Joe's Mad Men Graduation Party

Graduation is such a fun day. My own graduations are behind me (at least for now...I think about going back to school pretty much every other day), but 2012 was a big year in our family for graduations. 

First, my brother Jeff (who I affectionately refer to as Jeffé) graduated from the police academy in August. I travelled down to Virginia with my parents so we could be there with him and it was fun being the loud northerners in the audience of quiet southern folk (at one point we were like, "wait...are we not supposed to cheer?").  Here's my younger - but quiet a bit larger - brother officially becoming a police man. 

No big deal, but he did win two out of the six awards that they gave out that night. We were so proud. Here we are, later in the evening, back at their (super cute/adorable/I love it so much) house to celebrate. 

I'm still not scared of you, Jeffé.

In December, we had another family graduation. My other younger brother Scott graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a degree in Criminology. I went with my parents, and my sister-in-law and her family to his graduation ceremony (he didn't have enough tickets for everyone, so my husband was the obvious one to get the shaft). 

We all enjoyed the ceremony, especially the honorary alumni speaker who happened to enjoy stringing different quotes together to make up his speech. Luckily, Scott had his phone and was able to discretely send me some texts during said speech. 

My mom loves sharing some quotes on Facebook... 

Please tell me you know the Mean Girls reference. If not, you might just think my brother is insanely mean to me. 

Seriously though, we are so proud of Scott, too. He graduated with honors and plans to attend law school next fall. 

As always, folks...Derek Zoolander.

To sum up, my brothers are the best, and graduations are another great time to celebrate with family and friends.  

Which is exactly what Joe will be doing this month with his family and friends (my transitions are just phenomenal, aren't they?!).

Joe found me online when he was looking for some Mad Men inspired invitations for his own graduation party from law school. The invitation he found is by far the one that has been requested the most from clients who have happened to come across it on the internet. Here's the original from this blog post. 

(Fun fact - this is now available in Vivian Elle's Etsy Shop! You can purchase them for your own party here.)

I put this Mad Men invitation together for one of my BFF's husband's birthday party. And just with it being out there on the internet via my little blog, I've had several people email asking if I could design something similar for a Mad Men themed party that they were throwing. 

Joe was one of these people. He emailed me a few months ago about designing a Mad Men themed invite for his graduation party. We emailed back and forth about what he wanted and then I started putting something together for him. Here's what we came up with. 

Anyone who watches Mad Men or has seen the ads for the show should recognize the familiar format of the invitation. I really wanted to keep the front simple, since we had greater plans for the back. 

I love the wording he chose - Gents, look dapper. Ladies, get your heels on.

The glass of whiskey was the actual inspiration for the invitation. Very Mad Men like. (I've honestly seen four episodes...what do I know?) Instead of putting it on the front, I decided to use it on the back, along with this quote from Henry David Thoreau that Joe liked.

I'm always nervous when I work with guys that the invitations will not be "man" enough for them. Luckily, I think that we managed to make a masculine graduation party invitation thanks to Mad Men.  At least Joe was extremely happy with the result.

I honestly love working on these fun side projects, and during the wedding off-season I'll be sharing a lot of other projects I've been working on. Next week I'll be showing some super cute moving announcements that I did for a dear old friend from college. :)

Until then, congratulations to all of the graduates out there!

Want to hear more about the value of custom invitations? Check out this post. 

Mike's Mad Men Invitations

This is a blog post about a birthday party invitation, with some WE'REMOVINGIN2DAYS mixed in. If you are here to see a birthday party invitation and only a birthday party invitation, you've been warned.

To review, this happened...

Luke and I are the proud new owners of a little bungalow and we couldn't be more excited. So I have to admit that it's hard to think about anything right now aside from her (the house is clearly a she).

(Yes, there is a porch swing hanging on that porch, and yes, it will be left for us. When the previous owner texted to ask me if we wanted it, I replied with an enthusiastic "Oh, yes yes YES!" She may think I'm weird.)

We've actually been the owners since March 9. That's right...80-some days ago. Which means that I've had 80-some days to obsess over what colors to paint, how to decorate, what things to buy, what things to wait to buy, what to use each room for, and so much more.

But wait...this is a post about some Mad Men invitations. Right.

So one of my BFFs, Heidi, has a husband named Mike. You might remember Heidi and Mike from this post or this post. One thing about Heidi: she knows how to throw a party. So much so that she's started a blog called Parties for Pennies. She loves to host parties and save money at the same time. She's thrifty like that.

So when Heidi's husband was turning 40, she wanted to do something extra special for him. Since he likes the show Mad Men, she thought she'd use that as her theme. And she decided that she wanted to let everyone know about her party with an invite that set the tone. And...she came to me to do it. What a pal!

After much staring at Mad Men images that I found online (how you doin', Jon Hamm?), I gained the inspiration I needed to create what I hoped to be the perfect invitation.

{Psssst - this Mad Men invite is now available at Vivian Elle's Etsy Shop. Click here to visit and order it for your own party!}

Confession: Once again, I have stolen images from my beloved friend, Heidi. This was due to an unfortunate event that occurred a few days ago when I accidentally deleted every photo that I had uploaded to this blog post only to realize that I had also deleted them off of my camera. It just doesn't get better than that, folks.

While Heidi wanted me to make the invitations, she had a really cool idea for the envelopes, so she did those herself. They turned out perfectly and I will now steal another photo from her blog and show you them here.

My crafty friend inspires me all the time.

I am so grateful to Heidi that she would trust me with such an important event, and a successful one at that. You can check out how her party went here and here.

In conclusion, it now just needs to be stated that when I write my next blog post, we will be living in our new house. Most likely with just a bed, half painted walls, and a leftover pizza as our only food, but our new house nevertheless. I promise to not take over every blog post with some kind of Young House Love-ish post about all of the plans we have for our bungalow, but I cannot help it if one or two photos sneak in there...

Want to hear more about the value of custom invitations? Check out this post.