Decorating A Door (But Really A Wall)

In early February a girl from our old ward (the part that we split from back in May) e-mailed me and asked if I'd be willing to decorate Mr. Guymon's door for Teacher Appreciation Week. She's the PTO president and apparently she thought I'd do a good job, that or she was desperate. :) When she asked me my first thought was that it would be a lot of fun. I agreed to it, told the kids about it, and then the reality of it all sunk in and I remembered I had to come up with something creative. That's when the stress hit. Authors get writers block, I got creativity block. I had a week to come up with some way to decorate his door and I was only coming up blank. Half way through the week she e-mailed me again and said decorating doors is apparently against fire code. I was secretly hoping this meant we couldn't decorate the doors, but no, it only meant we needed to decorate the wall next to the door. Bummer! So, I stressed a little more. Then 2 nights before decorating time I was laying in bed trying to sleep and an idea hit me like a ton of bricks. It probably wasn't the greatest idea, but it was an idea and that was better than nothing. The next morning I told Kenny about my idea and he told me it sounded good, but he reminded me he thought I was crazy for agreeing to do it in the first place. I know secretly he was glad I agreed to it, I need to be doing more things like this, he just knew I'd drag him into helping me and really, what guy wants to help his wife decorate a teachers door? :)

Ben and Hannah playing with the news prop in Sarah's classroom.

With Kenny's help, we took my initial idea and made it bigger and better (I hope.) I originally thought of having the kids trace their hands and then cutting them out. They were then to write why they like Mr. Guymon on their cutouts. I e-mailed him the next morning and asked if I could come in for a few minutes. On Friday, Feb 11th, I went to the school first thing in the morning and got the cutouts (talk about cutting it close.) The hands were going to be the leaves on a tree and thankfully Kenny is a fairly good artist and was able to draw a great tree for me. That's where my creativity stopped. I couldn't for the life of me come up with something to say. I enlisted Kenny's help and he came up with our very creative saying. I was a little leery about using it, but it seemed to work so well with Mr. Guymon's personality that I decided to go for it.

Kenny make the head of Mr. Guymon.

Kenny agreed to help me put the final project on Mr. Guymon's wall (he's such a good boy for helping me with my crazy projects) and so we gathered all the kids up headed to Rimrock Elementary after school on Friday. It took about 2 hours, but I enjoyed it and I think Kenny did as well. I was quite proud of the final project and never could have done it with Kenny's help. I heard that it was liked by all, including Mr. Guymon, so I'm pleased. I figure if I did a bad job the worst that would happen is they won't ask me to do it again. :)

Adam hanging out at the school waiting patiently for us to get done.

The tree complete with hand cutouts and Mr. Guymon's face.

Mr. Guymon was nice enough to leave is door open for us when he went home. The kids enjoyed playing with the math objects and it made the project go much smoother for Kenny and I.

Kenny putting up the last of the words.

The little boys were getting really bored by the time we were done. Sarah did a good job helping to keep them entertained. She walked them around the school for us and definitely saved us some time and headaches.

The final project.

Let me explain a little. See, Mr. Guymon's quite tall. He's actually the tallest person in the school. That's where the 'Shadiest' comes from. The little boy on the ground (also drawn by Kenny) is saying "Wow, that guy's REALLY tall." HaHa! We thought it was cleaver and it totally goes with Mr. Guymon's sense of humor. The hand cutouts from the students are the appreciation part of the project. So, that's it. They didn't take it down, in fact it's still up and this post is almost a month late, so I'm guessing it was OK. It was fun and I'm glad I/we did it. I hope to be able to do another some time.