How-To: Repurpose New Year's Eve Decorations

Hello! Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday full of food, family, and resolutions just waiting to be broken! Just kidding. I have complete faith in you all. One of my resolutions this year is to read more books and watch less TV. So guess what I did last night? I read a book while watching a movie! Baby steps, right? (I started "Hotel Rwanda" but then I was like WAIT WHAT AM I DOING so before I lost all hope in humanity I switched to the "First Wive's Club" and paged through "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?" by Maria Semple. Blissful ignorance prevails!! How great is this scene from the movie, though? It had me dancing around my apartment and wishing I was a middle aged divorcée.)

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, I wanted to revisit New Year's Eve because that is one of my highest rated holidays. Why? GOLD. Gold everywhere. And sequins. Gold sequins are practically the uniform of New Year's Eve and people will give you the stink eye if you choose not to participate. Therefore my roommate and I decided to throw a party. However, throwing a New Year's Eve party is tricky. There's a lot of pressure for NYE. Everyone has this vision of being at the perfect party in the perfect party dress and receiving the perfect midnight kiss. So everyone kind of waits around for an invitation to said party, but no one is throwing one because they assume everyone else already has plans. So until one brave friend steps up to the plate and bites the bullet (thanks Julia!) there aren't many house parties on NYE (but if you're looking for club parties, New York City is a goldmine).

In light of that, we decided to do the logical thing and host a New Year's Eve Eve party on the 30th. And it was a hit! It was titled "Penultimate: A Beer In Review". We ran out of food and alcohol so that's a sure sign it was well attended, right? Either that or we are terrible party planners. My sister Selina was visiting from Singapore so she, Ariella and I made the trip over to Party City and stared in awe at the millions of options for decorations. Literally some of the most inane things can be sold if you slap "Happy New Years!" on it. We decided to stick with a more modest selection of gold tinsel and gold solo cups  (see below) which should replace the red ones at all college parties in my humble opinion.

After a wonderful night with close friends and even closer strangers, we awoke to an apartment that looked like King Midas had projectile vomited on. (For clarification, that is not a negative description). But, alas, one cannot live in such a state. So what were we to do? Throw out all the gold decorations? What a waste! I decided to find a way to recycle them. My bedroom door was in need of a little sprucing up, so I took the gold tinsel and did a little Sweet Nothing number to it. See below for my DIY on re-loving your New Year's decorations.