Larzelere Hall room decked out for the holidays
One roll of duct tape, two rolls of wrapping paper, two packages of construction paper, three rolls of scotch tape, 24 candy canes, 35 hours of decorating and a spent $24.
One holiday-decorated residence hall room? Priceless.
Grand Rapids freshman Stacy Siereveld, Richmond sophomore Kathryn Van Ha and Illinois freshmen Taylor Galmarini and Hannah Faleer began decorating their study room Nov. 1. They used lights, a paper fireplace, a decorated tree, Christmas stockings, wrapped presents and much more to deck out their room with holiday spirit.
“We overdo everything,” Galmarini said. “We decorated a little bit for Halloween, but Christmas is our favorite holiday.”
She said the room and door took about a week to decorate, but the process was accompanied by a lot of Christmas music and peppermint mochas.
“We would just get spurts of ‘lets do it now,’ and then work on it for two hours and then take naps and then stay up until 3 a.m. decorating,” Galmarini said. “It took days of brainstorming because we didn’t know exactly what we were going to do. The fireplace on the furnace was a no-brainer but, for everything else, we had to wing it.”
Faleer said the decorations came from her house or were bought collectively with her roommates.
“We had people telling us we decorated too early, but our season ends on Dec. 12 when we have to go home,” she said. “I’m not sure when we are going to take them down. I want to wait until at least after the break.”
Siereveld said not only did they spend time decorating their room, they also took the time to buy gifts for each other and place them wrapped under the tree.
“We all have a class together on Tuesday, so we will probably exchange the gifts after that,” she said. “It will be a nice break during finals week.”
Aside from decorating and exchanging gifts, they also started a new tradition of “sleeping in Christmas.”
“It’s where we sleep out here under the Christmas lights,” Galmarini said. “We take turns going two at a time and sometimes three. It started when I came out here one night because I saw a spider in my room and it made me angry.”
