office holiday decorating contest

Apparently, before I joined ICMA, the company had never really decorated for Christmas before.  That is just totally unacceptable!  So, with Tricia and me on the holiday party planning committee this year (naturally), we decided that each team would decorate its respective area and that the COO would decide the winner after a week.  At first, no one was really very excited about it (granted, I don't work at an interior design company), but I have to hand it to our Finance team... once they got into it, everyone else did, too!  We may not all be creative, but we are all fiercely competitive.  These pictures are a little grainy because they were taken on my iPod, but here's a peek at what our festive office looks like!

Here's the front desk...

Our Christmas tree.  Guess who made that bow?  ;)

Leftover ornaments in a bowl... classic Martha move.

One of the activities I organized was having everyone place their staff picture in an ornament to hang on the tree... here's mine!

Here's the Sustainability team's area... everything was made out of recycled materials!

Here's my team's area!  (I work on the Center for Performance Measurement.)  I cut this tree out of gift wrap and hung some state flags cut in the shape of ornaments on it.  We work with a lot of local governments, so the state flags represent those of our participants and our team members' home states.  I also put extra batting I had on top of our cubes to look like snow!

Hannah and I made this tree out of garland and wrapped a whole bunch of random boxes that were sitting under our desks.  The one on top holds extra copies of our Annual Data Report.  We know we're cool.  DBJ (Don't be jealous).

Here's the outside of my cubicle.  This was the first holiday craft bow I ever made, and I'm so in love with it!

Poinsettias on my desk.

Here's the International team's area.  They each have a sign with "Happy Holidays" written in a different language and actually brought in some international decorations and costumes.  Love it!

Here's Wayne's desk... he's the head of US Programs and one of my bosses.  I love that he has the Bible story from the Gospel of Luke typed up and posted outside his cube!  What a daily encouragement it is to me!

Here is the Information team's area.  Since they run the Knowledge Network (which is basically Facebook for local government professionals) and the mascot is the Municipal Meerkat, they dressed him up in his holiday finest.  He's a little creepy because he has human hands. 

Here's HR!  They did a gingerbread theme, and I helped dress the gingerbread girls in their haute couture.  ;)

Here's the Executive Director's office.

And here's the Customer Contact Center.  They had a huge space to use... lucky!

Here's Membership.  So much funukkahhhhh to celebrate Hanukkahhhhh...

Here's Finance!!!  Didn't they do such an amazing job for a bunch of accountants?!?  They were out there adding to it and enhancing it up to the very last second!

They even took a hilarious "family photo" to put on the "hearth", hahaha!

This is a little unrelated, but one of my good friends in Finance, Amy, has a wall of celebrities.  Currently, it includes Jon Hamm, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Rudd, Prince William, Kate Middleton, Chuck Todd, Gayle King, Stedman Graham, and Andy Garcia.  Word on the street is that Enrique Iglesias is next.

And here was my absolute favorite... the IT team!!!  No one EVER thought they would participate, because you know how IT people are.  Especially ours.  But they threw this up when no one was looking and blew us all away!

Sooo, who do you think the winner was?  Well, we all would have been happy with IT, but the winner was actually Finance!  I have to say, they deserved it, because they really got everyone motivated and absolutely went the extra mile.  I've received so many compliments on how the decorations have lifted everyone's spirits and how fun it was to compete against each other, even if it just meant a break in the daily grind.  And our place looks fantastic!  I couldn't be more proud of my coworkers!

If your office did holiday decorating, I want to hear about it!  (I know there are people who read this blog I haven't met yet, so don't be shy... introduce yourself!)  Merry Christmas!