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College Grad Party

June 2005

Cailean in Seattle, WA  USA

For my husband's college graduation, I picked the theme of the Dr. Seuss book "Oh the Places You'll Go!" and got the book out from the library to study. Invitation: I picked a page from the book and found it on a web site online so I could easily reduce the size down to 4x6 so I could replicate it in a paper-cut card. The page I picked is where the character is floating away on a hot air balloon. I cut out paper to exactly look like the picture from the book (colors and all), and to duplicate the little person, I used a photo of my husband and cut out just his head. I had as the top title of the invitation "Oh the Places He'll Go!" Favors: I custom-ordered M&Ms from their web site and had them in the school colors plus had them add the words "Congrats _____" on one side and "B.S. E.E." on the other side. Decorations: For the table decoration, I painstakingly duplicated another scene from the book - the one where elephants are carrying a canopy. I bought four 36" high dowels and painted them, and bought four 5"-high hard rubber elephant toys online and made little saddles out of felt for them. I then bought some striped fabric and hung that from the ceiling, attached the dowels, and had each dowel resting on top of the elephant so it would look like they were carrying up the canopy. These went on each corner of our dining room table and the food fit in the center under it. For the room decor, I bought some beach balls and attached little paper baskets with white thread to the bottom and then hung the beach balls all around the room to look like hot air balloons. I also made a huge flat hot air balloon with a little graduation-person with my husband's photo-face as part of it, and taped that to the wall. The basket of that hot-air balloon was a little holder for notes /messages/well-wishes to him. Also above our mantel, I had bought individual 9" letters from a display store to spell out "Oh the Places He'll Go" and spray painted them gold, hung them from the ceiling next to the biggest beach ball/hot air balloon. That was the main thing people saw when they walked in. Food: We had pizza from a local gourmet pizza places with some side dishes and for dessert I made a cake to look like a circuit board (his major was Electrical Engineering) complete with silver dragee balls, piped on lines, Mike & Ike capacitors, and Hershey Bar computer chips (upside down). I iced it an icky green color :) All in all it was a very fun day and a fun party!

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