We’ll be completely honest. We didn’t think we could pull it off. Especially because this is the room we had to overhaul into a beautiful setting for 200 people with only a $300 budget.

Oh boy. We were scared. But guess what? We pulled it off and the night went so well, and the room looked beautiful. We used all of our sneaky resources and came up with some inexpensive, but pretty awesome decor for the room.

These babies were definitely our favorite feature of the room. We used chargers and vases from the Dollar Store, branches from our backyards that we spraypainted gold, and flowers from Produce Junction. But what really made them shine was the Worthwhile Wear jewelry we hung from the branches. They looked so cool, made a great conversation piece and helped to sell even more jewelry for the organization,

The tables were covered in an inexpensive purple satin with a gold, shimmery tulle overlay.

We used the same roofing material that we used on our last Nate Show episode and the Indian Paisley Damask stencil from Royal Design Studios to create a gorgeous backdrop for the room. A big thank you to Royal Design Studios for donating the stencil for a good cause!  We’ve said it time and time again that stencils make a huge impact for very little cost, and RDS stencil are the BEST!

Unfortunately, the room had a pretty ugly border around the entire room that would have been too expensive to cover up, not to mention pretty difficult to do in a non-permanent way. We decided to use one of our other tricks, giant Staples Engineer Prints to deck out the walls and draw the eye away from the border. The prints of these gorgeous girls and women were taken while Dan was in India learning more about the culture and the great need for these girls to be rescued. Printed on each picture was a statistic of interest (most of them heart-breaking) related to human trafficking.

We were pretty limited as far as furniture goes to just what the church had available, so we decided to make the whole room into a lounge/coffee shop feel. Lots of cozy seating areas, coffee tables and lamps for softer lighting. We also used a lot of Ikea curtain panels to dress up the walls a bit more.

Of course, Viswas, the sitar player, need a cool background!

One big score was the lights we had hanging from the ceiling. The church already owned this (which helped us stay within budget), but they originally came from Ikea.

 

 A big thank you to the photographers for the evening, Jake of Harr Photography and Robert of Robert Radu Stern for sharing their pictures with us. They even snagged a great one of the two of us at the end of the night!

We were so happy with the way the evening went, and that we could use our talents to help out our good buddies, Dan and Steph and the amazing organization they’ve started. Want to know how you can help us help them out even more? Worthwhile Wear is a part of two awesome contests and need our votes. It only takes a minute, but will make a big difference!

1. The First ever Philadelphia DoGooder Awards celebrates the power of storytelling as a way to connect non profit organizations with valuable partners, volunteers, donors and resources.

Non profits are invited to submit short 5 minute or less (2-3 preferred) films with a compelling narrative. Filmmakers are encourage to submit films on behalf of their non profit clients. They are competing for $250,000 in resources, national and regional recognition, and much much more.

To vote, click here, watch the video (be prepared for tears!), and cast your vote.

2. Our local bank, Univest, is giving $5,000 to a local non-profit. They are asking you, the community, to nominate a non-profit for this contribution. Please take a moment to “Like” Univest and then in the comment section write a nomination for Worthwhile Wear. You can nominate WW until 12/31/12. Feel free to share this with others.

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This is the perfect season to do a little good for someone else. We thank you so much for helping us grow Worthwhile Wear!