Valentine's Table Decorations on a Budget

 Every year the scouts do an all you can eat pancake breakfast fundraiser on the Saturday before Valentine's day. And almost every year I am asked to do something for the decorations. The budget is usually around $50 and I have a total of 15 school lunch tables to decorate. On top of just normal decorations they like to have two "flags" that are incorporated with the decor that the customers can use to signify that they'd like a refill on their drinks or pancakes. The "flags" have always been the greatest challenge; we attempted to make  actual flags that could be raised one year, by the end of the fundraiser most of those had broken; we put a big heart on a stick last year and the customers would just hold a stick into the air to get the attention of one of the boys, it was just kind of tacky and we ended up with sticky or broken sticks by the end of the morning. But this year I somehow managed to create "flags" that we durable, supper cute, and can be used over and over again every year from now on!! Check out these Cupid flags:

 Aren't they cute?! They slide up and down the pole. And like the poem says "If you help me to soar up, they'll refill your plate or cup." I even laminated them! The only thing that we will be changing for next year is putting the cupids onto taller dowels. These were just a little too short and not always easily spotted when they we up. For the bases we just wrapped baby shoe boxes (free) with wrapping paper ($5).

And we also dressed up old spaghetti jars (free) by filling them with shredded paper (also practically free) and gluing on some cute ribbon (less than $5 for all the jars). Because it was a scout fundraiser I also used wolves, bears, and bobcats to make little Valentines and stick them in the jars. I just had to search for some cute clip art and add a little saying, almost all were free!

 These are only the wolves and bobcats. I didn't include the bears because I had to pay for that clip art. But the sayings for the bears were "A bear hug for you" and "Thanks for CUBing!" Feel free to use the ones above if you'd like.

And aside from covering the tables with red and white table cloths I was lucky enough to find these Valentine's Day cups from Walmart. They were 4 for $0.97! We put 4 on each table so that only cost $15. Just added some hearts on a stick and more shredded paper! (Before next year we will have to add just a touch of resin to the bottoms of the cups to weigh them down a bit better. We had to tape them to the tablecloths so they wouldn't fall over.) The last touch was a bunch of black and white photos of various scout activities (laminated of course) taped directly to the tables. The photos were free because that, along with conversation hearts were last years decor.

So in case you are keeping track of the prices, you know so far that I spent about $25 aside from the skewers, dowels, and then some card stock paper. Skewers: free, I had a bunch at home. Dowels: $4. Card stock paper: $5. Scrapbook paper: $5. Scotch tape: $3. I was under budget!! So what do you think? I think we did pretty darn good this year!