Blue and Gold - Flight

For this year's Blue and Gold Banquet we chose to go with a flight through the ages them.  Again we decided to begin with figuring out the decorations.  We went through a few different ideas, but finally settled on one.  The modes of flight we highlighted were kites, hot air balloons, airplanes, and space shuttles.  We were going to throw a dirigible in there, but ran out of time due to my having surgery a week before our banquet.  I suggest avoiding surgery right before your event.  We had our modes of flight laid out as follows: kites on the side walls, the dirigible was going to be on the back wall behind the food, hot air balloons as the center pieces, paper airplanes strung up above and a cardboard space shuttle up front.

With that plan in place the next thing to do was figure out how are we going to do it.  We always have the scouts help with the decorations in one way or another, so we decided to have them decorate kites and fold paper airplanes.  For the kites we purchased white poster board.  We were able to get 5 small kites out of each poster board and one large kite per poster board.  We had 4 large kites with the Bobcat, Wolf, Bear, and Webelos insignia on them.  We recycled the insignia from the previous years banners.  The boys were given a stack of kites and the craft bucket and told to go at it.  They each made at least two kites, some made more than that.  We used blue and yellow ribbon for the tails of the kites.  So as the boys colored two of the den leaders and I worked on cutting ribbons and tying tails.  The tails were probably about a foot long with 3" ribbons of the opposite colored tied down the length of it.  So one long blue tail with 3 yellow ties or vice versa.  Once the boys were done with the kites we had them start folding paper airplanes.  The airplanes were all made from yellow or blue card stock.  We asked them to all fold them the same way as they were for decoration.  Once they had folded over 90 airplanes we let them have at a pile of construction paper to fold whatever type of airplane they wanted.  They split off into groups for the last 20 minutes of that meeting with their dens to work on rank objectives.  Once we had the paper airplanes home we cut straws into 1-2" pieces and taped them to the tops of the airplanes.  So they won't hang funny you need to find their center of balance.  To hang them we threaded a string through the straws and strung them across the gym walls towards the ceiling.  Now that we had the boys kites done and the airplanes folded, we took the 4 large kites added the insignia and added yellow or blue construction paper around the outside for some color.  Some of our leaders had real kites which they brought and hung up for extra pops of color.  Wall and ceiling decor done!  

POSTER BOARD KITE TEMPLATE:

 Next we worked on the center pieces.  We again used square tissue boxes as the base.  This time though we cut them in half for baskets.  We spray painted the tissue box baskets either blue or yellow.  Once those were done they were set aside for drying.  We decided to use helium balloons for our, well balloon.  We debated using a non-helium balloon and using skewers to hold it up, but the helium balloons were just much cooler.  For the bottom part of balloon we took a standard 8.5" x 11" paper and cut it into strips that were 8.5" x 2".  We then wrapped it into a circle and taped it close.  We used regular sheet paper as card stock or construction paper were too heavy for the helium balloon to hold up well.  We then took blue and yellow skinny ribbons and cut them into 5-6" strands.  You needed 4 strands per balloon.  We used yellow ribbon for the blue boxes and blue balloons and blue ribbon for the yellow boxes and yellow ribbons.  On the ribbon you want to use the skinny, lightweight ribbon or the balloon can't hold up for long.  We had printed out the 4 insignia again for each of the hot air balloons.  My teens helped cut them out and glue them to all the boxes.  Once the boxes were done we set them aside again.  Next we took the circle paper rings and the ribbon.  We taped the ribbon to the paper.  You need to have the 4 strands fairly evenly placed around the paper.  We eyeballed it as it didn't have to be perfect.  Once that was done we put them in with the boxes and set it aside until day of the banquet.  Day of the banquet we had blue and yellow balloons filled with helium.  To assemble everything we took a balloon, taped on the paper circle at the bottom so it covered the tied end.  Then each of the strings dangling from the paper circle were taped into each corner of a box.  And voila!  You have a hot air balloon.  We purchased some blue and gold Easter hay for the inside of the box so that people weren't just looking at the plain inside of a tissue box.  We put one box on each of the dining tables and one on the cake table.  On to the next project.

The Space Shuttle was the biggest project of all.  My husband brought his skills as a builder to bear again here.  He grew up on Air Force bases, so to him having the shuttle look recognizably like a space shuttle was important.  In my head I'm thinking something more cutesy.  I should have known better!  Google sketch-up to the rescue again!  My husband drew up plans on sketch-up for how he would make the shuttle.  A friend of mine had kindly donated their water heater box to us.  I'm sure my husband could provide better instructions, but from what I saw he cut long sections of box and taped them together to form the shuttle.  He then painted it white.  He cut the wings and tail out of spare card board pieces.  These were also painted white.  Then using some black paint he hand painted on the windows and the black outline of the wings.  We happened to have some red and blue paint on a desk in our bedroom, so he also painted on the US flag on the wing of the shuttle.  It ended up looking great!

We had planned on a dirigible for our back wall behind the food table.  However due to time constraints from my foot surgery we just didn't have time.  This is the sketch of what we were planning on doing.  We were just going to make it out of a big roll of paper.  (Sorry for the sideways pictures.)

For the invites I found something on Pinterest that I knew would work perfectly.   Using this as a template I made up our plane tickets that were handed out to each of the scouts and the boys who would be joining us this year.  Being LDS all our boys are invited to join scouts when they turn 8 years old.  The plane tickets were printed on yellow card stock and the ticket holders were printed on blue card stock. The holders were folded somewhat in thirds.  I used the ticket as a guide compared to the holder where the wording is.  Then folded it there and again.  The final third wasn't a true third, but that was fine.  I cut it down so that it was just a small corner that would hold the ticket in.  I taped this part down.  Just like that the tickets are ready to be handed out.

 We were expecting over 100 people for our banquet, so for dinner we went with spaghetti, a meat sauce, rolls and a salad.  We had cakes from Costco for dessert.  A chocolate cake with the American flag and a white cake with an airplane on it.

The final set up: