and without them it would not have been nearly as exciting. 

Once we had the trees we proceeded to spray paint them red & white to look like peppermints.  We also got a few strands of garland donated that we sprayed and wrapped around the trees for added color.  The trees turned out amazing.  We did learn very quickly that it was easier to spray paint them one color instead of trying to alternate between two different colors.  We also used a ridiculous amount of spray paint. 

Dawn Kimberling also used donated paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, and pringles cans to make peppermint sticks to line the path in the forest.  We also had some larger mail carrier rolls (for posters and blue prints) donated that she used to make larger peppermint sticks.  She used Girl Scout cookie boxes that she had left over to cut out candy canes and then wrapped them all in red & white tissue paper.  She also used red & white plates to make the peppermints to hang on the wall and red & white pipe cleaners to make tiny candy canes to decorate the trees.  She did an AWESOME job. 

This red and white tree was one of my favorites.  I spray painted it myself and it took 9 cans of spray paint and I can still see a couple of green spots :/  but it was the most popular tree of the night and I saw many girls taking their picture in front of it. 

 

Dawn's sign also looked amazing.  I am sure that it took a really long time to get the letters to look like little peppermints with the red stripes.  As a final touch she bought some peppermint extract and poured it in cups which she placed under a lot of the trees to give off a peppermint smell (you can see one under the white tree above on the left).

Before & after the pathway was added to the dance floor. 

 

Once you made your way through the Peppermint Forrest you came across Gumdrop Mountain which was one of my personal favorites.  Tabitha Wallace did such an amazing job with the little bit of junk (and I really mean junk) she was given.  To make the gum drops we started collecting empty plastic containers like butter, milk jugs, 2 liter soda bottles, and she even received a few yogurt cups.  We also got about a dozen buckets donated.  She then took colorful spray paint and painted them to look like gumdrops.  To make it look more like a mountain we took a 4 ft table and sat it on top of two 8ft tables and then covered them with Green tablecloth to look like grass on the mountain. 

 

In one of the many boxes of donations that we received there was actually a string of gumdrop garland that we strung across the front of the table after the mountain was stacked up. 

Great Job Tabitha!!

 

The final destination on our candyland path was Plummy the Plum tree (and her two baby trees).  Diana Wolfe also took care of plummy and the babies.  She did a great job creating a life size tree and decorating it.  The tree trunk was made using brown wrapping paper (the kind you use to send a package) and the leaves were made using green tissue paper.  The plums were purple balloons (we ran out of purple and used pink for the baby trees).

We also decorated the ground underneath the trees using some gum drops and white Christmas lights and some more hand made candy decorations.

Great Job Diana!!

 I am very sad to say that I do not have any pictures of the Chocolate Mountain that was set up out in the hallway by the Snack Tables.  Robin McKenna did the chocolate mountain.  She stacked many cookie boxes and stuffed a few pillows throughout (to give the mountain curves) and then covered it with brown tablecloth.  The mountain even had a face and a cool sign.  Robin did an amazing job making it look like an actual chocolate mountain. 

I also do not have pictures of the snack table, the 16 candy guess games that we had for the girls to guess at while waiting to have their pictures taken or the lollipop tree where we gave each girl a lollipop and a prize on her way out the door.  These games were something that we have never done before that the kids really enjoyed.

The only area left to show you is the ceiling.  I do not think that the ceiling turned out exactly the way we wanted it too but the girls liked it and that is all that mattered.  We used colorful plastic table cloths to run from one basketball net to another in an attempt to dim the lights in the gym.  The problem that we encountered was that there were quite a few areas that we just could not get covered.  Cristi Hahn & I also made 8 long strands of candy decorations that we hung from basketball net to basketball net as added decorations. 

This is what the girls saw when they first walked into the gym.

The picture on the left shows a bunch of different colored tablecloths tied to the net and a couple strings of decorations.  The picture on the right is of our pathway which looked amazing but got ripped to shreds within minutes of the girls arriving.  Tabitha, Jackie, & I spent about 45 minutes taping these to the ground in a fun arrangement for the girls to follow. 

This is what it looked like once the lovely couples arrived at the dance.  Everyone enjoyed the theme and the decorations.  We heard many times that it was the best theme EVER!!  And I believe all the girls went home happy.  Thanks again to all those wonderful women who took time out of their busy schedules to help make the decoration and set up for the dance.  I most definitely could not have done it without you!!  If you would like to do a similar dance and have any questions I would be willing to help you in any way that I can.  :)