With all this talk of helium balloons, I'm beginning to sound like a "munchkin"...  *grin*

While I KNOW (first hand) its best to ban balloons, I thought I'd toss out our "exception" to the rule. 

We just completed a three-year construction/renovation to our historic fire station (museum).  Trying to live up to my title as a good, responsible curator/historian, I took photos and documenting EVERYTHING (and everyone) during the course of the construction. To celebrate the end of the project (and before we moved the collection back into the building) we hosted a party -- an "end-of-construction-wahoo-I-can't-believe-the-nightmare-is-over-bash" and the 300+ project photos became an important part of our "interactive-exhibt/partydecor."

We made color copies of the photos (paper is lighter than photographs, and I didn't want to loose the originals) and tied them onto 6ft-ribbons dangling from 300+ balloons.  We let the balloons float up to our 12ft ceilings so the pictures dangled just over most visitors heads (about 6ft off the floor).   Everyone loved it!  It was fun watching our guests as they reached up, pull-down a photo to take a better look,  then "let it fly" before reaching for another. 

I'm told it took the local balloon store the better part of a morning to fill 300 balloons up, and it took our volunteers the better part of an afternoon to trim the photos and tie them on the ribbons.  The 12" helium balloon held things (4X6 piece of paper and a ribbon) aloft for about 10 or 12hours.  The following morning we simply swept up the "remains of the day" with a broom -- and only one balloon/ribbon got entangled around our tracklight.

-- David --
David Lewis, Curator (and balloon wrangler)
Aurora Regional Fire Museum
www.AuroraRegionalFireMuseum.org
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